Whatnot's $20B Bet & the Lakers' $12.5B Flip

The Digital Dealflow

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Quartermast Advisors
August 13, 2026

Good Morning,

Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed, and Avra, nearly doubling its prior $11.5B valuation to $20B as the live shopping platform pushes into new markets and AI tooling for sellers. Alex Cooper's Unwell landed its first outside capital since self-funding in 2023, with Patrick Whitesell's WTSL valuing the Call Her Daddy parent company at $500M.

Meanwhile, Dentsu acquired performance-creative shop Scroll Stop, rebranding it dentsu Scroll Stop and adding a UGC and short-form testing capability to its creative stack. Alix Earle took an investment stake in wellness brand Cymbiotika, which crossed $150M in 2025 revenue- Earle previously held equity in Poppi before its roughly $2B sale to PepsiCo.

In legacy media, Ari Emanuel's live-events company Mari agreed to acquire Broadway and West End operator ATG Entertainment, which owns seven Broadway theaters, in a deal reported near $6B. And in the biggest number of the week, Bob Iger and Josh Kushner agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter for a record $12.5B, handing Walter a $2.5B profit after owning the team for just over a year.

Elsewhere, the Vanderhook brothers are teasing yet another MySpace relaunch, still "waiting for the right time" a decade after their last attempt burned through $150M. How many turnarounds does $150M in tuition buy you?

[Special] Creator Economy Capital Landscape:

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Layoff Watch:

  • TikTok: Laid off 250 employees and is closing its Nashville office, which housed part of its content moderation team, effective October 5.

  • Veeps: The Live Nation-owned company cut editorial staff across four of its music publications, BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, and Goldmine, trimming roughly 7 positions as the titles continue publishing with a smaller combined team.

The Weekly Roundup

  1. YouTube Doubles Its Bar to Get Paid: Starting February 2027, new YouTube Partner Program applicants will need 8,000 watch hours in the past year or 20 million Shorts views in 90 days, double the current thresholds, though existing members are grandfathered in (TechCrunch).

  2. TikTok Shop's $100B Runway: TikTok Shop's global GMV hit $50.3B in the first half of 2026, up 92% year over year, putting the platform on pace to top $123.5B for the full year (Tubefilter).

  3. Kick Enters the Ad Business: Nearly four years after launch, Kick rolled out mid-roll ads across its live broadcasts, citing over 100 million active users and 300 million-plus monthly watch hours, 81% of them between 18 and 34 (Tubefilter).

  4. Meta's $567M New Mexico Bill: A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567M to fund youth mental health treatment, on top of $375M in civil penalties from earlier this year in the same case (AP News).

  5. Follower Count Stops Mattering: Vaseline's influencer marketing lead says follower count is "one of the second-to-last things" she looks at, part of a broader shift toward treating creators as vendors rather than an audience to rent (Inc.).

  6. Gap and Staples Deputize Staff: Gap Inc.'s employee creator program has generated nearly 30,000 posts reaching 154 million people, while Staples is leaning into viral employee ASMR content instead of banning phones on the clock (Digiday).

  7. Gen Z Is Over Being an Influencer: Only 5% of Gen Z now aspire to be creators, down from 57% in 2023, as the top 10% of creators capture 62% of brand payment volume (Yahoo).

  8. Owned Audiences as the Next Moat: Creators and media companies are entering an "ownership premium" era where first-party data and direct relationships matter more than platform reach (Forbes).

  9. Creator Talent Gets a Headhunter: Night, the management firm behind MrBeast's Feastables, launched an executive recruiting arm called Night Search, betting creator businesses need seasoned operators as much as creative talent (LinkedIn).

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