At Cannes Creator Summit, private equity firms are buying YouTube channels for their back catalogs and licensing potential, not just ad revenue. The most valuable $100M YouTube businesses have fifteen revenue streams built on owned assets like email lists. Owning your audience, not just the platform, is what makes a creator business worth real money.
I just came back from Cannes Film Festival, my first time. I was in Hollywood for 20 years and I never got invited. But now that I represent big YouTubers, now they wanna hear me talk. Yes. And so it was, it was quite a, you know, kind of watershed moment. And they had their first Creator Summit there. I think private equity funds are saying, well, what does it mean to buy a YouTube channel? Because they think, well, it's a YouTube channel. I guess there's AdSense dollars, you know, I think there's brand deals, but there's so much risk around the key man. Yeah. So what happens if this YouTuber doesn't wanna make videos anymore? Is it maybe the back catalog? Is it the videos? Can we license it to streamers? And, and yes to all of those. But the clients that I'm selling for $100 million have 15 revenue streams in addition to their YouTube channel because they're building on their own land. They have an email list, they have a newsletter. Yeah. You know, that's very important, owning your audience.
