Steven Bartlett teamed up with Authentic Brands Group on September 14 to launch OBSN, a creator venture with plans to deploy up to $400 million into creator-led businesses. Authentic, the operator behind Reebok, Champion, and Sports Illustrated, is now bolting Bartlett's Diary of a CEO empire onto its brand-building machine. The message to the rest of the creator economy is direct. IP is the new asset class, and the biggest checks are being written to acquire it outright.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- Steven Bartlett and Authentic Brands launched OBSN on September 14, targeting up to $400M in creator-led businesses.
- Authentic runs a $32B/year portfolio (Reebok, Champion, Sports Illustrated, Muhammad Ali's likeness) and just bought 51% of Drake's OVO three weeks earlier.
- OBSN's media arm is already live and past 1M IG followers; the investment vehicle has no named targets yet.
- Goldman Sachs projects a $480B creator economy TAM by 2027, and OBSN is the single largest declared creator-IP vehicle in the market today.
- Bartlett's Steven.com, valued at $425M last year, is the sourcing engine; Diary of a CEO's 40M+ monthly downloads are the distribution moat.
- The thesis is winners-take-most. Creators who don't own their commerce layer will have nothing worth acquiring when Authentic calls.
What actually happened?
OBSN, pronounced "obsession," launched at an invitation-only creator event in New York, with Authentic founder Jamie Salter and Bartlett on stage and Hot Smart Rich's Maggie Sellers Reum moderating, according to Tubefilter. The venture has two halves. One is a media platform (already live, already past 1 million Instagram followers) that will run news, analysis, festivals, and awards. The other is the investment vehicle chasing the $400M deployment target reported by Variety.
No specific creators have been named yet. The playbook is the one Authentic just ran on Drake, whose OVO brand Authentic bought a 51% majority stake in on August 27, per The Hollywood Reporter. Bartlett's Steven.com, valued at $425 million after last year's Slow Ventures round, becomes the sourcing engine that finds the next OVO before its founder is thinking about an exit. The Diary of a CEO itself pulls 40M+ monthly downloads, giving OBSN a distribution engine most funds would spend a decade trying to buy.
Why does this matter for creators?
This is the moment the creator economy graduates from "monetize your audience" to "IP that outlives you." Authentic's history is buying brands after the founder's cultural peak (Reebok, Champion, the likenesses of Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali) and licensing them into forever-money. Bolting a creator sourcing engine onto that machine means the next Reebok might not come from a factory. It comes from a podcaster with 15 million subscribers and a signature fragrance line.
For the top 0.1% of creators, this is a bigger exit than any brand deal. For everyone else, the message is the opposite of comforting. The Bartlett-Authentic thesis assumes a small handful of creators become multigenerational IP, and the rest stay renters on someone else's platform. That's a bet on winners-take-most, and it makes the ownership question louder than any monetization question you were asking last quarter.
"In a world where sovereignty, which is owning the relationship with your audience, is increasingly more important, there's no chance of sovereignty if your data is everywhere and there are different people pulling walled gardens around it because they have their own incentives."
Steven Bartlett, Founder of Steven.com, at the OBSN launch (via TheWrap)
Where does this go from here?
Authentic's portfolio does roughly $32 billion in annual retail sales across 50-plus brands, per WWD. Its playbook is licensing: turn a name into apparel, fragrance, footwear, and stadium naming rights, and take a cut on every unit. Applied to a creator, that is a completely different exit than the standard "brand deal until burnout" ladder. It also implies Authentic gets ownership, not just a rev share.
Goldman Sachs projects the creator economy TAM will hit roughly $480 billion by 2027, with 50 million creators worldwide growing at a 10-20% CAGR. OBSN's $400M is a small slice of that in absolute terms, but it is the single largest declared creator-IP vehicle in the market today. Watch which creators get named first, because their fee splits, their storefronts, and their audience data will tell you what Authentic actually thinks is acquirable. Everyone else should stare hard at their own commerce stack.
What does Fanvault think?
OBSN is a validation trade for creators near the top and a warning shot for everyone else. When the biggest checks in the space are being cut to acquire creator IP outright, the creators who kept ownership of their commerce layer are the ones with something worth acquiring. Fanvault's entire thesis is that the storefront (memberships, paid DMs, auctions, authenticated memorabilia) has to belong to the creator at an 8% platform fee, not 15% at Fanvue, not 20% at Fanfix, not a majority stake to a licensing conglomerate. Every point of margin you give up early is a point of leverage you don't have when Authentic calls.
The creators who survive this next phase won't be the ones with the biggest audiences. They'll be the ones with the biggest ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is OBSN?
OBSN (pronounced "obsession") is a joint venture between Steven Bartlett's Steven.com and Jamie Salter's Authentic Brands Group, launched September 14 in New York. It has two halves: a media platform covering the creator economy (already live, past
How is this different from a normal brand deal?
Brand deals are rev-share on someone else's product. Authentic's playbook is buying the IP outright and licensing it forever, the way it turned Reebok and Champion into perpetual royalty streams. Applied to a creator, that means OBSN gets equity in a fragrance line or a CPG brand, not a one-time promo cheque. It also means the creator sells majority control to get there, the same way Drake sold 51% of OVO to Authentic on August 27, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Which creators is OBSN targeting first?
None have been publicly named yet. Bartlett has hinted at building consumer brands around top podcasters and streamers, and cited his existing investment in Maggie Sellers Reum's Hot Smart Rich as a template. Watch for names with strong personal brands, sticky distribution, and defensible IP: signature vocabulary, characters, visual identity, or a signature product angle a licensing team can extend for a decade.
What does this mean for creators who aren't in the top 0.1%?
OBSN's thesis is winners-take-most, so most creators aren't the target customer today. But the deal makes ownership louder than monetization. If the biggest exits are being cut for creator IP, the creators who keep their fee splits low and their storefronts theirs are the ones with something a Reebok-style licensor might one day acquire. Every point of margin surrendered early is a point of leverage lost.