FAST Times (and Cash) for YouTube Creators
MrBeast, Dhar Mann, Michelle Khare get in on the booming space with their own 24/7 channels
I cover the creator economy at Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter that’s being sampled for a limited time for paid subscribers to The Ankler. I reported on the NIL gold rush for athlete-influencers, interviewed Candace Owens about the rise of right-leaning podcasts and wrote about the Gen Alpha stars shaking up podcasting. Email me at natalie@theankler.com
A little more than a decade ago — several years before he’d piss off a lot of Hollywood as CEO of WarnerMedia with his pandemic-driven “Project Popcorn” — Jason Kilar summoned journalists like me to one-on-one presentations showing off his flashy new startup Vessel. Armed with more than $70 million in funding, the former Hulu CEO promised to completely revolutionize how people watched digital shortform programming by essentially creating a new exclusive paid window for videos from top YouTube creators like Rhett & Link, Shane Dawson and Ingrid Nilsen. “This is internally what we call the first window for the web,” Kilar told me back then, calling Vessel “a reimagining of what video can be.”
But it turns out no one was asking for the web video experience to be reimagined, and Vessel struggled to entice people to pay for its service. Less than two years after its spring 2015 launch, Vessel sold to Verizon and promptly shut down.
One of the lessons of the failed Vessel experiment was that it didn’t make a lot of sense for creators to drive audiences to new platforms when they were already happily watching YouTube programming for free. So I’ve been watching with interest as, over the last couple of years, YouTube creators have embraced an off-YouTube strategy designed to mimic the stodgy old world of linear TV.
FAST channels — you know, those “live” feeds of streaming videos that are meant to replace the OG experience of flipping on the TV and channel surfing — are all the rage with top creators from MrBeast to Rhett & Link to Hot Ones. This fall, Samsung debuted channels from Dhar Mann Studios, Smosh and The Try Guys on its free ad-supported TV platform, Samsung TV Plus, and has more on the way from Michelle Khare and Mark Rober. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins launched a FAST channel across multiple platforms just last week.
Back when Vessel was trying to create a windowing strategy for YouTube content a decade ago, people were mostly watching web videos on their phones, and the quality was pretty low. But today conditions are ripe for a complete merging of the mobile video and TV worlds — and creators are ready to capture that audience through FAST channels. Around 115 million U.S. households can stream from their TV sets now, with 67 million owning a smart TV, per eMarketer. And with YouTube dominating the living room, accounting for the highest percentage of streaming TV consumption in the U.S., audiences are primed to watch digital videos on the biggest screen possible. The democratization of the television set means that Dhar Mann TV can sit right next to BBC News, NFL Channel and Paramount Movie Channel on Samsung TV Plus’ channel guide.
Hansen Jacobson partner Ryan Pastorek, who works with a number of top creator clients, tells me he’s seen an uptick in FAST channel deal volume this year as “the zeitgeist churns up more interest.”
Today I’m pulling back the curtain on this fast-growing new line of business for creators, who are not only exposing themselves to new audiences but in many cases can also make good money either licensing their content or taking a cut of advertising revenue. I spoke to Dhar Mann Studios CEO Sean Atkins, Dhar Mann himself, Samsung TV Plus’ Takashi Nakano, pocket.watch executive David Williams and several dealmakers who work with digital talent to give you a look at why creators are flocking to FAST channels, how much work it takes to get one up and running — and just how big the opportunity is.
Keep reading to learn:
How creators’ FAST deals are set up, with revenue split ranges, terms and licensing dollar amounts
The opportunity for creators with “incredible reach” to take ad dollars that “still sit over in traditional”
The lift to launch, and the companies stepping in to help creators make a FAST move
The “secret” that makes YouTubers ideal TV partners
The win-win (and who’s really winning) when creators sit beside legacy brands
How creator FAST deals are structured — from rev shares to million-dollar licensing fees
What insiders say about the real ROI and whether FAST’s gold rush has a hangover coming
The new middlemen turning YouTubers into full-blown TV networks