THE BELIEVE THAT AWARDS was created to redefine what an awards show can look like in the algorithm era.
Legacy award ceremonies are institutional, polished, and committee-driven. We saw an opportunity to build something creator-led, culturally fluid, and native to the internet — a format where a 24-year-old NBA superstar could function as host, tastemaker, and editor-in-chief.
THE BELIEVE THAT AWARDS is a deliberately offbeat, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly sincere digital awards show that celebrates everything Ant loved over the past year . The BTAs are part satire, part celebration and a chaotic mix of love, jokes, and Ant doing things entirely his way.
The objective was threefold:
• Establish Anthony Edwards as a cross-cultural voice beyond sports
• Build a digital-first awards format engineered for shareability and meme velocity
• Prove that a YouTube-native tentpole could generate cultural impact comparable to traditional broadcast moments
Rather than replicate legacy systems, the BTAs embraced precision-engineered irreverence — blending satire, sincerity, and unexpected cultural commentary. The show collapsed sports, film, fashion, and internet culture into one creator-owned platform designed to travel organically across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, and syndicated sports media.
With a built-in audience of 6.6M across Anthony’s social ecosystem, the show was designed to ignite immediate cultural conversation and extend far beyond its runtime.
Bringing THE BELIEVE THAT AWARDS to life required executing a broadcast-scale cultural moment with the agility and discretion of a digital production.
The show honored high-profile figures across sports, film, music, and media — including Timothée Chalamet, Candace Parker, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Skip Bayless, and Shams Charania. Coordinating outreach, approvals, legal clearances, and media alignment across talent of that caliber required meticulous planning. Every category, winner, and participation detail was managed under strict confidentiality to preserve surprise and maximize impact at launch.
Production operated with an intentionally lean footprint. Anthony Edwards’ NBA schedule allowed for a highly limited filming window, so the entire show was structured to be captured in a single condensed session. Rather than rely on fragmented pickups or heavy intercuts, we filmed the program back-to-back, preserving performance continuity and maintaining tonal authenticity. The efficiency of that shoot required detailed pre-production planning and precise execution on set.
Much of the creative, editorial, and distribution workflow was coordinated remotely across multiple cities. Despite this distributed model, the show maintained a cohesive voice and rhythm — reinforcing that digital-first production can rival traditional broadcast standards without the same infrastructure.
The release strategy mirrored the production philosophy: controlled, deliberate, and surprise-driven. No winners or category announcements were leaked in advance. There were no staged previews. The premiere functioned as a true digital drop, engineered to ignite conversation in real time. Within hours, clips traveled organically across sports and culture ecosystems, generating widespread earned media without paid amplification.
What makes THE BELIEVE THAT AWARDS unique is its combination of scale and authorship: a creator-owned awards show with cross-industry talent, executed with a small team, filmed in a limited window, and distributed natively through YouTube.
In its first 48 hours, THE BELIEVE THAT AWARDS generated more than 167 million impressions across broadcast, digital, social, and print media. The full-length YouTube premiere reached 109K organic views, while short-form clips exceeded 7 million views across platforms — validating the show’s digital-first design and shareability.
More importantly, the impact extended beyond Anthony Edwards’ existing audience. The BTAs drove millions of new viewers to his YouTube and social channels and broke out of the sports ecosystem entirely. Coverage spanned ESPN and SportsCenter, legacy publications including NY Magazine, Hypebeast, and Sports Illustrated, and digital culture platforms such as Complex, Bleacher Report, and NiceKicks. Film and television outlets — including Variety, ScreenTime, and DiscussingFilm — also engaged with the moment.
This cross-category coverage directly fulfilled our objective of positioning Anthony as a cultural voice beyond basketball and proving that a YouTube-native awards show could generate impact traditionally reserved for broadcast ceremonies.
