Before the Super Bowl spot, before Rhode, before Fanatics, Michael D. Ratner was quietly building the kind of company Hollywood never saw coming.
In Hollywood, everyone wants to be a producer, a director, or a writer. Few understand what it takes to build one of the industry’s most quietly formidable companies from scratch. No studio backing, no shared relationships, and no guarantees. Just a hope that a bet on YouTube would eventually lead to the top. Or to a Super Bowl commercial.
Michael D. Ratner did exactly that.
As founder and CEO of OBB Media, Ratner has spent most of a decade constructing a content empire that operates at the intersection of elite talent and cultural momentum. The company’s fingerprints are on some of the most-watched unscripted projects of the past decade. From Kevin Hart’s Cold as Balls, which turned a cold tub and a simple premise into billions of YouTube views, to Justin Bieber: Seasons, a 10-episode documentary series that shattered records on YouTube Originals and remains one of the most-viewed long-form projects in the platform’s history.
What separates OBB from the crowded field of production companies chasing the same talent and the same deals is Ratner’s refusal to be treated like a vendor. From the beginning, he understood that service providers get commoditized and that brands, even B2B ones, accrue power over time. The result is a man who has co-founded (and sits as Co-executive Chairman of the Board on) a billion-dollar skin-care company with Hailey Bieber, produced a viral Super Bowl spot that reframed what a sportsbook ad can be, and just entered a joint venture with Fanatics that positions OBB at the center of the next phase of sports media.
For the latest episode of Boardroom Talks, Ratner sat down with Boardroom’s Rich Kleiman inside OBB Studios — the same building whose facade appeared in the original Fast and the Furious — to talk about building a brand, earning trust from elite talent, and the future of media.
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