FOX Advertising and The Lighthouse are connecting traditional media infrastructure with the creator economy through a strategic partnership. This collaboration, announced in June, combines FOX Advertising’s media resources with The Lighthouse’s creator-focused campus to develop new content franchises while maintaining creator integrity.

The Lighthouse, established as a company of the Whalar Group, was designed as a campus for creators, with Jon Goss serving as its President. Jon, who oversees the vision and execution of the brand, design, build, and operation of campuses, sees the collaboration as beneficial for creators’ career development: “We empower, connect, and enable creators to build their careers and develop and learn from each other and from experts. We provide a place physically and figuratively that enables them to be more creative, more productive, and grow personally and professionally.”

For FOX Advertising, which encompasses sports, news, entertainment, and streaming platform Tubi, the investment aims to incorporate creators in the ecosystem. “It’s much more than just investing in the physical space – it’s an environment and metaphorical space where communities are built both in person and over the web,” explains Stephano Kim, who joined FOX as Chief Strategy and Operations Officer for ad sales in early 2025.

Stephano articulates FOX’s recognition that creators are essentially becoming media companies: “We’re starting to see creators differently. The ones we’ve been working with are truly entrepreneurs. In many respects, they are media companies. As they grow and they scale, what we want to do is help them provide all of the infrastructure so that they can really unlock their full potential and truly be their own little mini media companies that hopefully scale one day.”

The Foundation of the Partnership

The origin story of the partnership reveals much about the values driving it. Rather than emerging from sterile boardroom negotiations, the relationship between Fox and The Lighthouse began over shared meals and conversations.

“Like all good things, this came to life over a fine Italian meal and some negronis,” Stephano recalls. This informal beginning reflects a deliberate approach to building relationships rather than mere transactions.

Jon elaborates on why this approach matters: “When we think about Fox as a partner, and we talk about a strategic investment, it is genuinely a strategic investment. But it was sort of that moment of breaking bread and sort of having a glass of wine and talking about things through a relationship we knew was going to lead to great things.”

This emphasis on connection extends to how The Lighthouse has designed its physical space. Jon points to their test kitchen as an example: “We put a test kitchen in The Lighthouse because we wanted food creators and chefs to be able to make content. But I had a dinner for 12 people last night in the test kitchen, and there’s nothing better in terms of building community in the real sense than sharing a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta.”

The focus on trust is practical. As Jon explains, creators need to trust that Fox and The Lighthouse will support rather than exploit them: “Having spent a lot of time with creators, they know that they’re successful. They’re going to be open and vulnerable to the idea of what Fox and The Lighthouse are bringing to them if they trust us.”

Image: The Lighthouse
Credit: Yoshihiro Makino

The Development Space

Both executives describe The Lighthouse as a “lab” for experimentation and development, creating an environment where creators and media professionals can discover new approaches to content and business.

“We’ve focused on building an environment that catalyzes and enables people just to be more creative, more productive, more collaborative, to learn from other people and each other,” explains Jon. “Once you build the environment, it’s like the hardware and the software; they have to work in sync. I think if we’ve built the hardware, everything Stephano and his team and Fox can bring is the software elements that bring it to life.”

Stephano expands on how The Lighthouse enables a more immersive creative process: “When you go to The Lighthouse, you have all of the tactile pieces that you can touch and feel, and you can make things together. There’s a kitchen, you can cook things together, and you have these actually real-life experiences that really just enrich the whole creative process.”

This experimental approach naturally leads to a broader understanding of what it means to be a creator. “I think the definition of a creator is changing in the wider creative and entertainment world,” Jon notes. “When we think about architecting our community as an ecosystem, we don’t just see creators who are on social media as part of this. We see the creators, the teams they’re building, editors, videographers, directors, screenwriters, and all the things that have massively disrupted Hollywood and media.”

Stephano agrees, adding: “Not all the best creators are in front of the camera. Sometimes they’re behind the camera, sometimes they’re writing for the camera, and sometimes they’re simply creating an environment where other creators can thrive. We want all the people to flourish.”

Developing Creator-Driven Franchises

The investment opens notable opportunities for creator-driven content franchises across Fox’s platforms. Stephano outlines several initiatives being developed: “At Fox, we’re launching several new initiatives across the company. Tubi has had phenomenal success in building creator-led franchises and shows. They’re going to continue to do that and expand on that ecosystem.”

The partnership will explore multiple approaches to content development, as Stephano explains: “On the Fox Entertainment side, we look at a couple of things. One key aspect is how we collaborate with creators to amplify their IP across our Fox Entertainment-owned and operated networks and properties. Another is focusing on co-producing new output and putting that across our own operated networks.”

The strategy also includes bringing Fox’s existing IP into creator spaces: “It’s about taking our IP and having it travel within those creators’ social spaces. And ultimately, it’s about building native authentic content for the social spaces.”

This approach aims to create what Stephano describes as “a symbiotic relationship of traditional media and the creator economy coming together.” Furthermore, he emphasizes that this work will be guided by creator needs rather than corporate assumptions: “This is where the partnership with The Lighthouse allows us to build what they need, not just arrogantly build what we think that they need.”

Maintaining Creator Voice While Scaling

A critical challenge in the creator economy is maintaining creator voice while pursuing commercial opportunities. Both Fox and The Lighthouse recognize that diluting creator voices would undermine the very value they bring.

“I’ve seen this where other media companies, large media companies, have failed,” Stephano observes. “They try to find these top creators, they bring them into this big, impressive Hollywood studio lot. And then you start to lose authenticity, and it becomes a very transactional type of conversation.”

Stephano contrasts this with their approach: “The whole beauty of the creator economies is that it’s organic. It comes from the ground up. It’s real. And I think we have to meet them in the middle and make sure that we’re true to the form of what they’re trying to do with their personal mission.”

This isn’t just an idealistic stance but a business imperative, as Stephano explains: “It’s not just an altruistic mission. When you dilute their personal voice, what happens is that you lose views and attention. The average consumer sees through all this. It’s just good business to make sure that we stay true and genuine to what grew that creator in the first place.”

Image: The Lighthouse
Credit: Yoshihiro Makino

New Opportunities for Brands and Marketers

The partnership creates fresh pathways for brands to engage with creators in more meaningful ways. As the boundaries between brands and creators blur, new collaborative models are emerging.

“It’s fascinating what’s happening with our brand advertisers,” Stephano notes. “They’re trying to figure out how to not only crack the creator space, but they want to improve the model, and they want to do it at scale.”

Stephano envisions bringing CMOs—who he describes as creators in their own right—into collaborative spaces with digital creators: “We want to bring CMOs who are also, in many ways, creators. They’re managers trying to steward a brand of their own and bringing it into that collaborative space with creators. And then again, we’ll start to see some really amazing content that happens to be marketing.”

Jon adds: “Brands are starting to act like creators, and creators are starting to act like brands. The smart CMOs and the smart brands are moving at the speed at which creators move, which is at the speed of culture.”

Envisioning Success

Both executives have clear visions for what success will look like in the partnership’s first year, emphasizing the qualitative impact on creators and the development of compelling content.

“If we’re having this conversation a year from now, I’d like to do the panel that we had at this past year’s Cannes [Lions],” Stephano says. “We’d be talking about the work, the results of a campaign, and how it all came together. Maybe we’ll be speaking with a creator that we’ve collaborated with that have now experienced our first run at this.”

Jon shares a similar vision focused on creator empowerment: “The main focus of this business is giving something to the creators in our community that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. So, if in a year’s time, we’re sitting on a panel with three creators and they can tell a story about the work they’re doing, something they’re building, or something they’ve built that they’re proud of. Something that wouldn’t have happened but for the fact that they were at The Lighthouse and Fox, then I’ll be delighted.”

For creators watching this partnership develop, Jon summarizes its significance: “Because of the combination and the resources and experience that Fox has, we’re incubating ideas, talent, careers, and just being an experimentation lab for those things to happen with one of the biggest, most respected media entertainment companies in the world.”

Stephano adds: “This is a platform that’s bringing together the deep expertise and all of the knowledge and the ecosystem that Jon brings, coupled with our scaled platform of resources and capital to really create a unique opportunity for creators to really accelerate what they want to go do.”

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