Creators have spent years turning attention into a business. Now, some are trying to prove that attention can leave the feed and fill a room.
A new report from Digiday points to a growing shift in creator marketing: IRL events are becoming a stronger signal of audience value than follower counts alone. Maya Raichoora, who built an Instagram audience of more than 600,000 and became Nike’s first mental fitness trainer in 2024, now hosts monthly events for her community.
The feed can find people. Events can hold them.
Raichoora’s argument is straightforward. Instagram helped her reach people, but recurring events give those people a reason to meet, return and identify with one another. That distinction matters as creators look for income and influence that are less dependent on unpredictable platform distribution.
Digiday also cites James Kirkham, co-founder of brand consultancy Iconic, describing social platforms as a “post-feed world” where media is increasingly broadcast rather than genuinely social. A feed can create recognition. A live room can create memory.
The examples are not limited to celebrity-scale creators. Dude Perfect reportedly brought more than 200,000 fans through its U.S. stadium tours in 2025, while Alex Cooper’s Unwell Tour attracted sponsorship from White Claw. Smaller creators are now testing more focused events built around shared interests, rather than trying to replicate the scale of a mass-media tour.
Showing up is becoming a creator metric
That changes what a brand partnership can prove. A post can report impressions and engagement. An event can show who bought a ticket, entered a room, signed up, purchased merchandise or returned for the next gathering.
Digiday reports that AT&T sponsored all of Ludwig Ahgren’s events for six months last year. It also cites MKTG Sports + Entertainment research in which 45% of sports fans said the growth of digital and AI content made them crave more physical experiences, while 62% said community in sports can only be built through real-life experiences.
The point is not that every creator needs to become an event producer. Offline communities are harder to organize, less scalable and more exposed to practical failures than a post. But that friction is precisely what makes participation informative.
WeRSM has seen a similar logic in TikTok and Strava’s push to move fitness communities offline: the creator is not only distributing a message, but helping create the setting where behavior happens.
For brands, the implication is sharp. The valuable creator may not be the one with the largest audience, but the one who can move a meaningful audience from passive viewing to deliberate participation.