Inside The Chernin Group’s Bet on Creator-Led Empires
Partners Greg Bettinelli and Maureen Sullivan on their investments in Substack and podcasts, what went wrong at Food52, and their next big moves
This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter on the creator economy. I wrote about NBC’s winning creator strategy around the Olympics, interviewed the co-hosts of TBPN about their rapid growth and revenue strategy, wrote about YouTube’s new studio era and covered how video podcasts are taking over TV. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Greg Bettinelli spent 15 months traveling around the world — from Chicago to New York to London to Paris — to pursue an investment in U.K. podcasting powerhouse Goalhanger. No bankers, no official investment document, just Bettinelli, a partner at The Chernin Group, building a relationship with the guys — former ex-pro footballer Gary Lineker, former ITV executive Tony Pastor and one-time BBC journalist Jack Davenport — who’d founded the company behind hit shows like The Rest is History and The Rest is Football (which will film a daily show from New York for Netflix during the World Cup this summer).
TCG became Goalhanger’s first outside investor in January, extending a run of bets on emerging media companies. Peter Chernin’s 16-year-old firm put $40 million into Ashley Flowers’ Audiochuck last year to fuel its expansion into video, co-led Substack’s $100 million series C round and backed Entangled, the romantasy publisher behind Fourth Wing.
Across all of them is the same underlying thesis: Community, not celebrity, is the most valuable asset in media. TCG is betting the next generation of media companies will be built by creators who can turn those audiences into durable, multi-revenue businesses.
“We have a unique position where we’re not a traditional private equity firm looking to put a tremendous amount of debt on a business,” says Bettinelli. “We’re looking for growth. We’re looking for new, but with businesses that have scale.”
I spoke with Bettinelli and his colleague, TCG partner Maureen Sullivan — who are based in Los Angeles and New York, respectively, to bring you an inside look into their creator-first investment strategy. “We’re always hunting for unique companies that have managed to build a community,” Sullivan says.
Over the years, TCG has backed companies ranging from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine to Barstool Sports, Crunchyroll and the investment arm of creator management firm Night. I’ve been particularly interested in their work with companies like Doug DeMuro’s Cars & Bids and Kevin Espiritu’s Epic Gardening, which began as YouTube channels but have grown into commerce businesses where digital video is now part of the marketing flywheel.
Not all of the firm’s investments paid off. Last year, Food52, where TCG owned a majority stake since 2019, declared bankruptcy. The Erika Ayers Badan-led company, $25 million in debt, ultimately sold to America’s Test Kitchen for $10.3 million, with its homegoods brand Schoolhouse selling to Hudson Valley Lighting Group. Sullivan, who sat on the board at Food52, says she’s “not deterred,” adding that there’s “no bigger opportunity” for the right next-generation creator than lifestyle media.
Keep reading for insights into TCG’s big bet on podcasting’s pivot to video, what’s fueling Bettinelli and Sullivan’s belief in creator-led businesses, and where they might be investing next.
Read more over at Like & Subscribe, where we get into:
How TCG evaluates which creator-led businesses can become durable, multi-revenue companies
Why they’re betting on podcasts as the next major media platform — and the surprising strategy for choosing which ones to back
Why they see creators “burning out” of Instagram and what it means for their Substack investment
What went wrong at Food52 — and why they’re still bullish on lifestyle media
How they evaluate a brand’s “community” and what actually makes it valuable to investors
The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media.
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