The National Football League (NFL) is reshaping how major sports leagues connect with digital Creators and influence culture. Under the leadership of Ian Trombetta, the NFL has enhanced its digital strategy by positioning Creators at the center of its mission to reach new audiences. 

As SVP of Social, Influencer/Creator & Content Marketing, Ian directs a comprehensive ecosystem that includes league accounts, team accounts, and a dedicated player social team – all working together to connect football culture with the next generation of fans.

Building a Creator-First Strategy

When Ian joined the NFL in 2019, he applied valuable experience from Red Bull and Activision to reshape the league’s approach to digital engagement. “Coming here to the league, we knew that we had to build an influencer program that was less centered on some of the traditional celebrities and more focused on the influencers and Creators who had the social media currency, the ones who are driving culture with the youth,” he explains.

This shift required creating a comprehensive Creator program from scratch, leaning on genuine partnerships rather than traditional celebrity endorsements. “We built a program based on the strategy of ensuring we’re working together for the right reasons, seeing the brand opportunity for both the league and the influencer or Creator,” says Ian.

The approach now extends beyond verification metrics to identifying rising talent. “It’s shifted from the blue check marks, and it is important to identify those coming out of nowhere on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. They’re gaining traction because of their creativity and the power of their content,” Ian notes.

Measuring Success Through Data

The NFL’s Creator strategy relies on analytics, with data guiding every decision. “It is the foundation. We cannot do anything without the data and analytics,” Ian points out.

This analytical approach validates the league’s investment in Creator partnerships. Ian notes that “some of our top performing posts ever in the history of the NFL involve Creators and influencers.” The impact extends beyond social metrics to broader campaign success. “When we look at the audience engaging with that content, it is much different than the folks who are watching, for example, Sunday Night Football, which is very complimentary for us.”

The metrics encompass more than reach numbers. “When working with some of the bigger Creators and influencers, we’re looking at a big reach number and the sentiment. How did the followers and those who engaged with the content respond to it?” Ian explains. “We don’t get caught up in every comment, but we have a good sense of percentages and volume.”

Connecting with Young Audiences

The NFL’s Creator strategy serves a crucial purpose: building relationships with younger audiences who may not engage with traditional football content. 

“Gen Z and even Gen Alpha are very important,” Ian stresses. “The earlier you can convert someone to becoming a consumer or a fan, the more likely they are to stay that way.”

This means meeting young fans where they are and speaking their language. “We know we must do it on their terms,” says Ian. “Social media and Creators are often the conduits to do that with younger fans. Hopefully, we can expose them to our players, teams, games, and partners and do it in ways relevant for today’s day and age versus trying to force maybe an older technique or device to engage those young fans.”

Ian notes that the league succeeds by spotlighting aspects of football culture that resonate with younger audiences, which includes food, fashion, music, gaming, etc. “Those also happen to be huge passion points for the players,” Ian explains. “You can start to see where all these intersect. There’s limitless opportunity for us to tell those types of stories.”

Adapting to Platform Changes

As social media platforms introduce new features and policies, the NFL maintains an agile approach. 

“The platforms are always introducing new features,” Ian acknowledges. “We’re consistently updating our strategies to stay ahead of platform changes, whether that be Twitter’s transition to X or even developments concerning TikTok today.”

The NFL prioritizes early adoption of emerging platforms, with Ian citing Meta’s Threads as a “good” example. “[Threads] came online and garnered 100 million users in a week. If you miss out on that wave for several months, that’s tough to recover from,” Ian explains.

“We try never to want to alienate our avid, in some cases, older fans,” he adds. “We want to continue to service them with the right level of content and the types of content they’re accustomed to and want to see. In addition, we also want to be more of a challenger brand in the sense of being aggressive regarding looking at the opportunities with scaling platforms.”

Creator Selection and Partnership Strategy

The NFL implements a sophisticated system for identifying and selecting Creator partners. “We have a team that’s focused on influencers and Creators. It’s important that they understand and live in that world day-in and day-out, and have a sense of who’s emerging, trends occurring on platforms and so forth,” Ian explains.

The selection process combines technological tools with human insight. “We use several different tools to look at the engagement across and understand some of the trends there, who’s going up, who’s going down, etc.,” Ian says. However, he emphasizes that metrics are just the starting point.

Brand alignment guides the selection process. “We’re essentially looking at a quality score for how we envision ourselves working with a particular Creator or influencer. Can we have a fair degree of confidence that they will be in a brand-safe environment for us?” he notes. “You can never guarantee the future, but you can inform the present with much of this.”

With emerging Creators, the NFL is “looking for more of a test and learn type of approach where we can do things that are relatively low lift and enable us to learn and continue to sharpen the needle regarding the Creator strategy as a whole,” Ian explains.

The league prioritizes genuine content creation over scripted. “It’s an opportunity for us to figure out ways to represent the creator’s voice authentically and not force them into situations where the content’s not resonating,” says Ian.

The NFL has expanded Creator partnerships across teams, with Ian noting that every NFL team now has an influencer and Creator strategy. “It’s more about how we continue to grow where we’re seeing even more outreach and engagement within the community,” he adds.

The exec also states that the league supports all Creators, including sharing campaign performance data. “We ask in return that they can share as much as they can from what they see from their channels. We don’t mandate that by any means but always ask to learn and understand how certain things are performing.”

This collaborative approach has led to successful partnerships with major creators like MrBeast and Deestroying, where Ian notes, “an overwhelming amount of the conversation around the commercial or the campaign is focused on the influencer or Creator.” 

He adds that these successes have validated the NFL’s Creator-centric approach and set the stage for expansion: “You’ll see much from us in the future, which will be terrific for supporting the Creator Economy.”

The Future of Sports and Creator Culture

Ian sees live streaming as a significant trend transforming Creator content. “I’ve been fascinated by this push into live; the less curated and the less polished view of social media as a whole, but then the Creators themselves who are leaning more into that space from a live streaming perspective,” he says, citing Creators like Kai Cenat and iShowSpeed who are pushing new formats for fan engagement.

The NFL plans to expand its Creator initiatives significantly, particularly around major events. “You’ll see more live Creator activations from a wide variety of brands and partners, as well as from us. We’ll be doing a lot more in that regard on various levels through the off-season and into the regular season of 2025,” Ian reveals.

The league is implementing this vision with innovative partnerships. “We have our first set of live games on Netflix coming up,” Ian shares, describing upcoming Christmas Day games that will reach “north of 100 countries.” He believes this global expansion represents a significant opportunity to combine traditional sports content with creator-driven engagement.

Commerce integration presents another opportunity the NFL is exploring with Creators. “There’ll be a lot more from a commerce perspective happening in these environments,” Ian predicts. “We are certainly, as a league, going to be pushing more into that since we’ve got amazing partners native to this type of space.”

The upcoming Super Bowl in New Orleans will showcase this enhancement in Creator strategy. “We have several things happening with YouTube, including a YouTube tailgate,” Ian explains. “From a Creator perspective, I think [it will be] the most we’ve ever done by a wide margin.”

Despite social media’s challenges, Ian maintains optimism about Creator communities’ positive impact. “I think the Creators lead some really interesting and positive signs,” he reflects. “There have been notable cases where the creator community, the followers, and the fans of those communities have stepped in to support one another.”

He points to specific examples of community impact: “There’s Taylor Swift and her Swifties. There are also the Creators who’ve maybe had a misstep here or there, and their community has galvanized behind them to support and uplift them.”

This supportive aspect of Creator communities extends to NFL players as well. “We’ve seen that with our players in different cases,” Ian notes. “That’s a positive sign of where things are going with culture and the Internet. And I hope that continues.”