From golf balls to crypto: Lessons in influence for the next generation

In March, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a 12-page letter to Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast to his nearly half a billion YouTube subscribers, raising concerns about Beast Industries’ plans to offer financial products through its acquisition of the teen-focused banking app Step. While some may dismiss this as political theatricality, it is actually an early warning signal, and marketing and economics research tells us why.

A study published in Marketing Science examined Tiger Woods’ endorsement of Nike golf balls from 2000 to 2010, exploring monthly sales data across hundreds of retail outlets. The finding everyone anticipated was that endorsements steal customers from rival brands. Indeed, Nike’s market share jumped from roughly 1.5 per cent to over 6 per cent in the 18 months after Woods switched from Titleist (dropping from 24.9 per cent to 21.8 per cent).

But the more consequential result was a second, less obvious effect: endorsements also generated what the authors call primary demand — pulling people into the golf ball market who would not have purchased at all in the celebrity’s absence.

Now scale that mechanism to MrBeast’s audience of nearly half a billion subscribers, larger than the combined populations of Canada and Australia. His viewers are often under the age of 18 and a substantial share are encountering financial instruments for the first time. The primary demand effect documented in sports marketing may not disappear when you move from golf balls to banking apps and cryptocurrency. If anything, it has the potential to intensify. A golf ball purchase is low-stakes and reversible. A financial product is neither.

A 2025 working paper by researchers at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Indiana University, and Queen Mary University of London puts precise numbers on what happens when celebrities enter financial markets directly. Analyzing over 1,200 celebrity posts about cryptocurrencies, linked to individual-level transaction data from a U.S. fintech aggregator, the authors find that the probability of a person investing in a cryptocurrency rises by 14 per cent on the day a celebrity posts about it. Trading volume in the targeted asset jumps 11 per cent in the hour after the post. Critically, a representative investor who acts on that celebrity signal earns negative returns after transaction costs. The celebrity moves the market; the followers absorb the loss.

Published research on influencer sponsorships finds that children who are ages 12 to 14 need to be told not just that a video is sponsored, but also what that sponsorship means. Without both pieces of information, the commercial message registers as entertainment, not advertising. More troubling still: even when adolescents successfully identify content as advertising, this recognition does not reliably translate into changed behaviour toward the product.

Fortunately, we have navigated similar territory before, and the evidence shows that targeted intervention can work. Prior to the U.S. CARD Act of 2009, credit card companies aggressively reached college students through high-energy, relationship-based promotions on campus. A study covering 160 million credit card accounts published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that the Act’s limit on fees saved consumers around $11.9 billion annually. Crucially, the largest benefits flowed to the most financially vulnerable borrowers: those with lower credit scores who were previously disproportionately affected by hidden charges. This history illustrates that regulation succeeds when it moves beyond simple disclosure.

None of this is an indictment of MrBeast, who has said publicly that he wants to give young people a strong financial foundation, and his philanthropic record suggests this is genuine. The problem is structural, and not about one person. The regulatory architecture governing financial advertising was designed for a world where firms reached consumers through intermediaries with their own obligations. It was not designed for a world where a single digital creator, beloved by millions, becomes the primary distribution channel for financial products through a single video.

Marketing science has identified the mechanism. Financial economics has documented the harm. History has shown us a workable remedy. Canada’s financial regulators already have the tools they need. They can require that financial products which are promoted to large audiences of minors meet age-appropriate suitability standards, rather than relying on simple disclosure labels. Sticking with old rules in a new reality is no longer an option. The evidence has been waiting, and we are the ones who need to catch up.