Sponsored by RockWater

Six words to ruin any kegger full of US poli-sci majors:

“Let’s talk about the Middle East!”

And I know just by talking about this, a subset of you are ready to hit ‘unsubscribe’, but I think it’s important to understand the full context of the region in the minds of US creator economy business execs to understand what’s happening within the region.

And why it’s so complex for reps.

The list of mental affiliations across the political spectrum can only be described to the tune of We Didn’t Start the Fire:

Foreign oil, oceans boil, billionaires, weapons sales, luxury, poverty, everything that’s in between, Jamal Khashoggi, MBS, Islamaphobes, all-white dishdasha dress, 20-year senseless war, Riyadh Comedy Festival, Qatari plane for Donald Trump, Israel and Palestine, that burning house saying:

The truth is always more complicated than the headlines. And, based on MrBeast leaning into the region, he knows that.

Author’s note: I’ve spent the past 7 years as a board member and advisor to Alfan Group in Dubai and, in all of my travels, have found all of my travels in the region to be safe, friendly, full of history, and very, very, very hot (like, ‘my breath burns’ hot).

So what should other digital talent think about when eyeing the Middle East for creator economy initiatives?

Also in this edition:

🇩🇰 Something’s Sensible in the State of Denmark

👻 Snap Gets Perplexity to Fix Complexity

🧑🏽‍⚖️ Mamdani Wins in Social-Media Forward Mayoral Race

👮🏻 Logan Paul Wins Lawsuit With a Bit of Shade From the Judge

💪🏼 Jobs from Fox, FaZe Clan, and UTA

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

The Fertile Crescent for Creators

TLDR:

• The UAE and Saudi Arabia are making big plays for creators

• Backlash from social media has been brutal, but uneven

• Government investment is attractive and necessary for creators

Let’s list the ways the U.S. government helps U.S. content creators do what they do.

1. …um…ObamaCare?

…and that’s it.

Let’s compare that to the UAE:

1. $150m government-funded relocation through Creators HQ to attract 10,000 new creators.

2. ‘Golden Visas’ for content creators, allowing 10 years of residency without a sponsor.

3. ‘Dubai Program for Gaming’ funding a global gaming creator hub with ‘Gaming Visas’.

4. YouTube Academy was built in conjunction with the government-sponsored Creators HQ.

5. An annual government-supported conference that’s paying for Mr-freaking-Beast to come out in 2026.

In the US, creators can’t get healthcare (check out essentL), banking (check out Karat), and taxes / small business formation is expensive, confusing, and prone to weird, intimidating mailers from the IRS even when the creator does nothing wrong.

I’ve seen them. My creators have been getting them for decades.

And don’t get me started on Saudi Arabia ($234m film financing program), Qatar (government partnership with TikTok, huge AI incentives), and many others in the Middle East at the very least having clear licensing for digital advertising standards (Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt).

Now let’s talk about the super-mega crazy-gigantic elephant in the room: the ‘brand’ of the Middle East is not good with your average American.

I was born in 1982, and I can’t remember anytime in my life where there wasn’t some sort of war or conflict going on: Israel-Lebenon War, Gulf War, Iraq War, War in Afganistan, War on Terror, Israel-Palestine.

It’s not fair to judge an entire region based on corporate US news that knows that ‘war sells’, but I can tell you from personal experience that every time I’ve gone to the Middle East I’ve had people reach out to me on social media asking, “are you scared?”

I don’t get a lot of that when I go to Asia.

I just tell them, “No, my hotel is next to a Cheesecake Factory and I plan to spend my Saturday at a water slide park.”

But some regions, Saudi Arabia specifically, has had some of their initaitives, most recently the Riyadh Comedy Festival where many top US comedians performed, absolutely blasted on social media because of the government’s extrajudicial killings, treatment of women, treatment of LGBTQ+ people, criminalization of peaceful dissent, and restrictions on religious freedoms.

That’s hard to overcome in the creator economy, where ‘free expression’ is kind of the point.

But it seems the social media blowback isn’t happening for MrBeast, who is announcing a theme park in Saudi Arabia, in the same way it did for Bill Burr for performing in Riyadh.

Heck, Eminem, Ciara, Missy Elliott, and Busta Rhymes all performed in Riyadh in 2024 and nobody said a peep.

Kwebblebop and TikTok have held events there. No backlash to my knowledge.

So it’s certainly a third rail to work with Saudi Arabia as a US talent, but not one where the trains are running daily. The internet has to decide it’s a problem.

But the UAE seems to be leading in the region and none of those issues seem to be front-and-center in the region.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed a beer and a burger at a restaurant in Dubai without issue.

But outside of the brand and the government investment, there’s one very obvious reason the Middle East will do well:

It’s in the middle of everything.

China and South Korea are exceptionally important markets for monetization and premium content creation.

So are the US and Brazil.

And Western Europe.

And the Middle East is the most obvious place for all of those regions to meet.

Plus, sorry for the shade America, but at multiple conventions I attended in the US this year, major overseas companies and execs didn’t come in fear of being thrown in an El Salvadorean prison if they didn’t have the right papers.

Not exactly great branding for us.

So back to the ‘Jimmy’ of it all.

He climbed the Burj Khalifa, he’s launching a social good campaign at 1BS, he’s building a theme park in Saudi Arabia.

Now I ask you: do you think there’s any universe where the US government would bend over backward to let Jimmy do this anywhere?

At the best, Jimmy could get tourism commissions to help, but the red tape would be astronomical.

The Middle East will continue growing within the creator economy landscape, and, sans being the Big Tech hub and the land of brands, the US will shrink.

SPONSORED BY ROCKWATER

Have you thought about selling your creator business?

RockWater advises owners in the creator economy on the sale of their business. We have the largest buyer network, and negotiate the best deals possible for our clients. We’re proud to be the industry’s top M&A advisor.

We recently advised on the sale of Feedfeed, a social media publisher and creator network, to People Inc., a publicly traded media co. We’ve also advised Click Management (sale to GameSquare), Lionize (an IM platform, sold to gen.video), Long Haul Mgmt (sold to Wasserman), Bottle Rocket Mgmt (sold to Night), Bounty (a UGC platform, sold to gen.video), and more deals are in the works.

If you want a POV on your company’s valuation and readiness for a sale, reach out to to chris@wearerockwater.com to setup an intro call.

FAME & FORTUNE

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

🇩🇰 Denmark is poised to ban the usage of social media for anyone under the age of 15, citing social media ‘stealing childhood’. The science seems to agree, but good luck keeping a teenager from lying about their age to get their TikTok fix.

👻 AI-heavyweight Perplexity will pay Snap $400m to power search on their platform. Search on Snap has always been practically non-existent as Snaps don’t generally come with a lot of metadata (no titles, no descriptions, no tags), so AI may be the best way to save me from a Discover page without a single cute puppy video.

🧑🏽‍⚖️ Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist from New York, beat generational politician Andrew Cuomo for the NYC mayoral race that was heavily battled online. Zohran’s posts were street-level cool, with IG reels never dipping below 1m views in recent months. Cuomo did a lot of radio and Logan Paul’s podcast and barely topped 100k views. So….yeah.

👮🏻 The lawsuit against Logan Paul for rugging his Cryptozoo project was thrown out of court with prejudice, with the judge saying Paul’s claims were “puffery” and “no reasonable buyer would be justified in relying.” Apparently that judge has never been in a web3 Discord…

JOB BOARD

Head of Creator Studio, Fox

There aren’t a lot of creator economy jobs starting at $500k, but here we are. Getting to shape Fox’s POV in the creator economy is a huge undertaking. Trust me. At Fullscreen we worked on their YouTube channels in 2012 and it was very Hollywood. But, like all media companies, they’re starting to come around to the reality that all premium entertainment companies will have to find a way to place nice with creators.

SVP of Talent, FaZe Clan

The esports and gaming creator org FaZe Clan has had their ups and downs in the years, but the brand is still beloved by young gamers and their core talent is as popular as ever. This will be a great role for anyone excited, for the first time, to recruit gaming talent who ‘grew up’ with aspirations to be a FaZe member.

Vice President, Communications, Creators, United Talent Agency

UTA has always been great at digital talent. I can’t say that about all of the major agencies. They were leaning into gaming before it was cool and had the focus of ‘owning verticals’ before most agencies were signing their first vloggers. This role is awesome for any PR-minded creator economy wonks who want to work with some of the best creators, and creator-economy-relevant Hollywood talent, in the business.