Disney buys producer of 55,000 YouTube channels

The Walt Disney Company acquires Maker Studios for around 360 million euros. Maker Studios is the producer of YouTube channels such as PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, Game Grumps and 55,000 others, which total 5.5 billion views per month.

Maker Studios is a multi-channel network, a network of YouTube channels for which the company handles things like promotion, merchandising, royalty-free music and technical support. Maker Studios handles this sort of thing for a portion of the YouTube channel’s ad revenue, so YouTubers can focus on creating content.

According to a source from Reuters, the purchase amount of Maker Studios can further increase to 685 million euros, provided Maker achieves a number of performance milestones within a certain time. Maker Studios was founded in 2009 and its target audience is young millennials, i.e. people born between 1980 and 2000, who consume a lot of online video content. The channels under Makers management together have 380 million subscribers.

Disney aims to reach more teenagers with the acquisition. The acquisition “gives us a lot of data that we can use to promote our products to them,” said Kevin Mayer, executive vice president of corporate strategy. The company appears to be on acquisition path; previously it paid $4 billion for Lucasarts and the same amount for Marvel. It is still unclear whether and to what extent this will affect the channels under Makers management.