Stop Renting Your Audience. The Companies That Figured It Out Are Buying the Doorway.
Three case studies in what it looks like when you actually start to own your distribution. Part 2/3 | Brand Distribution, Audience Ownership, and the Future of the Attention Economy.
In the previous piece in this series, I made the argument that the follower counts, reach metrics, and platform audiences that brands have spent the better part of a decade building are dependencies. Owned by someone else, priced by someone else, and available for repricing or removal at any moment.
In case you missed it - Part One of Three
The natural response to that argument is: fine, so what does the alternative actually look like?
The answer is becoming clearer, and it looks less like a content strategy and more like an acquisition strategy. The most strategically sophisticated organisations operating right now are buying direct lines to audiences that no platform can intermediate. They are purchasing the doorway, not just what’s behind it.
Three organisations have demonstrated this clearly, across three different industries, with three very different acquisition targets. The logic underneath all of them is identical.
Case Study One: The New York Times Buys a Daily Ritual
When the New York Times acquired Wordle in January 2022 for a price reported to be in the low seven figures, the coverage largely framed it as a quirky cultural moment. A newspaper, struggling with the existential pressures facing legacy media, buys a word game that had gone viral. The strategic significance was largely missed.
What the Times purchased was not a game. It was a daily ritual shared by tens of millions of people who had never previously had a reason to visit a New York Times product. Wordle gave the company something that subscription marketing cannot buy and advertising cannot manufacture: habitual, direct contact with a new audience at a moment of their day when they were already engaged, already open, and already forming a behavioural pattern around the experience.
The strategic sequel is the more important part of this story. Wordle became the entry point to a broader Times Games ecosystem, alongside Connections, Spelling Bee, and the Mini Crossword, that has become a powerful engine for subscription conversion. The Times is selling a daily habit that, over time, makes the broader Times offering feel indispensable. They built a conversion funnel by buying a ritual.
The platform cannot disintermediate that. There is no algorithm between the Times and its puzzle player. The relationship is direct, daily, and owned. It’s been the most powerful driver of digital revenue growth and subscriber stickiness for the Times that I dedicated an entire section to them in my book on gaming strategies for brands.
Case Study Two: OpenAI Buys a Voice in the Conversation
OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN, announced in April 2026, looks unusual on the surface. An artificial intelligence laboratory buying a daily tech talk show. The strategic logic becomes obvious once you stop thinking about TBPN as media and start thinking about it as distribution infrastructure for narrative control.
OpenAI is operating in the middle of one of the most contested reputation battles in the history of technology: a fight over what artificial general intelligence means, who benefits from it, who is harmed by it, and who should be trusted to build it. Every major publication, every tech commentator, every YouTube channel with an opinion has a platform from which to shape that narrative. Before TBPN, OpenAI had to rely on earned coverage, which means relying on editors, journalists, and algorithm decisions made by platforms it doesn’t control.
TBPN changes that. The show generated approximately $5 million in advertising revenue in 2025 and was on track to exceed $30 million this year, according to reporting from TechCrunch. That tells you something significant about the audience’s size and quality. More importantly, it gives OpenAI a direct audio channel into the ears of the founder and operator class that shapes tech culture. No editorial filter. No algorithm. No platform that could bury or amplify coverage based on its own commercial incentives.
“Narrative is a competitive asset. Relying on third-party media to carry your story is a form of distribution risk.”
This move echoes something Andreessen Horowitz has been building systematically for years. a16z has constructed a media infrastructure: podcasts, newsletters, and a media fellowship that trained 65 storytellers in its inaugural cohort, with a second cohort launching in April 2026. The goal is direct access to an audience of founders and operators who subscribe. If a16z’s views on tech regulation, AI, or cryptocurrency are filtered through a reporter who frames them differently, that is a loss. If they publish directly to the people who matter to their business, that is leverage.
This is a distribution ownership strategy wearing media’s clothes. The distinction matters.
Case Study Three: Disney Buys a World
The most ambitious articulation of this thesis involves two of the most recognisable names in entertainment.
In February 2024, Disney invested $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, and announced a multiyear partnership to build what they described as an “expansive and open games and entertainment universe.” On paper, this looks like a content deal: Disney IP inside an Epic platform. Marvel characters in Fortnite. Star Wars experiences. Avatar activations. That reading is too narrow.
Fortnite has over 300 million registered users and a cultural gravity that makes it a persistent social space, somewhere people inhabit regularly and with genuine emotional investment. Unreal Engine is the infrastructure layer powering a growing proportion of interactive entertainment globally. Epic Online Services provides identity, social graph, and cross-platform connectivity for millions of players across dozens of titles.
Disney, meanwhile, owns the most powerful IP portfolio in the history of entertainment (Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney Animation, Avatar) and distributes it almost entirely through platforms and theatres it doesn’t control. Disney+ is the closest thing to owned distribution the company has, and it has faced sustained commercial pressure as the streaming wars have matured. In cinemas, in streaming, in social media: Disney is a content creator dependent on aggregators for reach.
The Epic stake changes that strategic frame. Follow the logic of this partnership to its conclusion, and you arrive at a scenario where Disney owns the interactive world that hundreds of millions of people inhabit. A persistent digital environment where the next generation of fans grows up alongside Disney IP as something they do, rather than something they watch.
That is the escape from aggregation at its most complete. Disney would own the platform where the relationship between its characters and the next generation of fans is formed. No streaming deal. No algorithm. No theatrical window to negotiate.
Why Disney Should Acquire Epic Games
The Common Thread
Three case studies, three different industries, three very different acquisition targets. The logic underneath all of them is identical.
Wordle is a daily ritual. TBPN is a direct audio channel into the founder class. Fortnite is a persistent social world with 300 million registered users. None of these can be intermediated by a third-party platform. None of them can be algorithmically deprioritised. None of them can have their reach revised downward in the next quarterly update.
What all three organisations did was stop thinking about distribution as a function of content strategy and start thinking about it as infrastructure. The question they asked was not about creative quality or channel mix. It was this: what do we need to own in order to reach the people we want to reach, without asking anyone’s permission?
That question is available to every brand to ask. The answer will look different depending on your category, your audience, and your resources. But the framing is universal. The brands that win the next decade will be the ones that understood, early enough, that the platform is the prize.
The next question is obvious: what does this look like when you don’t have $1.5 billion to spend on a games company? That’s the third piece.
Where does acquisition-led distribution thinking fit inside your organisation’s strategy today? Is it even a conversation at the leadership level? Let me know in the comments.
Technically Entertaining covers business strategy at the intersection of gaming, technology, and entertainment. If this was forwarded to you, subscribe below to get every issue directly.
This is Part Two of a three-part series on brand distribution, audience ownership, and the future of the attention economy. Subscribe today to receive the entire series straight to your inbox.