The first international game of the National Football League season, a Friday-night tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, is celebrated on the ground by the usual pomp and circumstance.

There are photo booths and merch tents catering to local fans, samba dancers in feathered head-pieces entertaining American die-hards traveling across the equator, and a press conference where Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has to backtrack after calling association football (that is, the kind that is still most popular in Brazil, and the rest of the word) “soccer.” But fans tuning in at home are greeted by a different, somewhat more disturbing spectacle: news that YouTuber, prolific content creator, and protein-infused milk impresario Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has purchased the NFL.

In a pregame preview airing on YouTube–which, for the first time ever, is broadcasting a regular-season NFL game globally, and for free–the platform’s most valuable creator appears opposite league commissioner Roger Goodell, in a purportedly comical “sketch” about MrBeast’s takeover of the league, which sees him assigning popular content creators to team rosters. A postgame stunt sees Donaldson awarding one hardcore fan a ticket to Super Bowl LX, and firing another out of a human cannon. Not everyone welcomes the NFL’s new zillennial overlord. “MrBeast on my television invading my beautiful sport,” one fan posts on X. A friend (a lifelong football fan in his mid-40s) who texts me during the game says the whole production, “Looks insanely gen z.”

Which is of course the point. The September 5 YouTube-exclusive S&atild...