Only a few years ago, Keith Lee was a professional MMA fighter, doing food delivery and making social media videos to ease his social anxiety.
On Thursday night, however, Lee found himself under the glare of bright lights and walking the red carpet outside the historic Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard about to be recognized as TikTok’s “Creator of the Year.”
He and hundreds of other creators had gathered for TikTok’s first American awards show. And they had good reason to celebrate.
Only a few minutes before the start of the inaugural show, they got word about a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. through a joint venture controlled by a group of U.S. investors that includes tech giant Oracle Corp. TikTok confirmed the deal in an email to employees and said it is expected to close next month.
“[TikTok] is the best way to reach people and I know so many people who rely on it to support their families,” said Lee, who has 17.3 million followers of his casual restaurant reviews. “For me, it’s my career now so I can’t imagine it not being around.”
Creators — many of whom are based in Southern California — rely on the app as a key source of income, while businesses and brands turn to the platform and its influencers to promote their products.
Many had worried that the app might disappear after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on the platform because of national security concerns raised by President Trump in 2020.
Trump subsequently allowed TikTok, which has offices in Culver City, to keep operating in the U.S. and in September signed an executive order outlining the new joint venture.
Comedy creator Adam W., who attended the awards show, called the news “game changing.”
With 22.6 million followers on TikTok, Adam W. has amassed a massive audience for his videos that parody pop culture trends.
In one, he’s a contestant on “The Bachelor,” surrounded by a line of lookalike blond models; in another, he’s drinking matcha lattes with Will Smith.
“That’s so good to hear,” said Adam W. of the new ownership. “So many people are able to make careers off of TikTok. There’s so many people out there who go to TikTok to get away from their reality and it means a lot to them, so I think it’s really valuable for us to have.”
TikTok said the awards show is intended to celebrate the influencers who’ve helped transform the app into a global force that has shaped the way younger Americans shop and consume entertainment.
“You represent a truly global community of over 1 billion people on TikTok,” Kim Farrell, the app’s global head of creators, said at the event. “This year, you showed the world just how much impact creators have.”
Despite the historic moment, the awards show was not without technical glitches. Screens that were intended to display clips of contestants and visuals during speeches were dark the entire night.
The two-hour show, in which creators received awards in several categories, featured a range of skits parodying TikTok cultural moments, from Jools Lebron telling the crowd to “be demure,” to Rei Ami of K-Pop Demon Hunters shooting a Labubu cannon into the crowd.
“TikTok definitely changed my life,” Lee said in an interview. “I always planned my life around food, so I’m blessed to just turn the camera on and do the same thing.”
The new ownership of TikTok should allow the app to rebound after it lost market share amid uncertainty over its future, said Max Willens, an analyst at EMarketer.
“This past year, because a lot of advertisers weren’t really sure whether TikTok was going to stay or go, it did kind of slow the momentum that we had seen on that platform,” Willens said. “We think that moving forward that is going to wind up just being a blip.”