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It's Tuesday and OpenAI is bringing a full-length, AI-driven animated film to Cannes Film Festival. The title: Critterz.

Today’s News

PLATFORM HEADLINES

Some fans aren’t happy with YouTube’s record-breaking NFL broadcast

The stream: Results are in from YouTube’s first exclusive NFL broadcast. The platform’s coverage of the Brazil-set tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers drew an average-minute-audience of 17.3 million (per Nielsen).

That viewership total—which a YouTube rep confirmed includes YouTube and YouTube TV, local over-the-air distributors for in-market teams, and NFL+—set a new record for the most-watched live stream in YouTube history.

By NFL standards, however, that traffic was fairly pedestrian. The opening game of 2025 (which took place the night before YouTube’s broadcast) hauled in a Nielsen rating of 28.3 million across NBC networks and Peacock, while the average NFL broadcast in 2024 reached 17.5 million viewers. It’s worth noting, however, that last year’s Brazil game had 16% fewer viewers than YouTube’s exclusive.

That improved year-over-year result could pave the way for future exclusives, especially since the Google-owned platform proved that it could handle NFL-sized viewership without major technical hiccups.

The controversy: While YouTube’s ratings lined up with typical NFL fare, however, not all fans were thrilled with its approach to game-day coverage. The on-air team offered an eclectic mix of media personalities, retired football players, and creators, with MrBeast’s introductory video setting the stream’s irreverent tone.

In particular, it was MrBeast’s outsized presence that drew the ire of many football fans. Some X posts compared the YouTuber’s frequent commentary to force-feeding, while others questioned whether he and fellow creators possess the sports knowledge necessary to weigh in during NFL broadcasts.

YouTube could have limited the creator cameos, but then its NFL coverage wouldn’t feel distinct from other networks. If it hopes to continue courting football fans, then, the platform must strike the right balance between creators and traditional celebrities.

🌟 SPONSORED 🌟

VidSummit has unveiled its 2025 speaker lineup. Here’s a sneak peek:

Every year, VidSummit tickets sell out as top creators and industry pros prepare for a biz dev event like no other. 

With a fan-free environment and a speaker lineup dedicated to furthering your career, VidSummit is more than a creator industry event. It’s where creators discover how to dominate the industry—with exclusive insights from digital revolutionaries.

Here’s a sneak peek at the speakers who will define VidSummit 2025:

• Tyler Chou, the founder and CEO of Tyler Chou Law for Creators and CreatorArq, a legal and strategic advisory firm representing some of YouTube’s biggest stars.
  
  

• Instagram vet and Former YouTube Head of Creator Product Marketing Jon Youshaei
  
  

• Linus Sabastian, founder of Linus Media Group and creator of the popular tech YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips, which boasts 16.3M+ subscribers.
  
  

• Jordan Matter, the creator behind one of the top five most-viewed U.S. YouTube channels, with 30M subscribers and 11B+ views.

From October 7-9, VidSummit 2025 will unite these and other experts in digital content to share strategies and secrets you won’t hear anywhere else.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• KIMPRO is back at the top of our weekly YouTube viewership ranking after collecting 1.75 billion weekly views at the start of September. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees in a recent memo that the company plans to restructure around “five to seven teams” that will “run like startups inside Snap.” (Snap Newsroom)
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• Bluesky is giving users the ability to privately keep track of previously-viewed content with a new bookmarking tool called “Saved Posts.” (TechCrunch)
  
  

• Documents presented to Congress by current and former Meta employees suggest that the company suppressed internal efforts to research child safety concerns. (TechCrunch)

GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos: MrBeast, sports bets, and “The Crop Mafia”

After two weeks of Alan Chikin Chow domination, MrBeast and Veritasium are back at the top of Gospel Stats’ weekly ranking of most-viewed branded YouTube videos—along with a typical injection of miscellaneous sports content.

🥇 #1. MrBeast x Feastables: $1 vs $1,000,000,000 Nuclear Bunker (82.4M views)
Billionaire bunker tours are somewhat of a thing on YouTube, with creators like Ryan Trahan, Airrack, and Jack Pembroke propping open the doors of underground shelters built by the rich and powerful. MrBeast’s Feastables-sponsored twist on that format took viewers all the way to the U.S. Space Force’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex—and snagged over 82 million views in the process.

🥈 #2. John Nellis x FotMob: Every Haaland Pass = $100 💵 (29.4M views)
Sports content usually makes an impact on Gospel’s branded rankings and this week’s chart is no exception. John Nellis’ latest “football side quest” brought him to Manchester City game, where he shelled out $100 every time star striker Erling Haaland scored a pass. FotMob—a gameday companion app for soccer enthusiasts—managed to take a bit of the bite out of that exercise by serving as the video’s sponsor.

🎰 #3. Veritasium x Incogni: Explaining Why Farmers Can’t Legally Replant Their Own Seeds (7.9M views)
Veritasium’s latest Incogni-sponsored video revolves around a full-scale investigation into “The Crop Mafia” and Monsanto, an agricultural biotechnology company that makes pesticides and was acquired by Bayer in 2018 for $63 billion.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

MONEY MOVES

YouTube’s Hacksmith raised $10M on Kickstarter

The Kickstarter campaign: Another creator product has proven to have mass appeal beyond its maker’s online fanbase.

After growing its channel to 15.4 million subscribers and ~20 million monthly views by recreating cinematic engineering marvels (think the Power Loader from Alien or a Star Wars lightsaber), Hacksmith Industries has at last built something fans can hold in their own two hands.

Introduced through a Kickstarter campaign launched August 6, Hacksmith’s Smith Blade is a 21-in-1 everyday carry tool. Its blade is made of M390, a steel Hacksmith says is “produced in Germany through a process called powder metallurgy.” Also included are wire strippers, tweezers, a bottle opener, a protractor and ruler, a pry bar, Phillips- and flat-head screwdrivers, a pen, a sewing awl, an illuminator that glows thanks to radioactive tritium, a fire striker, an emergency glass breaker, and a storage slot for 4mm drill bits.

The “standard” version of the Smith Blade is around ~$200, making Hacksmith’s Kickstarter goal of $180,000 for the first production run pretty reasonable.

Instead, the creator’s campaign attracted ~36,600 backers, who handed him $10,636,050. 

The battle: Like Linus Tech Tips‘ ratcheting multi-bit screwdriver (which sold $7.2 million worth of units in just three months) and JerryRigEverything’s $20 knife, Hacksmith’s Smith Blade achieved stunning success by drawing attention far beyond the creator’s existing audience.

What ties those products together? They’re all functional, for use by everyday people and pro craftsmen. We know YouTubers are often experts when it comes to their interests—now they’re turning that expertise into multimillion-dollar products.

WATCH THIS

After conquering Twitch, Ibai is taking on YouTube

The Spanish streamer: At just 30 years old, Spanish streamer Ibai Llanos has founded his own esports company, set Twitch records with his influencer boxing series La Velada del Año, and been named by Forbes as Spain’s most prominent content creator.

The YouTube push: Now—just weeks after obliterating his own record for the most concurrent Twitch viewers—Ibai is turning his attention to YouTube. After years of sporadic uploads, the creator has begun consistently posting Sidemen-style long-form videos while also increasing his output on Shorts.

Those videos are already drawing a big crowd. During the first week of September, Ibai added 400,000 new subscribers, bringing his total tally above 14 million. Check out one of his latest uploads here.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.