Why FIFA and YouTube are betting on creators this World Cup

On Sunday afternoon, the biggest star at a FIFA soccer event wasn’t a professional footballer.

Hours before kickoff at Wollman Rink in Central Park, New York, kids gathered outside the gates hoping for a glimpse of IShowSpeed. Some carried soccer balls and Sharpies in case they got lucky. Others settled for watching through the fence as YouTube and FIFA’s inaugural Creator Cup got underway on a temporary pitch built atop the rink.

Over the next 90 minutes, the crowd watched some of the internet’s biggest personalities swap livestreams for soccer cleats under the blazing afternoon sun. Speed captained one side to victory in his No. 7 jersey — a nod to his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo — while soccer creator Céline Dept led the other in her custom “Celnado” kit.

Brazil’s Allan Stag dazzled with quick footwork, while B Lou and Zias stayed alert between the goalposts. Marlon, JasonTheWeen, Zhong, Coringa, and other creators rounded out an international roster that looked more like the YouTube homepage than a traditional football lineup. But this was still a FIFA event: Pierluigi Collina, the organization’s chief refereeing officer, officiated the match.

As FIFA works to reach a new generation of fans, creators are increasingly becoming a gateway to the sport. Initiatives like the Creator Cup recognize that some of football’s biggest ambassadors now build their audiences on YouTube. Collectively, the creators invited to play in the tournament reach more than 350 million subscribers on the platform.

That strategy has been years in the making. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, YouTube worked with creators on the ground and saw how they could bring fans closer to the tournament outside of the matches themselves. Four years later, that collaboration has expanded well beyond creator coverage. This World Cup, YouTube partnered with FIFA to expand how fans experience the tournament, from livestreams and creator activations to taking over the southeast corner of Central Park for an all-star creator match-up.

The audience has followed. According to YouTube, videos from its World Cup creators have already generated more than 1 billion views during the 2026 tournament, with personalities such as IShowSpeed drawing tens of millions of viewers to their own live coverage.

Rather than replacing traditional broadcasts, Angela Courtin, YouTube’s global head of brand marketing, said that creators offer fans a different way into the sport — one built around personality, community, and the online conversations that happen long before and after kickoff.

“The broadcasters play an amazing role in bringing the game [to the people],” Courtin told Mashable. “Creators just bring a different flavor. They’re chatting with their fans every day. This game around the game that we’ve had on YouTube for the last 10 years, from clips and highlights to creators and fans, is really what we’ve been leaning into. We want to bring fans pitchside.”

Among the creators who took to the turf was fashion creator Wisdom Kaye, who played forward for Céline Dept’s team. He said brands and organizations are now realizing that creators understand how to capture attention in ways traditional marketing often can’t.

“Creators understand a certain recipe that garners engagement, that garners attention, that garners an audience,” Kaye told Mashable. “Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to figure that out, but you have people with their phones who did it in a few months. There are certain things you can’t replicate if you’re a big business.”

That attention has real monetary value. According to an analysis cited by Business Insider, influencer-led World Cup campaigns generated an estimated $4 billion in earned social media value.

It’s the kind of reach organizations like FIFA are trying to harness. Romy Gai, FIFA’s chief business officer, described the partnership with YouTube as a new approach to World Cup coverage, designed to work alongside traditional broadcasters while reaching fans wherever they already consume the sport. As part of that effort, participating broadcasters could stream the first 10 minutes of each match on YouTube.

Creators understand a certain recipe that garners engagement, that garners attention, that garners an audience.

“This is a novel approach that we’ve built together with our existing broadcasters,” Gai told Mashable, describing it as a three-way collaboration between FIFA, broadcasters, and YouTube. “Understanding the need to onboard the younger generation, we found the best way to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right moment.”

The way Kaye sees it, that’s only possible when organizations trust creators to speak to audiences in their own voice: “You need to work with people who are human and who really understand these things.”

For a creator like IShowSpeed, who has over 57 million YouTube subscribers, the event demonstrated how far the industry has come.

“This is crazy,” he told Mashable before the match. “It just shows that the creator industry is evolving and bigger brands are starting to realize that. That’s why we’re here now. We’ve got a FIFA YouTube Creator Cup match, and I’m glad to be a part of that.”

Zhong, a YouTuber who writes sketches for his 76 million subscribers, echoed that sentiment, saying opportunities like the Creator Cup would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago. “I’m really excited about where the creator space is heading,” he said.

Streamer Marlon pointed to changing media habits among younger audiences, arguing that platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have become where many fans spend their time, making creator partnerships feel like a natural evolution. “I definitely think that’s the place to put stuff now instead of [traditional] TV,” he said.

For creators from outside the U.S., the event also carried a different significance. Brazilian creator Allan Stag called representing his country’s creator community in New York’s Central Park “next level.”

“Getting to represent the Brazilian creator industry, especially in Central Park — it’s crazy that they closed it out,” he said.

His friend and rival on the pitch, Victor Augusto, who goes by Coringa, shared a similar thought. “Not only for the creator economy, but also for us as Brazilians, it’s crazy to be here in New York representing Brazilian creators,” he said.

JasonTheWeen, known for his IRL streams, pointed to the World Cup itself as another reason the event resonated. “Soccer is growing in the States, especially with the World Cup going on,” he said. “To be able to participate in something like this is just epic.”

For Gai, creators like Speed are more than influencers promoting the sport — they’re helping shape how a new generation experiences it.

“His passion is genuine. His vision is so unique that he’s adding a little bit of magic on top of our normal magic,” Gai said. “It’s a win-win combination.”

As the match wound down, the crowd outside Wollman Rink hadn’t thinned. If anything, it had grown. Teens packed the pathways while kids, and plenty of curious parents, climbed the hill overlooking the rink.

Gai believes that’s ultimately what makes football unique. “Everybody should feel that football belongs to you.” For a growing number of fans, creators are making that invitation feel personal.

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