When WWE hits 100 million subscribers on YouTube, VP of digital media Steve Braband says the milestone should be celebrated not just by his team, but by the entire organization.

After being an early adopter on the video sharing platform, the company has continued to press its advantage. It now has more than twice as many subscribers as the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL put together. With 99.9 million subs as of Tuesday morning, WWE sits among the top 10 YouTube channels across categories.

“(WWE president) Nick Khan has really instilled with us the three R’s of ratings, relevancy and revenue,” Braband said. “And I think YouTube can help check all three of those.”

WWE still pushes fans to its live events on Fox, USA and Peacock, but it now views digital as a key source for behind-the-scenes content, storyline elements and highlights from the past, with clips from Raw, SmackDown and NXT put up immediately post-show as well. Digital team members are also included in pre-event planning to ensure they can capture and distribute key moments as they happen. At the moment, Braband is looking for ways to further own post-show conversation online. 

“We’re very strategic through each match and each segment of each show, to pull the moments that we think will succeed on the internet while also driving back to linear television,” Braband said.

A programming team oversees a content schedule as if they were managing a linear channel, keeping tabs on what YouTube’s recommendation algorithms might be preferring at any given moment.

For instance, the company put together a three-hour livestream of past WrestleMania entrances last week ahead of the 40th annual event in April. It now has more than 800,000 views.

“Digital media can just be kind of set off on digital or social misfit island, and they’re doing everything themselves; we don’t do that here,” Braband said. “We’re making sure that some of our best editors and people that have created some of the best content in WWE over the years have a stake in content that goes on the platform.”

A connected ethos has worked its way deeper into the company in recent years, as younger, social media native superstars make their ring debuts and others, such as Logan Paul, are pulled directly from the world of online celebrity. The return of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has also boosted the company’s subscriber count in recent weeks. 

As sports leagues aim to attract young fans, extra emphasis has gravitated toward YouTube in recent years—most clearly in the NFL’s embrace of the platform’s independent creators this season. For Gen Z in particular, YouTube is the most used social media platform, according to Morning Consult, with more than 80% of respondents spending time there. WWE has found success by looking at its talent as creators in their own right and thinking about how video once created for TV could be updated for modern audiences. The brand also has more than 30 million Instagram followers and 26 million followers on TikTok.

Much of WWE’s YouTube audience is international (with the biggest slice of that group coming from India), and the company says 35% of its views on the platform come from the sought after 18-to-24 year old demo. 

Those numbers could improve next year, when the WWE moves to Netflix, which has an even younger audience and a global footprint. Still, among WWE fans polled by YouGov in January, 57% said they use YouTube on a regular basis, compared to 50% who cited Netflix as a frequent destination. For adults at large, that order was flipped (51% for Netflix, 46% for YouTube.)

As today’s tech giants look for their next sports rights buys, proof of success with young fans online could give certain leagues a leg up. For its part, WWE has already brought the hammer down.