How streaming creators built a new broadcast blueprint at the World Cup

Anticipating the power of that shared communal experience and armed with the results of a new survey in which 44% of Twitch viewers said they wanted sports coverage on the platform that wasn’t available on traditional media, Twitch set up a special “Football Fest” category on its front page. Since then, 29% of viewers said they increased their fandom when comparing this World Cup to the one in 2022.

For Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, those numbers validate a long-held notion: viewing is fundamentally about community, and creator-led streams are better built for that than traditional, one-way broadcasts.

“People think that sports are about watching the world’s best athletes, but it’s not. Sports are all about community, and there’s no better example of that than the World Cup,” said Clancy. “And that is exactly what happens on Twitch… Twitch is a communal platform centered on this shared affinity for a creator, and then shared experiences together as a community… Soccer is, and especially the World Cup, is the pinnacle of that shared communal experience.”

Clancy said this year’s World Cup has felt notably different on Twitch. Because the platform invested in creator coverage, and FIFA was more open to providing access, streamers aren’t competing with the World Cup for attention; their audiences are consuming both. Fans can now watch both their favorite creators and their favorite soccer team or player.

For Clancy, livestreams centered around games offer people a chance to watch games with their chosen community and their favorite creator, a notable difference from just throwing games up on streaming platforms. He argues that distinction matters for how leagues treat streaming platforms. 

“A lot of times the first thing leagues say is, ‘Oh, I’ll show the game on YouTube.’ That’s just using YouTube as another distribution channel, that’s not creating a social experience… I want to sit and chat with a community I’m part of,” he explained. “When a creator does a watchalong, it breaks the audience down into lots of small groups. It is kind of the equivalent of an online sports bar… If you like watching games at a sports bar, you go to the same sports bar, and you see the same people… It goes back to the sitcom Cheers. We all yearn for a place where everyone knows your name. Cheers was a sports bar and Twitch is like a virtual sports bar where you go there and everyone knows your name.”

That virtual sports bar is enticing for younger audiences, who are less likely to go to sports bars in the first place. A 2023 Gallup poll revealed that 62% of those under 32 drink alcohol, down from 72% two decades ago.

“Streamers like myself are bringing a younger, more global audience. My fans are watching, reacting, clipping, commenting and talking to me the whole time, so it becomes more of a live, two-way conversation or interaction than one-way like a regular broadcast,” Watkins Jr. told Digiday. “The way my fans watch games with me is how younger people all over the world actually want to watch live sports. I think how well this has turned out so far really is proof that this works [at scale].”

Watkins Jr. praised FIFA for giving him the kind of access to the tournament — including prime seats among soccer stars and celebrities — that helps his viewers feel more like they’re at games that are financially and logistically difficult to attend for the average person. Those viewers tune in to watch Watkins Jr., giving brands that may not work directly with FIFA (like Unilever with its 50,000 creator activation) a chance to sponsor Twitch streams. 

Clancy told Digiday he pitches Twitch to advertisers as a way to harness the emotional intensity of live sports but in a more interactive context. “Brands love advertising on sports because of emotional transference, because you’re emotionally engaged and the reason you’re emotionally engaged is because of the communal experience,” he said. “As you start talking about these live experiences, it greatly increases the amount of inventory and the number of brands that can now take advantage of this shared communal experience.” 

Stream Labs CEO Ashray Urs noted the increased brand activity around World Cup streams this year, as well. 

“It definitely feels like all of the major sponsors and all of the big brands are finding ways to leverage creators to capture this moment, which is really encouraging,” he said. 

A new broadcast blueprint

Streamers have drawn up a new broadcast blueprint during this FIFA World Cup, one that both creators and platforms plan on leveraging with other major sporting events and professional sports leagues. 

Sports have increasingly become about individual players as much as (if not more so) individual teams, with fans following specific players, who have in many ways become creators themselves. Clancy told Digiday that creators mirror this new kind of sports fandom, building communities of dedicated fans that tune into watch creators like Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins Jr. or Nicholas “Jynxi” Stewart. 

Watkins Jr.’s sideline World Cup livestreams (in which he records himself reacting to the game, rather than the field) have gotten tens of millions of views each on both Twitch and YouTube across the world. And Stewart’s NBA “Creator Casts,” where he watches basketball games from home and comments on them live, are further proof that leagues and brands should consider offering more explicit rights to creators on livestreaming platforms.

“We saw the Creator Cast drive an incremental 5% viewership that I don’t think would have been watching the game on Prime if not for this,” Clancy said. 

With that kind of incremental lift Clancy believes FIFA could ask Twitch to become an official partner for the 2028 tournament. He pointed to both the NBA and WNBA already bringing more creators into their events and opening up access for them, and said Major League Soccer, the American men’s professional league that has long-struggled to cultivate a fan base on the scale of Europe’s top leagues should be paying close attention to streamers at the World Cup. 

“The U.S. soccer league should be like, ‘We need to make watching the regular season soccer games communal.’ That needs to be through online interactive engagement, because that’s the way we’re gonna drive fandom for soccer in the U.S.,” he said. 

Stream Labs’ Urs said that their current setup, which includes a smaller partner that gives creators rights to access different sports leagues to broadcast, could be a precursor to broader creator-rights frameworks with bigger leagues. Considering how much it cost Fox to get the rights for the 2026 FIFA World Cup ($485 million according to reports), and how there will likely be a bidding war for the 2030 tournament, using creators as secondary broadcast offers sports leagues and the brands that work with them more economical ways to cash in on the global phenomenon. 

“You’ve got Speed meeting all of FIFA’s VIP execs, talking to [FIFA president Gianni Infantino] on stream, having this kind of unprecedented relationship with FIFA,” Urs said. “ I think it’s going to signal and lead to much more than this.”

Both Urs and Clancy referenced livestreamed creator-led content at Coachella as another example of audiences wanting to experience major events through the eyes of the personalities they already follow and how the World Cup is just pushing that trend further. 

“Next World Cup, it’s going really interesting to see what happens there. I think this will be even more open…It’s going to only get more creator friendly,” Urs said. “Some leagues, like MLS…they’re trying to do a lot to try to grow. I think we’ll see them, you know, make changes that are very conducive to getting creators involved.”

Watkins Jr., who has his own dedicated stream on the Fox Sports app, hopes he’ll get even more access to future sporting events.

“I was able to do a livestream Watch With Me broadcast of the Chiefs-Chargers game in Brazil last year with the NFL and it was amazing…My community was in the chat with me, watching the game live, interacting, giving their opinions, asking questions, etc. I was able to talk to them about plays as they happened, I love it. I hope to do a lot more like this with all sports.”