With 80+ global speakers and 50+ sessions in Abu Dhabi from December 8–10, the Creator Economy Track will explore how influence, ownership and innovation are redrawing the world’s creative and economic map.
From December 8–10, 2025, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) will host the Creator Economy Track at BRIDGE Summit 2025, convening more than 80 global experts from among the Summit’s 400 speakers. Over three days, leading creators, founders, investors and platform innovators will engage in more than 50 sessions exploring how the rapidly expanding creator economy—now worth more than $250bn and expected to exceed $500bn by 2027—is being monetised, governed and reshaped by those whose power lies in the audiences they command rather than the assets they own.
As one of seven content tracks guiding the Summit, the Creator Economy Track will examine how influence has become a form of capital, how personal identity is increasingly treated as intellectual property, and how attention has emerged as one of the world’s most valuable commodities. By spotlighting the forces transforming ownership, legitimacy and creative value, the programme aims to advance BRIDGE Summit’s mission of accelerating systems that let creative enterprises grow without compromising independence.
The track will explore the evolution of creators into full-fledged industries. Discussions such as How Creators Are Building the Next Entertainment Giants will analyse the rise of creator-led conglomerates, while Viral Economics will address how digital storytelling can move markets at unprecedented speed. Panels including Who’s Cashing In on the Attention Boom? and The Price of Influence in a Platform World will look at how algorithms increasingly determine visibility and economic reward.
As attention becomes scarce, sessions like Reclaiming Focus in the Age of Infinite Scroll will assess digital fatigue and wellness. Technical and policy challenges will also be explored through conversations such as What It Takes to Break YouTube Monetisation and What Happens When Creators Become Policymakers?, which will question authority and legitimacy as influencers gain public influence and even political power.
The future of creativity, shifting from short-form virality to long-form world-building, will be highlighted in discussions like The Creator Economy’s Next Chapter is Written in Film. Other sessions will reflect on resilience, ethics and the psychology of online exposure, including The Weight of Being Seen and Curating Feeds that Heal.
The business of influence will be dissected through panels like Creators as the New Broadcasters and The Future of Media Has One Employee, which will explore how individual creators are redefining global media as lean, self-run enterprises. Meanwhile, conversations such as The Human Code of Storytelling and When the Messenger Becomes the Movement will analyse the power of narrative and the social impact of creators who evolve into cultural symbols.
Critical questions of accountability, culture and creative freedom will be addressed in sessions on cancel culture, global aesthetics, and the rising importance of personal intellectual property. Youth empowerment and cultural connection will also feature prominently, with panels examining creativity as a universal right and exploring food as a medium of identity and shared digital experience.
A diverse lineup of innovators, executives and cultural leaders will headline the Creator Economy Track. Industry figures representing the commercial backbone of the creator ecosystem include Aryeh B. Bourkoff of LionTree, David Freeman of CAA, Darnell Strom of UTA, Andrew Graham of CAA Creators and Joe Marchese of Human Ventures and CKBG. They will be joined by platform founders and ecosystem builders such as Drew Baldwin of Tubefilter, Katie Carroll of LinkedIn, Douglas Kendyson of Selar, David Page of Viewture, Lewis Crosbie of KOMI, Ben Casnocha of Village Global, Gustaf Lundberg Toresson of Antilop, Danny Cortenraede of InStudio Ventures, and many others shaping the global creator landscape.
Some of the most influential digital storytellers and cultural voices—among them Joe Hattab, Crazy XYZ’s Amit Sharma, Zachery Dereniowski, FruitFlan, Amine Aouni, Overheard Historian’s Justyna Gawlik, Chef Abby, Shaheen Khalil, Sara Al Refai, Andrew Zimmern and Abir El Saghir—will contribute perspectives from across media, food, travel, entrepreneurship and entertainment. Champions of resilience, advocacy and social impact, including Dr Abdullah Alawi, Annastasia Seebohm, Liv Stone and Ashraf Ibrahim, will further broaden the conversation.
Collectively, these voices represent the transformative shifts redefining ownership, distribution, identity and value in the global creator economy—from corporate boardrooms to platform ecosystems and the cultural narratives shaping public consciousness. The Creator Economy Track reflects BRIDGE Summit’s broader vision of a world where creative power, economic value and cultural legitimacy are generated not by institutions, but by individuals equipped with systems and capital that allow them to scale without losing ownership of their identity or ideas.
Hosted in Abu Dhabi, BRIDGE Summit 2025 will reinforce the UAE’s emergence as a global hub for the creator economy, digital entrepreneurship and cross-cultural innovation. In an age where audiences follow creators rather than institutions, the Summit asserts one central idea: the future will belong to those who build new worlds from their ideas—and BRIDGE Summit 2025 will gather those world-builders under one roof.
