iShowSpeed Hits TIME 100: The Creator Economy Just Ate Sports Media

The mainstream just got Speed'd.

TIME Magazine—yes, that dusty old publication your grandparents probably had on their coffee table—just dropped its 2024 Most Influential People in Sports list, and nestled between Dana White and Pat McAfee is none other than Darren Watkins Jr., better known to 80+ million screaming fans as iShowSpeed. The kid who made his name screaming at FIFA glitches and getting tased on stream is now officially in the same room as UFC presidents and NFL legends. The creator economy didn't just knock on sports media's door—it kicked it off the hinges while doing backflips.

Let's be brutally honest here: three years ago, nobody in the traditional sports media establishment would have bet a single dollar on a teenage YouTube streamer from Cincinnati ending up on a list with the most powerful people in athletics. But here we are, living in a timeline where a guy who once jumped over a moving car for content has more cultural pull than half the ESPN lineup combined. That's not a diss to ESPN—that's a wake-up call.

The Speed Equation: Chaos + Authenticity = Billions of Views

For the uninitiated (are there still people who don't know Speed? Seriously?), iShowSpeed exploded out of the YouTube gaming scene in 2021-2022 with a brand of content that can only be described as 'controlled chaos hurricane.' We're talking 23.5 million YouTube subscribers. We're talking billions—yes, with a B—of views across his content. We're talking a streamer who turned getting tased, visiting random countries, and screaming at Ronaldo impressions into a multi-million dollar empire.

But here's what the old guard doesn't get: Speed's influence isn't despite the chaos—it's BECAUSE of it. In an era of sanitized, PR-approved sports personalities giving the same 'we just gotta play our game' interviews, Speed represents something money can't manufacture: raw, unfiltered authenticity. The kid doesn't perform for cameras—he IS the camera, and the world watches through his absolutely unhinged lens.

His World Cup adventures in Qatar? Peak creator-journalism. His boxing appearances and fight announcements? Generating more buzz than most professional cards. His recent globetrotting streams from places like Brazil and beyond? Pulling concurrent viewer numbers that make traditional sports broadcasts look like public access television.

Pat McAfee: The Blueprint for Creator-Athlete Convergence

Then there's Pat McAfee, the former Indianapolis Colts punter who looked at the traditional sports media landscape and said, 'Nah, I can do this better.' And he was right.

The Pat McAfee Show didn't just become a YouTube phenomenon—charging $120 million for licensing rights and eventually landing a deal with ESPN—it redefined what sports media could look like when you let actual personality drive the bus instead of corporate talking points. With 2.3 million YouTube subscribers on his main channel and millions more across platforms, McAfee proved that the creator economy model (authenticity, audience relationship, direct engagement) could absolutely body traditional sports broadcasting.

The guy interviews Aaron Rodgers in ways that make traditional journalists seethe with jealousy. He's built an empire on the simple premise that sports fans want to hear from athletes like they're actual human beings, not walking press releases. And now ESPN is coming to HIM—not the other way around.

Dana White: The OG Influencer Who Won't Admit It

And then there's Dana White, who's been playing the influencer game before these kids were even born. Love him or hate him—and there's plenty of reasons for both—White understood personal brand building when Mark Zuckerberg was still in a Harvard dorm room.

The UFC exists as we know it because White made HIMSELF the story. Every press conference, every controversy, every 'f*** the media' moment—it's all content. It's all engagement. Dana White is essentially a creator economy pioneer who happens to run a combat sports empire instead of a Twitch channel.

With UFC's social media presence pulling hundreds of millions of followers across platforms and White's personal brand being inseparable from the product, he's the missing link between old-school sports promotion and new-school creator economics.

What This List Actually Means

Here's the real story that TIME might not even realize they're telling: the categories are dead. 'Sports media' isn't just ESPN analysts and newspaper columnists anymore. It's YouTubers pulling 100K concurrent viewers. It's streamers who can announce a fight and break the internet. It's former punters building nine-figure media companies by ignoring every rule traditional media said they had to follow.

The creator economy didn't enter sports—sports entered the creator economy. And the platforms know it. YouTube's fight partnerships, Twitch's sports expansion, even TikTok's aggressive push into live sports content—it's all recognition that the next generation of sports fans doesn't watch SportsCenter. They watch Speed screaming in 4K while 200,000 people spam chat emojis.

For creators watching this moment, here's your takeaway: the gatekeepers can't gatekeep what they don't understand. Speed didn't ask for permission to be influential. McAfee didn't fill out applications to revolutionize sports media. They just made content, built audiences, and let the numbers speak louder than any resume ever could.

The mainstream sports world is finally catching up to what the creator economy has known for years: influence isn't assigned by institutions anymore—it's earned, one viral moment at a time.

And if you're still sleeping on the creator economy's takeover of traditional media spaces, just remember: the kid who made his name screaming at video games is now officially more 'influential' than half the sports executives who wouldn't return his emails three years ago.

Stay mad, traditional media. Stay streaming, everyone else.