This editorial is the view of yours truly, not the view of anyone else involved with PoliticalArena. In the interest of full disclosure yours truly met Steven Crowder in 2011 – PLEASE see the UPDATE at the bottom.
You have seen the Steven Crowder “Big Con” video and you have seen Daily Wire (DW) CEO Jeremy Boreing’s response.
Let’s look at the numbers and certain stipulations to see what was left unsaid. In our view DW was not completely serious in its attempt to get Steven Crowder unless the potential profits were incredible for them so that is what their initial contract offer reflected.
DW offered Steven Crowder $12.5 million per year. Since it is known that Crowder insists on producing his own content the sets, camera and sound people etc would all come out of that $12.5. DW would assume promotions, marketing, quarterly and yearly special projects.
Steven Crowder’s “Mug Club” behind the pay wall member’s content has over 350k subscribers at $10 a month – that is $42 million PER YEAR – FULL STOP.
Think about that number for a second. If only 250k of Crowder’s Mug Club subscribers were to sub to DW to see his behind the pay wall content, that is a minimum of $36 million in new revenue. DW would very quickly TRIPLE it’s money. It is also reasonable to assume through promotion and marketing DW would likely generate 500K new subs over the course of the proposed four year contract.
Now lets add Crowder’s Rumble, Spotify, Apple Podcast and other such revenue.
NOTE: YouTube has demonetized Steven Crowder’s videos in spite of the fact that they make tens of millions of dollars a year off of him. This is why it is critical that YOU support alternative platforms like Rumble, Locals, Substack, YouMaker, Truth Social, Getter, Parler and Twitter (under Musk).
Seriously, you 4.9 million Crowder YouTube subscribers, get off your butt and follow Crowder on Rumble as well as downloading the Rumble app on your phone.
Crowder also gets a portion of his live advertising revenue. Joe Rogan also gets a portion of his live advertising revenue, but there is a key difference – almost no one cares when Joe Rogan advertises the new “lawnmower 4.0” pube shaver – Crowder’s supporters are much more engaged and passionate. When Steven Crowder tells his considerable audience that such a product is great it is certain that he will generate serious sales numbers.
Crowder has a Walther PPK handgun displayed on his desk during his show. There is no doubt that Walther has sold tens of thousands of their premium handguns as a result.
One of the key contract stipulations that upset Crowder is that DW wanted to dock Crowder 20% of that $12.5 million if his content was demonetized by YouTube and 10% for each other common social media platform.
Crowder is already demonetized by YouTube and there is no reason to believe that YouTube would not demonetize a new “DW Crowder” channel. The Walther handgun display alone would instantly demonetize the show.
Daily Wire already self censors to generate revenue.
It is no secret that Ben Shapiro has become, shall we say, “less edgy” as Daily Wire has become more wealthy. Ben stays well clear of certain topics and is careful not to say things the YouTube overlords will not tolerate. Ben is much more candid when he does his live tours. Ben also adopts certain corporate media false narratives such as when he promoted the completely scientifically wrong COVID poke nonsense, he said Trump would appoint liberals to the Supreme Court, he won’t talk about election fornication and other subjects.
There is also another large X-factor in the social media docking features of the proposed Crowder contract.
DW, as well as Steven Crowder, fully understand that just as Twitter (before Musk) did not follow its own rules when it comes to strikes and censorship; YouTube, Facebook etc do not follow their own rules either. They do what they want. Most of the time YouTube will not even tell you why they demonetized or banned your video.
Now that BigTech has seen how DW contracts work, they now have a Sword of Damocles over each DW talent. Democrats and their partners in the intelligence community are going to pressure them to use it against bolder talents such as Michael Knowles and Jordan Peterson. Imagine what they would do to hurt Steven Crowder.
Thanks to Elon Musk releasing the Twitter Files, we know that the overwhelming majority of censorship requests coming from government agencies was for content that was true, not “misinformation” as they claimed. Crowder could just as easily be banned for reporting something accurately as he could for saying something salty – so in essence Steve would have to censor himself from saying things he knows are true just to stay in the good graces of YouTube. Even that might not help because they are just as likely to ban him for being successful.
Make no mistake, what DW offered Crowder is a significant pay cut – in exchange for what? Better marketing and promotion reach to be sure, but Crowder wants DW to assume more of the risk and considering Crowder’s “Mug Club” and live advertising revenue alone which more than triples DW offer of $12.5 million investment DW absolutely should, especially since Crowder is willing to eat the daily production costs.
DW is not satisfied with just doubling their money, they are willing to tolerate the watering down of their message to quadruple their profits. DW has said money times that their goal is to be a direct competitor to Disney and merely doubling or tripling of their money is not going to get them the wealth they are looking for. What Crowder’s audience is expecting requires a level of boldness that DW simply cannot offer with their current business model.
This is not to say that DW is useless. While their news department is no Epoch Times, they are a decent news aggregator and several of their hosts offer valuable content to be sure. Their films such as “What is a Woman”, “Terror on the Prairie” and “Run Hide Fight” are absolutely terrific and in that content category there is no one better.
UPDATE – Steven Crowder responds to Jeremy Boreing.
Steven makes the case that is not about the money it is about the country and we cannot be honest with the audience while trying to please the crypto-fascists at YouTube and Facebook. We cannot be beholden to them.
We will say what Steven will not, with just new subscribers DW easily triples its investment into Crowder and more, any advertising revenue and social media revenue is just icing on the cake. So why hold the Sword of Damocles over Crowder’s head? Why give the YouTube CEO that kind of power?
DW is literally making the case that if they cannot at least quadruple their money it’s no deal. So when DW hosts criticize Steven saying “it is just about the money” when he was willing to take a massive pay cut just to get his brand out with DW, it becomes clear that DW is projecting.
UPDATE II – Jeremy from The Quartering, who has a HUGE following weighs in and get’s it right. DW is ignoring the revenue from subscriptions.
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