How TelevisaUnivision marries legacy media and modern-day influence
TelevisaUnivision established Premios Juventud in 2004 to honor Spanish-speaking celebrities.
As the leading Spanish-language media company, James Heath’s philosophy is “If we don’t do it, who will?”
Heath is referring to TelevisaUnivision’s commitment to centralizing creators, which the network emphasized at this year’s Premios Juventud in San Juan. The event has traditionally honored Spanish-speaking celebrities, and instead of just recruiting creators to promote the event, the media company brought them to center stage.
“We definitely see ourselves as the biggest media platform for Hispanics, and our audience really trusts creators,” said Heath. “To ignore that type of media would be a disservice.”
The network knows that the cultural impact of these partnerships creates real results. As their creator business accelerates, TelevisaUnivison saw a 40% increase in social revenue from the 2024-2025 Upfronts. As Heath builds out these partnerships and invests in audience engagement, he hopes to offer meaningful career opportunities for creators in return.
“Creators are media moguls themselves,” he said. “They’re entrepreneurs with huge followings, and we can expose them to the traditional media environments that they’re not always aware of.”
Crafting “Casa Creator”
At this year’s upfronts, TelevisaUnivision introduced Casa Creator, an experiential creator event leading up to Premios Juventud. Due to high brand interest at their Upfronts, the brand launched a year early and partnered with Coca-Cola as its inaugural sponsor.
Since Premios Juventud has previously attracted organic creator interest, Heath said launching an activation was a clear choice—and the most important aspect of the event was encouraging creators to work together.
“When we held focus groups with creators to get an idea of the experience they’d want, they said connections and networking were most important,” he said. “We saw creators collaborating on content and finding space at the event to create skits on the fly.”
Centralizing social impact
Juan Gonzalez, who has garnered nearly 8 million YouTube subscribers for giveaways and social experiments—like knocking on a stranger’s door and paying their rent—took home the show’s first “Creator Con Causa” award.
“There were so many other great creators there, so I was stunned,” said Gonzalez, speaking of the moment he won the award. “After doing this type of content for long, the recognition felt incredible.”
Honoring creator community
Looking back on top-performing content from the award show, Heath flagged a Facebook clip of creator Karla De La Torre, who accepted the award on the social stream and promptly gave her mom a call.
“Three of the awards were very community-based, and it was the more categorized awards that performed the best,” said Heath, referencing De La Torre’s win for Mejor LOL. “The creator community is based on specific passion points, and we saw that in the success of these awards.”
While Heath is eager to honor creators across the TelevisaUnivision ecosystem, he knows that integrations will only be successful if they truly align with their content and audience.
“From our sports networks to our reality TV shows, there are so many different places we can bring this,” he said. “In every activation, we want to realize how we’re supporting the creator community and aren’t just jumping on a trend for the sake of it.”
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