Disney Buys YouTube Channel for $500 Million

News

by Tim FokMarch 27^th, 2014

Disney has bought multichannel network Maker for a reported $500 million. Maker Studios has a huge subscriber base of 380 million users on YouTube, generating more than 5.5 billion views a month.

The deal gives Disney access to 55,000 video channels, in a clear attempt to tap into the online video market. This comes in the wake of other blue chip companies investing in the format, with Warner Brothers buying gamer network Machinima for $18 million, and Dreamworks Animation forking out $118 million for AwesomenessTV.

What does this means for filmmakers? With large companies investing huge amounts of money into online video, it’s pretty clear of their valuations on the platform. We will no doubt see web video play an even more important role in the future. It will be interesting to see where the broadcast industry sits in 5 years.

via/origmedia