Dhar Mann is building ‘Creator City’ in LA and chasing $100M in brand deals
Mann told MIPCOM his studio goes script-to-screen in seven days, and the campus opens Super Bowl week in February 2027.
The tea in 3
- Dhar Mann unveiled Creator City, a four-acre Los Angeles production campus, at Advertising Week New York; it opens Super Bowl week 2027.
- Mann says CMO pledges already hit $100 million in creator-brand deals, but none are signed, per Tubefilter citing Digiday.
- At MIPCOM he said his studio will launch one new YouTube series every month starting in December.
Dhar Mann, the YouTuber behind the parable-style videos with more than 170 million followers across platforms, is building a physical home for the creator economy. Creator City, a four-acre campus in Los Angeles, was unveiled during his keynote at Advertising Week New York, and Mann described the plan again on Oct 11 at the MIPCOM content market in Cannes.
Mann said the grand opening is set for Super Bowl week in February 2027, per Variety and Deadline.
What Creator City is
Per Variety, Mann says the site will have about 175 sets and room for roughly 15 productions at once. Variety reports nine sound stages; Tubefilter says five soundstages; Deadline says only “multiple.” The stage count differs by outlet, so treat it as unsettled.
The pitch: sets that are actual brands. “It’s not just a random coffee shop, it could be a Starbucks,” Mann said, per Deadline. Founding brand partners have not been named.
The $100 million claim
Advertising Week named Mann its first “Chief Creator Officer.” He set a goal of brokering $100 million of creator-brand sponsorships by the end of the event. Tubefilter, citing Digiday, reports Mann claims the goal is already met through pledges from chief marketing officers, but he would not name them and none of the pledges are signed deals.
Mann also acknowledged why the numbers take time. Brands plan budgets quarters ahead, he told Digiday, so “they’re not suddenly going to unlock dollars that [do] not exist.”
A studio, not a channel
At MIPCOM, Mann said Dhar Mann Studios makes five half-hour scripted shows a week and goes “from script to screen in a matter of seven days” for an hour of digital content (longest episodes take about 21 days), per Variety. He said that starting in December the studio will launch one new YouTube series every month.
He also said his studio has deals with Samsung TV Plus (where a second scripted show, “Unlikely Families,” is coming), Fox (40 vertical dramas) and Disney+.
When Sean started with us two and a half years ago, 95% of our revenue was between our YouTube platform revenue and our Facebook platform revenue.— Dhar Mann, at MIPCOM, via Variety
Mann said that share is now under 40%, and he expects about 30% next year.
What happens next
The big test is whether those CMO pledges turn into contracts, and whether Creator City actually opens on schedule.
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Where this story comes from. We link primary posts and the outlets that reported them.
- Variety — Creator Dhar Mann on Partnering With Hollywood Studios and His Vision for Creator City in Los Angeles 2026-10-11
- Deadline — Dhar Mann's Creator City in L.A. to be a new destination for creators 2026-10-11
- Tubefilter — Dhar Mann wants to broker $100 million in creator/brand deals, and also he's opening Creator City in Los Angeles 2026-10-07
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