Fan Engagement > Work > Turning creators into distribution and revenue partners for Volleyball World

Turning creators into distribution and revenue partners for Volleyball World

Key insights

10M+ new fans reached. A creator-led distribution network of 10 creators across six growth markets took VNL 2026 to younger, digital-first audiences, concentrated in the 25–34 age bracket.

69.5M branded impressions. Volleyball World and sponsor Decathlon gained high-attention exposure through unskippable ad inventory built into live creator content, creating $136,000 worth of sponsored inventory.

Fans converted into subscribers. 5% of site visits converted into VBTV subscribers, with six times more converted traffic than the average 2026 creator campaign and a 94% session engagement rate.

Creators outperformed their norms. Managed creators delivered 3–9 times their usual views and up to 17 times their usual engagement.

Content that kept going after the final whistle. 1,000 clips generated 33M organic short-form views, alongside 4.7M live views.

Budget efficiency through revenue share. Choosing creators where the campaign offered them the most value meant they could be contracted on a revenue-share model rather than standard content fees, without compromising performance.

Overview

Volleyball World wanted to expand the reach of VNL (Volleyball Nations League) and connect with new, younger, digital-first audiences around the world. The VNL features the world’s top national teams competing in pools across numerous weeks in iconic cities around the world.

To complement its existing broadcast, social and owned-channel distribution, Volleyball World partnered with Dizplai to build a creator-led distribution network across six key growth markets. The ambition was to extend the VNL into new audience communities, drive meaningful engagement for sponsor Decathlon, and convert new-to-volleyball fans into subscribers to Volleyball World’s OTT platform, VBTV.

The Opportunity

VNL 2026 presented an opportunity to establish a scalable creator-led distribution model around live volleyball at an international scale, opening up new ways for VNL to reach audiences beyond its existing fanbase. This required:

Sourcing appropriate creators: Identifying digital-first creators with relevance to Volleyball, who can illustrate the excitement of the event while still opening up new opportunities for the VNL to reach new potential fans.

Onboarding live creators: Through our live content expertise and digital tools, we ensured ample sponsor inventory was available for Decathlon and VBTV. We empowered creators to experiment with creating live content with confidence.

Hands-on Creator Management: As the key point of contact for creators, we coordinated 10 creators across 6 markets and multiple languages, keeping daily touchpoints to ensure delivery from every party while keeping the campaign truly global in scale.

Reporting and optimisation: Due to the experimental nature of the campaign, onboarding new creators to live content and reaching new audiences, consistent reporting and in-flight optimisation were essential to maximising the performance of every creator and stream.

What Dizplai Delivered

Dizplai delivered the campaign end-to-end, working with Volleyball World to source and vet creators against selection criteria built to reach audiences outside volleyball. We then briefed, onboarded, managed, and co-created content so Volleyball World and Decathlon messaging felt native to each creator’s channel.

We rigorously searched for creators who sat outside of volleyball, but were still genuine fans of the sport, whose audiences could help Volleyball World expand its reach into new communities. This relevance-based approach identified creators where the campaign value proposition was highest, enabling us to onboard them on a revenue-share model rather than standard content fees.

Combined with a consistent stream of non-live match rights and Dizplai tools strengthening their live content, the structure incentivised creators to publish content frequently, in turn driving higher views, engagements, and keeping VNL 2026 and Decathlon front of mind for their audiences.

We then sustained early momentum through the first two weeks of the tournament with real-time in-flight monitoring and reporting, continually refining messaging, assets, and inventory throughout the tournament to enable:

A route to a younger, digital-first audience: A global creator network tied to live and non-live rights distribution. We identified, managed and ideated content with 10 creators across 6 markets, reaching untapped audiences concentrated in the 25–34 bracket while keeping the conversation going after the final whistle with short-form social content.

Unskippable inventory paired with monetisation opportunities: High-attention, unskippable ad inventory was intertwined with player and match data to create ample exposure opportunities for Volleyball World and Decathlon.

Live content experiences that resonated: Live match data, broadcast feeds for the French market, and official VNL and Decathlon assets built into each creator’s content.

Budget Efficiency: Our ability to contract creators on a revshare basis drove spending efficiency without sacrificing performance vs objectives, increasing awareness of the VNL 2026, Volleyball World & Decathlon over the tournament.