Mythical Entertainment Names YouTube Exec Neel Yalamarthy As VP Strategy & Business Development

EXCLUSIVE: Neel Yalamarthy has joined Mythical Entertainment as VP Strategy & Business Development. He will report directly to Mythical COO Brian Flanagan, as well as founders Rhett & Link.

Yalamarthy served most recently on YouTube’s Sports & Entertainment team, where he oversaw product marketing and strategy initiatives for Sports Content and Partnerships, Licensed Movies and Shows and YouTube Originals. In this role, he helped launch YouTube’s first exclusive live game-streaming distribution partnership with Major League Baseball and advised on deal analysis and launch for numerous live sports deals globally. Additionally, he supported YouTube’s multiyear sponsorship deal with LA’s new SoFi Stadium and home NFL teams the Rams and Chargers.

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Outside of Sports, Yalamarthy helped launch and scale YouTube’s ad-supported Movies offering, partnering with top Studios including Disney, Warner Bros, MGM, and Lionsgate, amongst others, to bring free-to-watch, full-length films to the platform.

Prior to YouTube, Yalamarthy was on the Chief of Staff team for Google’s Chief Marketing Officer, overseeing strategy and operations for the global marketing organization, and began his career at PwC Strategy& (Formerly Booz & Co.), advising executives in the Private Equity, Retail, and Consumer industries. He is a graduate of Brown University.

“Neel brings to Mythical an exceptional combination of talents: intellectual firepower, analytical rigor, and a keen sense of what’s next for the burgeoning creator economy,” Flanagan said. “His track record of business- and audience-building at YouTube makes him the perfect executive to guide our next phase of growth, via investment both internally at Mythical and Smosh and externally in other creator-led enterprises. Rhett & Link and I are delighted to welcome him to the team.“

Mythical is an Internet-first entertainment studio led by YouTube creators Rhett & Link. The company’s owned and operated YouTube channels have amassed 75 million subscribers and 25 billion lifetime views, and its combined following on Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, Snap, TikTok and Twitter exceeds 45 million. Rhett & Link host the Internet’s most popular daily show, Good Mythical Morning, now in its eighth year. In 2019, Mythical completed the first significant M&A transaction in the YouTube space by acquiring the Smosh comedy brand — one of Internet media’s largest and longest-running enterprises.

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