Hoonigan Co-Founder Brian Scotto Builds a Way Off the YouTube 'Hamster Wheel'

Brian Scotto put the endemic automotive sponsorship market at $55 billion, and he has built a studio to help creators claim a piece of it. 321 Action Action, founded in Long Beach, California, in 2024, became the creative production studio for motorsports media group F=ma under a deal announced in September, while Scotto joined F=ma's executive team.

The studio exists because of a problem Scotto hears constantly. He hosts a podcast, and most of his friends are creators. "It's always the conversation after the podcast is over, and it always is: how do I get off the hamster wheel?" he says. The creators asking describe stalled subscriber and view counts for up to two years, with no money to fund the next big idea.

Scotto spent about 13 years at Hoonigan, the company he co-founded with the late Ken Block. There he directed the Gymkhana films, once-a-year spectacles he argues no longer fit a YouTube that rewards a repeatable show uploaded at the same time every day.

What happened to the automotive creator economy?

Scotto traces the current strain to a "land grab" between roughly 2015 and 2022, when automotive creators moved to YouTube. The biggest operated inside companies built like traditional media businesses, including MotorTrend, Hoonigan, Donut Media and Car Throttle. Scotto says those companies are now gone or doing far less, a pattern he also sees at VICE Media, Vox and BuzzFeed.

What replaced them is a single-Creator Economy built on one or two people and a small team. "Running a 50 to 200-person company on YouTube didn't really work as well," Scotto says. A solo creator also inherits the back office, from bookkeeping to copyright strikes, making it a 24-hour job in his telling.

The strain shows at two levels. Pandemic-era creators burn out within a year or two, or work 17-hour days because they cannot quit day jobs. Successful creators feel trapped, saying CPMs stay flat even when views rise. "What the platforms reward, in my opinion, are jack-of-all-trades creators," Scotto says. The losers are gifted storytellers without business skills, and that mismatch is his opening.

How does the studio work with creators?

Scotto sorts his targets into three groups:

• All-rounders at full bandwidth, who get what he calls "an easy button."
• Burnt-out creators with strong on-camera presence, who get production and business support.
• Personable creators without breakout ideas, who get a concept to host.

"We want to go build something with you, and we're going to do all the stuff you don't want to do," he says. He calls the studio a "special forces group" for projects too big for any one F=ma company — RACER, GRIDLIFE and The ID Agency — while he builds a creator network plugging into all of them.

He develops ideas and casting in parallel, bringing creators in early. One office wall is covered with faces he rearranges to find pairings, often creators whose audiences barely overlap. When a brand wants under-25 viewers or an audience in France, he assembles several creators whose combined audiences reach it.

Where does the content run?

Scotto stays platform agnostic. "I can make a documentary that could live in six parts on YouTube, but operates as a feature doc on streaming," he says. The same project could run on RACER or Netflix, with vertical versions for Instagram. Data show little chance of moving viewers between platforms, he argues, so content must go where they already are. RACER's acquisition of MAVTV, which brought linear streaming and an app, first drew him in as "a creator without a distribution home."

"While I have a love-hate relationship with YouTube, without YouTube I wouldn't have the career I have," he says, adding: "I think we've flattened a creative curve."

Endemic sponsorship makes funding easier, he argues. "You're building an off-road truck, and you are already going to put Toyo Tires on it because you like their tires," Scotto says. "If the marketing's the pill, just make sure the peanut butter is delicious." Some partners have stayed with him for more than a decade.

What does the F=ma structure offer brands?

F=ma CEO James Schiefer reports RACER on more than 450 million devices with 1.5 billion impressions in 2025, and GRIDLIFE drawing about 110,000 attendees a year, roughly 70% under 35. Brands enter through one company while a cross-group commercial team can assemble fuller packages. One current client works with all four groups, including a documentary series from Scotto that does not yet have a home.

"We're independent but united," Scotto says of the four companies, each with its own CEO and P&L. He is now in "selling season," pitching projects with production set to start in January. His sales argument is his track record: "Everything I've built to this day has always been sold on the project I did before," he says.