Europe’s creator economy took a step toward the television business on September 17, when creator management firm Arcade hosted what it described as the region’s first media upfront in London. It follows a year of experiments: creators have appeared in TV and streaming upfronts and NewFronts, while Spotter, Forbes, Walmart and the IAB have run creator-focused versions of the traditional media sales event.
The early takeaway is that a TV upfront cannot simply be lifted and applied to creators. Creator inventory looks fundamentally different from broadcast and streaming supply.
Why the TV model doesn’t fit
Traditional upfronts sell a finite, seasonal pool of inventory from a small group of sellers. Creator inventory, by contrast, is effectively unlimited and spread across hundreds or thousands of channels. Go Fish vice president of social media Lauren Lyster said that difference makes creators hard to compare with TV content and means the pitch process will have to evolve.
“It’s not an upfront in the traditional sense,” Lyster said. “Creator inventory is neither finite nor seasonal. It is, in the broad sense, effectively unlimited.”
- TV upfront: scarce seasonal inventory, a few sellers, predictable programming.
- Creator upfront: near-unlimited inventory, thousands of sellers, always-on output.
- Likely outcome: scarcity will be created through small, curated rosters of top creators rather than inherited from the format.
Lyster argued that talent agencies and creator networks will eventually originate the real creator upfront, likely built around the top one percent of creators who can offer scarcity and industry exclusivity.
Aggregators are selling structure, not just talent
At Arcade, CEO Matt Elek framed the London event as both a sales pitch and a way to close the gap between advertisers, traditional media and creators. He said the European creator economy still behaves like a “Wild West,” with brands quoting prices at random and creators seeking more consistent partnerships.
“There’s defined output, defined metrics, defined pricing… organizational structure in a way that makes it more viable and palatable to advertisers,” Elek said. “To a large extent, that isn’t happening in the U.K.”
Spotter CEO Nic Paul sees a similar shift. The first phase of creator upfronts introduced brands to talent and programming; the next phase is making it easier for advertisers to invest and show up in the ecosystem. Culture Genesis, meanwhile, has published what it calls the creator economy’s upfront calendar, outlining upcoming creator programming around events such as Coachella, the Grammys and NFL live streams. The company works with mega creators including Kai Cenat, T-Pain, Hasan Minhaj and iShowSpeed.
That calendar is the missing piece for many buyers. Creator inventory is not scarce by nature, so a useful upfront has to signal planned moments, exclusivity windows and measurable packages.
What this means for marketing teams
For marketing and media buyers, creator upfronts should be treated as a premium curation window rather than a broad marketplace. Before committing budget, teams should ask for defined output, metrics and pricing, and check whether the roster is genuinely exclusive or simply repackaged influencer inventory.
The creator economy still needs better infrastructure, and events like IAB’s CreatorFronts are partly educational. The most practical approach is to use these moments to build direct relationships with aggregators, while keeping always-on creator buying separate from high-commitment upfront deals.
Source: Digiday
