The Business of YouTube

A weekly strategic lens for senior leaders into how YouTube is reshaping the business of technology, sports, music, entertainment, and culture.

Welcome!
To your favourite newsletter, The Business of YouTube, brought to you by Paola Marinone and Bengü Atamer, founders of BuzzMyVideos and previously at YouTube and Google. We are bringing our exclusive insights from 20 years of experience leading strategy at YouTube and Google.

The US Open Found Money Inside a Deal It Already Signed

Paola and Bengü here! We are back and we have a very simple yet very powerful YouTube format move to share with you all.

It is US Open right now and we wanted to take a pass at what they are doing on YouTube and discovered something very smart.

Mid-tournament, the US Open's YouTube channel is doing something most rights holders still leave on the table: turning a broadcast property into a compounding digital asset. 

Here's what's actually going on under the hood.

The channel has 1.86M subscribers and 13K videos.

During tournament week it ran 6 distinct content formats at once, and each one is doing a different job.

The move worth stealing is "Live Radio." It's an audio-only live commentary stream that runs during the match, no footage of the actual points.

No video means no overlap with the TV or streaming rights already sold.

The men's final pulled 444K views on that stream alone, the women's final 265K.

WHY THIS FORMAT MATTERS AND WORKS:

• It doesn't touch the broadcast deal. No footage, no cannibalization of the TV or streaming rights already sold. Unless a rights contract explicitly blocks it, this is a genuinely new asset a rights holder can create for free.

• It's already sponsored. The men's final Radio stream carries American Express branding, a live, always-on placement that didn't require a linear ad buy.

• It performs at broadcast scale. 444K views on the men's final Radio stream, 265K on the women's, numbers most standalone digital properties would kill for, generated from a feed with zero video production cost.

• It keeps compounding. These aren't ephemeral livestreams. They stay up, get watched back, and accumulate value long after the match ends.

The rest of the US Open YouTube Channel’s Content Ladder: every audience intent, covered

Scroll the channel during tournament week and you see a deliberate ladder, not a random feed:

1. Shorts (highest volume, lowest cost) ; human, personality-driven moments: a proposal on court, a celebrity spotted in the crowd, a player's post-match phone call to his dad. These are fandom content. Some clear 1M+ views. This is top-of-funnel: it recruits people who don't follow tennis into the channel.

2. Community posts / polls ; "Who are you backing?" pulls 18K–25K votes. Nearly zero production cost, pure engagement signal, and it primes the audience emotionally before the match even starts.

3. Live Radio ; the sponsored, rights-safe live layer described above.

4. Practice session livestreams ; lower views (30K–50K) but they serve a different job: constant presence in the feed, algorithmic frequency, and access-driven fandom (fans watching a player practice is intimacy content, not highlights content).

5. Full matches and condensed matches ; the long-form asset for the deeper fan, published fast (same day or next day).

6. "Top 10 points" and best-of compilations ; repackaging the same underlying footage into a third and fourth format, extending its shelf life without new production.

Six formats, one set of source material, each one built for a different depth of fan interest.

A few things worth taking back to your own rights portfolio:

First bookmark this LinkedIn Post from Paola, she recapped the whole strategy in a great condensed way.

1. Your existing deal probably has unbundled inventory in it already. Before touching a renegotiation, check what audio-only, behind-the-scenes, or archival assets you're already cleared to publish and simply haven't.

2. Sponsorship doesn't need a title spot. AMEX got premium, always-on visibility without being the primary broadcast partner. Tier 2 and Tier 3 sponsors should see this kind of inventory before they see a standard media pack.

3. Long-form still has an audience, it's just watching on connected TV, which means it can carry a real premium. Worth testing rather than assuming.

If your channel only publishes one format, you're leaving several audience segments untouched with footage you already have sitting in a drive somewhere.

And the archive is closer to an annuity: every match you've ever shot is a future acquisition asset if someone actually structures and releases it, instead of leaving it in a vault.

To discuss your YouTube Strategy, reach out to us!

The Business of YouTube - Job Board 📈

We have curated what is open and available in the market, and who is hiring!

Happy job hunting!

YouTube Channel Manager, Manchester United

Sales Director, The Arcade

YouTube Channel Strategy Manager, The Orchard

Various Different Roles Open, The GoalHanger

Coordinator, Production & Live Events, Men In Blazers

Business Director, LADbible Group

If you have a senior YouTube/Video/Social Media/Content opening, and you want us to add it to our Job Board, please write to us at [email protected] or [email protected].

FOOTBALL CLUBS’ YouTube Stats for 2025-2026 Season

You can download it here: https://buzzmyvideos.com/2026/06/09/major-leagues-clubs-youtube-views-and-subscriber-growth-2026/

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