The Energy Drink Shelf Books the Same Creator 6.7 Times

The shelf that keeps calling the same people back

We counted every recorded paid YouTube video for 13 energy drink brands, from 30 October 2020 through to 29 July 2026. That comes to 884 creators and 5,927 sponsored videos, which is 6.7 paid videos for every creator on the shelf.

That last number is the finding. We have mapped several other shelves the same way, activewear, sleep, grooming and supplements among them, and none comes back to the same person as often.

The reason is in the category breakdown. Gaming channels carry 188 creators and 2,251 of those videos, 38.0 percent of the shelf, at 12.0 paid energy videos each. Entertainment carries another 217 creators and 1,859 videos at 8.6 each. Those two groups hold most of the shelf, and they are the same handful of channels running the same product every few weeks.

Of the 5,927 paid energy videos we have on record, 2,818 of them belong to one brand, Gamer Supps, spread across 268 creators.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals, pulled 7 August 2026, one row per recorded paid video.

What each of the three big buyers actually took

Only three of the 13 brands have a roster wide enough and deep enough to chart. Our bar is 100 creators and an average of at least 2.2 bookings each, because a pyramid built on eleven people is a picture of nothing. Gamer Supps, G FUEL and Magic Mind clear it, and each bought something different.

The ten brands we could not chart, and the honest reason

Ghost is the painful one. It rebooks 88 percent of its creators at 11.7 videos each, the deepest relationship on the whole shelf, and it still gets no chart because 26 creators cannot fill one. The same goes for 5-hour ENERGY, with 8 creators and 46 videos, every single one on a sports channel, at 30.9 times the sports rate of the shelf. Alani Nu has 5 creators, C4 Energy has 7, Celsius has 11 at 2.0 bookings each, Monster has 14 at 2.2, Red Bull has 15 at 1.3, Bang has 2, Reign has 2, and Rockstar has exactly one paid video on record.

Now the part that matters more than the counts. Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar, Bang, Reign and Celsius are enormous companies, and most of their money goes to athletes, teams and events. None of that lands in a YouTube video description, which is where our count comes from. So a small number next to Red Bull here is a hole in what we can see, and it says nothing about how much Red Bull spends. It is worth reading what happened after the fastest launch drinks has ever had before you copy any of the big names.

Nobody is bidding against you for anyone

Here is where the energy shelf breaks the pattern we see everywhere else. Stack three rosters on top of each other in most categories and a shared shortlist falls out, thirty or forty names every buyer has already paid.

Not here. Of the 884 creators on this shelf, 871 have been paid by exactly one of the 13 brands. Thirteen have been paid by two. Not one creator has taken money from three.

There is no agreed shortlist in energy, so the person you want is almost certainly not being courted by your competitor this month. On the shelf that owns the most creator videos on YouTube that would be unthinkable, and it is the best piece of news in this whole count.

The twelve creators two brands already share

These are the people who have taken money from two different energy brands. The last column is the paid energy videos each has on record, which is what your pitch would walk into.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals, pulled 7 August 2026, counting distinct brands per creator.

The lanes this shelf has worn out

Gaming is the worst of them. Its 188 creators carry 2,251 paid energy videos, 12.0 each, and 8 of the 13 brands are already in there. A creator in that group has read an energy code a dozen times, so your product arrives as the thirteenth version of something the audience already heard, at a premium price. The sibling count of which brands own the energy deals on YouTube tells that story from the brand side.

Entertainment is next, 217 creators and 1,859 videos at 8.6 each, with 7 brands present, and comedy is tiny but the most repeated of all at 10.1 videos across just 7 creators.

Sports is the odd one. It has only 47 creators and 192 videos, yet 10 of the 13 brands have gone there, more buyers than any other lane. What is crowded in sports is the number of companies competing over a small group of channels, while the audience itself has heard the pitch far less often.

The hard question here is the one a media kit will never answer, which is how many times the creator in front of you has already run your category. Checking that name by name across a few hundred candidates is the work we take on before a shortlist reaches you, so nobody on your list turns out to have read a rival's code 39 times.

Where nobody is buying

Travel is the emptiest lane we can point at, 27 creators and 69 videos, 2.6 bookings each, and only 4 brands have ever gone there. Food is thinner still, 15 creators at 1.7 bookings each and 0.4 percent of the shelf. Fitness has 10 creators.

Be honest about the size of those pockets. Travel is 1.2 percent of every paid energy video on record, so a plan built only on travel has almost no volume behind it. Be the only buyer there, without making it the whole plan.

Lifestyle is the one cheap lane with weight. It has 128 creators and 438 videos at 3.4 bookings each, and 7 brands have touched it, so it is contested but shallow. Compare 3.4 bookings against 12.0 in gaming and you can see how differently tired those two audiences are. Magic Mind is already there, a sign the lane works.

What to do with all of this

Do not open in gaming. You would be paying the highest rate on the shelf for the audience that has heard the pitch most often, with 8 of 13 brands ahead of you.

Copy the repeat pattern rather than the roster size. Gamer Supps books 10.5 times per creator and Ghost books 11.7, and both of those programmes are worth more than Magic Mind's 384 names at 2.9 each. Rebooking is the honest signal, because nobody pays a creator a tenth time for a placement that lost money.

Start in lifestyle, then test travel and food around it. No energy brand has planted a flag in the small lanes, and those creators already take deals from other categories.

The work between here and a signed creator is the tedious part, checking who has already run what, pricing against a history the creator will not volunteer, and keeping the disclosures clean so someone else's health claim never becomes your problem. That is the part we run for brands, from the shortlist through to the finished videos. If you want it done on your own shelf, tell us what you are launching and we will bring the names with their history attached.