Jellysmack built systems for adapting online video to the different formats, titles and publishing rhythms rewarded by YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. It developed the system across its own social brands, then turned it into a service for outside creators.[1][3]
That service, the Creator Program, turned Jellysmack into one of the most heavily funded companies of the creator-economy boom. A 2021 investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 supported rapid hiring, international expansion, creator financing, technology acquisitions and a push into owned media.[8][9]
The company subsequently became smaller as social-video advertising weakened, Facebook changed how it distributed and paid for content, and several expansion projects proved difficult to sustain. It now presents a more focused business: the Creator Program continues, while Law&Crime and Court TV form an owned-media position in legal and true-crime video. The original social brands moved into Blue Foxes in 2025.[8][19][2][21]
Jellysmack began as a laboratory for social video
The company started in 2016 as Keli Network. Its first properties were social-video publications built for specific interests, including football brand Oh My Goal, gaming publisher Gamology, basketball page House of Bounce and Beauty Studio.[1]
Oh My Goal supplied the early proof. Maizil had begun the football project before Jellysmack was formed, and the founders used analytics to understand which subjects and formats travelled across platforms. Teams recut footage, changed titles and thumbnails, tested variants and used performance data to guide the next round of publishing.[1][3]
Owning the pages made that experimentation possible at scale. By the time Keli Network became Jellysmack in September 2018, the company said its five vertical brands reached 170 million engaged viewers a month and had accumulated 30 million followers. The rebrand coincided with a $14 million Series A led by Highland Europe, with participation from Interplay Ventures, Partech and OneRagtime.[4]
Jellysmack said the capital would support more original programming and a Los Angeles studio. The financing gave the company a larger content engine, while the operating knowledge developed inside that engine soon became a service it could sell.[4]
The Creator Program turned an internal system into a service
Jellysmack launched the Creator Program in September 2019. Creators who had already built an audience on one platform could give Jellysmack the right to distribute their work on additional platforms. Jellysmack would select videos from the catalogue, edit them for each destination, test packaging, publish them and support their growth. The parties would share the advertising revenue generated on the accounts Jellysmack managed.[3][6]
This differed from a conventional talent-management agreement. Jellysmack did not need to represent every part of a creator's career, negotiate brand deals or take a share of the established channel. Its opportunity was the audience and revenue that might be created elsewhere from work the creator had already made.
The current program retains that basic structure. Jellysmack says creators keep ownership of their content while granting exclusive distribution rights on the platforms agreed in the contract. The company handles editing, packaging, testing, publishing, promotion and account management. It receives a share of in-stream advertising revenue from those managed platforms and says it does not participate in revenue from the creator's original channel.[5][6]
Early examples made the model attractive. At launch, Jellysmack toldTechCrunchthat Tal Fishman's Reaction Time channel had grown from roughly 80,000 Facebook followers to three million after joining, with the page generating about 100 million monthly views. In 2022, Derek Deso told Fortune that his partnership spanned more than 2,300 videos and that his income had increased tenfold within a month of joining.[3][7]
The program began with 25 YouTube creators in 2019, reached about 100 partners at the start of 2021 and exceeded 500 by March 2022, according to Business Insider's reconstruction. Jellysmack signed creators including MrBeast, PewDiePie, Bailey Sarian and the Try Guys during this period.[8]
SoftBank capital widened the ambition
SoftBank Vision Fund 2 invested in Jellysmack in May 2021. Jellysmack did not disclose the size of the Series C, although Business Insider later described it as a nine-figure investment. Bloomberg reported that the round valued the company at least $1 billion.[8][9][11]
The investment was intended to fund international expansion, product development and acquisitions. Jellysmack was already operating in the United States and France, and it used the new capital to enter additional markets, hire aggressively and build businesses around the Creator Program. Yanni Pipilis, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, joined the board.[9]
Jellysmack added creator financing, video-editing technology, channel analytics, creator development and owned professional media around its cross-platform distribution service. Some additions strengthened the Creator Program directly. Others depended on different economics and placed larger demands on the organisation.
Financing and acquisitions extended the model
In January 2022, Jellysmack launched the catalogue-licensing venture that became JellyFi. It announced that $500 million had been allocated to the initiative, with individual offers expected to range from $50,000 to more than $50 million. A creator received cash upfront in exchange for the revenue rights to an existing catalogue, while retaining the underlying intellectual property and revenue from future uploads.[12]
JellyFi used the same performance information that supported the Creator Program for another purpose: valuing the future income of an existing video catalogue and turning part of it into an upfront payment.
Kamua and AMA fit directly into the Creator Program. Kamua automated editing tasks such as converting horizontal video into vertical clips, while AMA brought channel analytics and YouTube expertise. Network Media added a creator-development operation. These purchases extended Jellysmack's existing service capabilities.[13][14][15]
Law&Crime was a different kind of acquisition. Founded by media entrepreneur and television host Dan Abrams, the company produces live-trial coverage, legal analysis and true-crime programming across YouTube, connected television, social platforms and its own network. Axios described the October 2023 purchase as Jellysmack's largest acquisition. Law&Crime's management remained in place, giving Jellysmack owned programming rather than another tool for distributing outside creators' videos.[16]
Platform economics forced a smaller company
The Creator Program relied on a repeatable gap between the cost of adapting and promoting a creator's catalogue and the advertising revenue earned from the resulting views. That gap became less dependable after the company's rapid expansion.
Business Insider reported that the program worked best for many early partners whose YouTube catalogues could be transferred profitably to Facebook. As Jellysmack signed hundreds of additional creators, later accounts were often harder to grow and monetise. Facebook changed its recommendation and payment systems, advertising conditions weakened, and audience attention shifted toward short-form video. Jellysmack was carrying the staff and creator commitments assembled during a stronger market while parts of the operation became less predictable.[8]
The company began reducing its workforce in 2022. By February 2023, The Information had reported three rounds of cuts affecting at least 300 positions, including a proposed voluntary departure plan covering as many as 208 roles in France. Jellysmack linked the reductions to lower forecasts for social-video advertising.[17]
In March 2024, Jellysmack sold JellyFi's catalogue-licensing portfolio and funding operation to Copyright Capital. Business Insider reported that some creators had been reluctant to hand over the keys to their YouTube accounts. Jellysmack said it was prioritising more profitable core initiatives.[18]
Another round of layoffs followed in October 2024, when Jellysmack said it would reduce the part of the Creator Program focused on Meta platforms. The company cited reduced monetisation and difficulty forecasting returns under Meta's newer payment model. It said it would continue serving key creator partners while concentrating investment on intellectual-property businesses that had continued to succeed on YouTube.[19]
The sequence narrowed Jellysmack's scope. JellyFi was sold, the Meta-focused creator operation was reduced, Network Media was sold in 2025 and the original publishing portfolio moved out of the company.[15][18][19]
In March 2025, Jellysmack spun off its Originals division as Blue Foxes. The transfer included Oh My Goal, Gamology, Beauty Studio and House of Bounce. Former Jellysmack executives Maxime Horbez and Paula Layoun became Blue Foxes' co-chief executives.[2][20]
The move separated Jellysmack's oldest activity from its remaining creator-service and owned-media businesses. Those pages had been the environment in which Jellysmack learned to test, package and distribute video across social networks. Blue Foxes continues to operate social-first entertainment brands, while Jellysmack retained Law&Crime and said it would focus on United States intellectual property and YouTube.[2][20]
Law&Crime and Court TV define the owned-media direction
Law&Crime became the clearest expression of Jellysmack's shift toward professionally produced media that it controls. The business combines a defined editorial subject with a library of trial footage and true-crime programming that can be distributed across long-form YouTube, streaming television, social clips and licensing channels.[16]
Law&Crime sells advertising, licenses trial footage and offers the ad-free Law&Crime+ service for $3.99 a month or $40.99 a year. Court TV entered the group as a free broadcast and streaming network from a Scripps segment that earned principally by selling advertising time.[24][25][26]
Law&Crime acquired Court TV from E.W. Scripps in February 2026. Court TV dates to 1991 and is one of the best-known brands in televised trial coverage. Law&Crime said it would keep Court TV as a distinct brand while expanding its digital distribution and YouTube presence.[21][22][23]
The two networks cover adjacent parts of the same market. Court TV supplies continuous live courtroom coverage and a widely recognised consumer brand. Law&Crime has built a digital audience around trial streams, analysis, documentaries and true-crime video. At the time of the transaction, Law&Crime said the combined businesses reached roughly 25 million followers and generated about 125 million monthly YouTube views.[22]
The transaction reverses the usual pattern of a traditional television group buying a digital publisher. Through Law&Crime, a creator-economy company acquired a legacy cable brand and plans to grow it through digital video. Jellysmack now owns a company assembling a specialist media category around recognisable intellectual property.[21][23]
What Jellysmack is now
Jellysmack now combines the Creator Program's revenue-sharing service with an owned-media business centred on Law&Crime and Court TV. This is a narrower company than the one assembled after 2021, and it fits Jellysmack's stated focus on YouTube and United States intellectual property.[5][6][2][19][21]
Jellysmack has travelled through three versions of the same underlying idea. It began by building social brands, converted the distribution system behind those brands into a service for creators, and used outside capital to expand into financing, technology and owned media. The retrenchment removed several of those extensions, including the original brands themselves.
The next phase depends on how the two remaining parts work together. The Creator Program supplies platform expertise and relationships across online video. Law&Crime and Court TV supply owned content whose value is not tied to a single creator contract. Jellysmack's earlier scale came from distributing a very large volume of third-party video. Its current direction places more weight on controlling the media assets being distributed.