Good afternoon, and welcome to the first issue of Creator Games.

I’m Salil, co-founder of Third Studios, I lead everything creator economy at THIRD, and I’ll be writing and editing this newsletter every week.

Creator Games exists to discover, fund and tell the stories of the next generation of creator entrepreneurs. This newsletter is where we share the ideas, companies and opportunities driving that mission across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

If you’ve got any stories to share or any feedback, feel free to email me at salil@third.group.

— Salil

Today’s lineup:

• A cricket legend’s shoe brand just outsold the athletes who wear it

• Idris Elba and Google bet $1M on Africa’s creator infrastructure gap

• The UAE just wrote checks to its first cohort of Arabic-language creators

A Cricket Legend’s Shoe Brand Just Outsold the Athletes Who Wear It

For eight years, Virat Kohli was Puma’s biggest face in India. On June 21, he opened a store that competes with it.

The Business Case →

Kohli signed an eight-year, ₹110 crore (~$12.8M) endorsement deal with Puma in 2017, one of the largest in Indian sports history. When it expired this year, Puma offered ₹300 crore (~$35M) to renew it. Kohli said no, and instead took an equity stake in Agilitas Sports, an Indian sportswear startup run by Abhishek Ganguly, Puma India’s former managing director.

That stake became One8: a sportswear label that launched its first independent footwear collection at Delhi’s Yashobhoomi Convention Centre in front of 5,000 fans, athletes, and industry leaders.

The flagship sneaker, the Seam XVIII Signature Test Red, was priced at ₹9,230 (~$96), a number chosen to match Kohli’s 9,230 career Test runs. The full collection spans three lines: Seam and Cover Drive, both cricket-inspired footwear, and Boom Rush, a multi-activity training shoe.

Pre-bookings on District by Zomato sold out within minutes when they opened on June 6. By the time the Delhi premiere wrapped, One8 had reportedly sold more than 150,000 pairs, generating an estimated ₹138 crore (~$16M) in first-day revenue.

My POV: India’s sportswear market has belonged to Nike, Adidas, and Puma for decades. Kohli spent eight years building Puma’s business in that market before turning around and building his own. The launch numbers answer the first question, whether an athlete-owned brand can move product in India. The harder one is whether One8 can do what no Indian sports brand has done yet: go global, and stay there.

Idris Elba and Google Bet $1M on Africa’s Creator Infrastructure Gap

Africa doesn’t have a shortage of creator talent. It has a shortage of studio budgets. Idris Elba and Google are betting AI can close that gap faster than money alone.

The Business Case →

At Google’s inaugural Africa Cloud Summit in Johannesburg, the company and Elba’s Akuna Group announced a $1M program giving roughly 100,000 creators in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and Sierra Leone free access to Gemini and other AI production tools. The program is funded jointly by Google and the Elba Hope Foundation.

It’s not just software. Akuna’s own digital wallet will handle cross-border payments for creators in the program, a persistent bottleneck for African creators trying to get paid by brands and platforms outside their home currency.

The announcement landed alongside a bigger milestone: Google confirmed it has now fulfilled its five-year, $1B investment pledge in African economies, and unveiled a new applied AI lab in Ghana and a planned connectivity hub in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.

My POV: Google framed the initiative around cost, not talent. The same production tools a major studio takes for granted, handed to creators who’ve never had a budget line for them. Pair that with Akuna’s payment rails, and the pitch isn’t just “make better videos.” It’s remove the two things, equipment and getting paid, that have kept African creators dependent on foreign platforms and foreign gatekeepers.

The UAE Just Wrote Checks to Its First Cohort of Arabic-Language Creators

Dubai has spent the past two years building creator infrastructure, a hub, a summit, now a fund. This month it started cutting checks.

The Business Case →

Creators HQ, the UAE’s dedicated creators’ hub, and content platform Alfan opened applications for the Social Content Fund: a $1.36M (AED 5M) program backing creators who make family-friendly, educational, and socially impactful Arabic-language content. The partnership was signed at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in January and formally launched at Creators Gathering, an event at Atlantis, The Palm that drew over 1,000 content creators and media professionals.

Want the numbers behind Alfan’s own raise? We shared their pitch deck in our newsletter Dealflow. Get access here.

To qualify, applicants need at least 100,000 YouTube followers, a consistent output of positive content, and a credible production plan. Selected creators get financial support, personal-branding workshops, and a year of access to the Alfan.io platform.

It’s part of a wider build-out: Wio Bank recently launched a UAE account built specifically for creator income, and the government has said YouTube creators in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are increasingly earning seven-figure sums.

My POV: Most creator funds reward reach. This one is explicitly filtering for values: family content, education, “socially responsible storytelling,” in the fund’s own language. That’s a narrower bet than a typical creator fund, but it’s also a clearer one: the UAE isn’t just trying to grow its creator numbers, it’s trying to shape what a national content industry looks like before it scales.

🗞 Creator Gossip

• IAB Global Network launches Global Creator Week, bringing together 17 markets, including South Africa and MENA, to establish industry standards and best practices for creator marketing, and taking place from September 14-18.

• Africa’s creator economy is projected to grow from $3.08 billion today to $17.84 billion by 2030, with South Africa and Nigeria leading the market and Egypt and Kenya among the continent’s fastest-growing creator ecosystems.

• The Philippines hosts the third edition of the &FRIENDS Festival, bringing together creators, musicians and gaming communities as creator-led entertainment continues expanding across Southeast Asia.

• Creator startup funding remains concentrated around AI, with late-stage companies attracting more than 80% of disclosed capital over the past year as investors back creator tools over consumer social apps.

Subscribe | Advertise | Apply for funding | Watch | Follow