Fox's Tubi has pledged $250,000 to a new Fandom Fund created with Kickstarter, its most concrete bet yet on emerging creators rather than established Hollywood talent. Kickstarter will recommend creators for the program, which expands on the two companies' 2025 FilmStream Collective Fund that helped creators finish films and bring them to the free streamer.

The numbers behind the fund are specific. Of the $250,000 total, $150,000 will be distributed across roughly eight to 15 creators, according to details released by the companies. A single project will receive $100,000 in matching funds to produce a full film or series.

Which genres does the money target?

The funded creators will work in genres that perform strongly on Tubi. The list includes:

• Stories centered on Black characters and experiences
• Horror
• Young adult
• Reality
• True-crime content

The genre focus reflects Tubi's audience data rather than a general programming mandate. The streamer has built its growth around content categories that legacy platforms have historically underweighted.

What do creators get — and keep?

Fandom Fund recipients will retain ownership of their intellectual property, a term meaning the legal rights to the underlying work. They will also gain access to Tubi's 110 million monthly active users, the company's most-cited scale figure.

Tubi will premiere the funded projects and run them through an exclusive window — a period during which no other platform can stream the title — of varying month-long periods, beginning in 2027. The streamer secures first-run exclusivity without acquiring the underlying rights, a structure that lowers the barrier for creators weighing platform deals.

Why is Tubi chasing creators now?

The fund forms part of Tubi's broader effort to raise its standing with creators as audience attention shifts toward social media. Tubi already counts more than 700 creators distributing nonexclusive content on the platform, but the company wants access to new, exclusive fare as well. Netflix and Disney are also competing for YouTubers and other creators, turning the creator economy into a contested acquisition channel for streamers.

Rich Bloom, general manager of Tubi's creator programs and its EVP of business development, framed the Fandom Fund as deliberately aimed below the top tier of creator talent.

"This is an opportunity for more emerging creators, versus bigger, more established creators, who, even with this big push across media to do more with creators, aren't necessarily getting those opportunities," Bloom said.

Kickstarter's chief executive, Everette Taylor, said cuts to programming spending across Hollywood have left a dearth of funding for independent creators. His diagnosis of the market gap was direct.

"What I'm hearing from creators is, I have my own audience, I have a great idea, I want to shoot this thing, but I don't know how I'm going to monetize it after," Taylor said.

How does this extend the 2025 partnership?

The Fandom Fund builds directly on the Tubi-Kickstarter FilmStream Collective Fund launched in 2025. That earlier program helped creators finish films already in progress and route them to Tubi's free, ad-supported service. The new fund moves upstream of completion financing: it seeds new production, including one title at full film or series scale with the $100,000 matching allocation.

The exclusive-window model starting in 2027 gives Tubi a pipeline of original, creator-led titles without the cost structure of traditional studio development. For Kickstarter, the partnership converts its curation role — recommending creators — into a direct financing pathway for its community.

The strategic logic for both parties is straightforward. Tubi gains differentiated exclusive content in genres where its audience already concentrates, while creators keep their IP, reach 110 million monthly active users, and receive production capital that Hollywood's contracting programming budgets no longer supply.