Bleacher Report launches YouTube channel for its sports cartoon fanbase ahead of World Cup

B/R’s animated content has “driven more viewership than any other original content franchise at the company,” said Drew Muller, vp and gm of House of Highlights, Bleacher Report’s social-first sports vertical.

Choosing YouTube as its primary platform is an effort by Bleacher Report to reach younger viewers who are looking for cultural commentary around sports, beyond live games and highlights.

“Animation skews younger and is highly shareable, which helps top of funnel sharing and brand awareness,” said Nicholas Spiro, chief commercial officer at Viral Nation, a social media marketing and creator agency. “A thematically coherent channel also gets better treatment from YouTube’s recommendation system than animated content scattered across a general sports feed.”

Within a week of launching, the B/R Cartoons YouTube channel has over 20,000 subscribers. 

Bleacher Report has produced animated sports comedy shows since 2018, and it remains the content type with some of the highest engagement at the sports publisher. It has the highest average completion rate of any B/R original content format, averaging over 75% across video franchises, according to a company spokesperson.

“The audience… were the most avid, the most committed, the most sticky, compared to anything else we were doing across the company,” Muller said.

During the World Cup tournament in 2022, B/R produced a special episode of its popular animated series “The Champions,” as well as a skit show called ”Champions Chat.” B/R is bringing back “The Champions” for its eighth season for the World Cup. The first episode premiered on May 19. The show has averaged nearly 4 million views per episode on YouTube, which makes it B/R’s most-viewed original content series, according to the spokesperson.

B/R’s longest-running animated series, “Gridiron Heights,” has 10 seasons and over 150 million views, they added.

Bleacher Report’s soccer vertical B/R Football had 264 million views on Instagram, 13 million views on TikTok, 5.8 million views on Facebook and 4.2 million views on YouTube in April 2026, according to Tubular Labs data.

“Animated sports content serves a very different, but valuable role compared to traditional live sports. Opportunities like these help to surround live games, increasing the visibility, while extending the advertising halo and gains provided by the live game portion. It also serves to enhance fandom and create additional fan ecosystems,” said Adam Schwartz, svp and director of sports media at ad agency Horizon Media.

Despite this impressive viewership, B/R’s team sensed a problem. The distribution of its animated content was primarily through B/R’s larger social account handles.

“When shows weren’t in season, we didn’t really have a way to continue to cultivate and really nurture the fandom that was there on the animated episodes. It basically existed just in the comments section of these videos,” Muller said. “We’ve made it hard for [our audience] to really form the type of community that they deserve and that the content deserves.”

The dedicated YouTube channel gives viewers “a place to really anchor themselves,” he added. It also allows the B/R animation team to share more bonus content, such as jokes that didn’t make it into a series, which wouldn’t be the right fit for the more general B/R social accounts.

The unique, satirical cartoons also sets B/R’s content apart from the sea of sports coverage around events with global interest, like the World Cup, which kicks off June 11 in North America.

“With the right digital strategy, you can convert a portion of this buzz into long term fans of the brand or the franchise. A dedicated animated channel is one mechanism for that conversion,” Spiro said.

B/R has also landed Nike as a sponsor for a shortform animated series around Nike-sponsored World Cup soccer players, produced by Bleacher Report’s animation team. B/R declined to share how much revenue it was making from that sponsorship. B/R cartoons will also be monetized from YouTube ads, Muller said.

B/R’s animated content brought in seven figures of advertising revenue last year, growing year over year, according to the company spokesperson, who declined to share specifics. Bleacher Report’s previous sponsors include Shell, Sony and McDonald’s.

“Animation is inherently brand safe, which is part of why a deal like Nike happens here. Premium advertisers can show up against cartoons in a way they sometimes can’t around hot take commentary or user generated reaction content,” Spiro said. “That makes the dedicated channel attractive on the monetization side, not just the audience side.”

Eventually, B/R wants to expand into selling merch around its cartoons. “Being able to have a direct to consumer aspect of this channel is a real ambition for where it goes outside of just ad sales,” Muller said.

Putting all the animated content in one place also allows for “umbrella branding” that could make it easier to sell to advertisers, Muller said. B/R has dedicated channels on TikTok for some cartoon series, but they are show-specific, according to Muller.

The YouTube channel and World Cup cartoons are also part of a larger investment by B/R into this content format. B/R has expanded its animation team, adding about five people this year to help handle development, animation, operations and strategy, such as community development, according to Muller. 

B/R is currently searching for a sponsor for a new season of “Bulletin Board,” one of its newest series, which launched last year. This fall, B/R will premiere its first show on college football. 

“Brand sponsors for this type of opportunity fall into two buckets. Traditional sports advertisers seeking a younger audience to bring their product to and brands that prioritize personality, style and culture. Depending on the specific opportunity I think you’ll see a wide range of advertisers in the space,” Schwartz said.