The 2026 World Cup’s First Winner: the Creator EconomyGoal rush! From Norway’s Erling Haaland to Trevor Noah, the tournament smashes viewing records and mints social stars
I wrote about reps’ race to sign buzzy Love Island stars, the robust creator M&A deal flow so far this year, 2026 as the summer of reality TV and Hollywood’s creator gold rush. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Hello again! I’m back with a bonus newsletter today about the televised event I’ve been spending pretty much all my free time watching: the World Cup. (If you haven’t already, check out my Tuesday report on my other summer obsession, Love Island USA, and all the stars who’ve flown home from Fiji with huge followings and reps racing to sign them.) Based on the ratings for the matches — even with Team USA out of contention, the matches continue to draw record viewer numbers — I suspect a lot of you have been doing the same. As we’ve seen now with the last couple Olympic Games, major sporting events have become a powerful platform to launch careers — and not just on the field. Take Norway striker Erling Haaland, who before the World Cup was well known across the pond — he plays for Manchester City — and has become the breakout star of the tournament, gaining a reported 22 million Instagram followers, thanks to his impressive seven goals and a cheeky social media presence. But even before the tournament began, Haaland was following a creator playbook, including vlogging on YouTube for the last several months, that helped prime him to pop here in the U.S. And he’s far from the only player who’s broken through during the tourney. Americans have become enamored with England’s Jude Bellingham, who now has 48.5 million followers on Instagram even though he doesn’t post quite as often as good friend and former teammate Haaland. And Cabo Verde goalkeeper Vozinha jumped from less than 100,000 followers on the Meta-owned app to more than 29 million (nearly double the following of NFL vet Tom Brady). Beyond the pitch, World Cup shoulder programming has also seen a surge. The Rest is Football’s live daily World Cup show with Netflix, for example, became the first podcast to break into the streamer’s country-specific daily Top 10 lists and found its way to No. 1 in the U.K. And Trevor Noah’s World Cup Watch Party has more than 200 million total views across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms. Noah’s manager and producing partner, Derek Van Pelt, tells me the live watchalongs were born out of the former The Daily Show host’s real-life World Cup WhatsApp chats with friends. Together with Religion of Sports, they conceived of a second-screen experience for Noah’s fans. “The spirit is bringing people into the living room with Trevor and his friends and them being part of the experience of watching the global game together,” says Todd Barrish, senior vp of business development at Religion of Sports. They’ve been particularly blown away by viewers’ engagement. Each live stream is averaging 20,000 comments, or what Van Pelt describes as three comments per second for the duration of the stream. “We’re trying to be additive to the game,” says Van Pelt, who notes that he’s already thinking of ways to bring the energy behind the Watch Party broadcasts to future projects from Noah.
‘Funny, Interesting Angles’ on the PitchThere really is something for everyone this World Cup. For a completely different vibe, Adam Friedland has been hosting a mini-series, The Adam Friedland Show Presents: The Beautiful Pod, as part of his new deal with Spotify. “I’m a comedian, so I’m going to find the funny, interesting angles,” he tells me of his show, which hit No. 30 on Spotify’s podcast charts. Soccer podcast listening in general has been up considerably during the World Cup. According to Spotify, U.S. soccer listening has grown 380 percent since the beginning of June, with all 10 U.S. host cities ranking among the top locations for consumption (New York was No. 1 and Los Angeles No. 3). Gen Z, in particular, has taken to the game. Three of the top five podcasts among that cohort are about the sport. 
All the major social platforms have been leaning in, too. TikTok worked with FIFA to tap 30 creator correspondents to capture content about the tournament. Axel Joel, for example, has been posting breakdowns on all the games under his @axel.footy account where he has 253,000 followers. 
And YouTube worked with FIFA to host the Creator Cup last Sunday, pitting online stars and athletes like PlaqueBoyMax and Chad Ochocinco Johnson against each other in a seven-on-seven matchup helmed by team leaders iShowSpeed and Céline Dept. Speed’s team took home the trophy and FIFA notched millions of views on the content around the event.
Norwegian Good
But for all the creator-first media lighting up the charts, it’s Haaland who’s been the World Cup’s clear breakout. Even though his tournament run ended Sunday when England defeated Norway to advance to the semifinals, that hasn’t stopped my feeds from being flooded with photos and videos of the striker, including on Monday when I couldn’t escape snaps of him exiting a plane in Oslo carrying a taxidermied raccoon he’d picked up as a souvenir in Texas. For evidence of his growing fan base, look no further than his YouTube channel, where he’s amassed more than 3 million subscribers since he began posting regular vlogs last October. The four videos he posted during the World Cup have been viewed more than 23 million times. Haaland is the latest proof point that celebrities can connect with fresh audiences by following the creator playbook. And there’s clearly a lot of intent around how Haaland has been showing up online. In addition to YouTube — where his videos have a professional polish that includes a voice-over track and sponsors like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — he’s hilariously unfiltered on Snapchat, and he posts regularly to Instagram, too. On the Friday ahead of his quarterfinal match, Googling his name produced an Easter egg of an animated Norwegian Viking rowing across the computer screen. 
What will we all do when the World Cup ends this Sunday? Friedland has a suggestion. He tells me he recently started HBO’s 2008 John Adams miniseries starring Paul Giamatti. “Every episode’s two hours long,” he says, “which is kind of like a soccer game.”
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