For years, YouTube was the place creators started out and Hollywood was where they hoped to end up. That has flipped. Netflix, Disney+ and Tubi are now writing big checks to sign YouTube’s top stars, and YouTube is fighting to keep them. According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Alex Weprin, the Google-owned platform is using “both incentives and threats” to convince creators to keep YouTube as their main home.

The streamers came shopping

THR reports that the raid started with kids and family content. Netflix licensed YouTube-born shows from CoComelon, Ms. Rachel and Mark Rober, saw them become some of its most-watched programs in that category, then ordered originals and moved into food, talk and teen creators like Nick DiGiovanni, Rhett & Link and Alan Chikin Chow. LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield believes Netflix has committed more than $1 billion to creator and podcast programming over the next three years.

Disney has signed family-friendly creators such as Dude Perfect and Like Nastya for Disney+, and recently hosted about 350 creators at the El Capitan Theater and the Disney Studios lot. Fox-owned Tubi has deals with dozens of creators for originals and older videos.

The appeal is simple: creators bring young audiences and they work fast and cheap. One top creator told THR they can deliver an hour of programming for perhaps 10% of the cost of a traditional comedy, drama or unscripted show.

The carrot: brand deals and big money

YouTube doesn’t pay to license content the way Netflix does, so its main incentive is brand money. THR reports YouTube has significantly increased its resources for brand deals, which some creators use to fund the shows they want to make. Back in August, The Ankler‘s Natalie Jarvey reported that YouTube was making offers to around 15 creators to keep their videos off competing platforms for a set period, with one source saying packages started in the low seven figures and could reach roughly $10 million.

The stick: losing the perks

The part that has shocked creators is the pressure. THR reports that creators who shift their loyalty elsewhere could miss out on a spot on stage at Brandcast, YouTube’s big annual pitch to advertisers, and lose YouTube’s support for Emmy campaigns. YouTube has even suggested they may not be eligible for YouTube Select, its ad program for top creators. As The A.V. Club‘s Dennis Perkins put it, the message to creators is: nice channel, be a shame if anything happened to it.

“That was never their approach in the past,” Home Game Studios CEO Adam Wescott told THR. “It was always about supporting creators and reminding them why YouTube was their home.”

Greenfield’s theory is that YouTube’s ad business depends on a small group of famous faces. “We suspect YouTube is concerned because the top 20-50 creators have an outsized importance to its major brand advertising commitments each year,” he wrote. If brands can find those same creators on Netflix, he asked, why pay YouTube for them?

Nobody is actually leaving

Even so, none of the creators THR spoke with plan to walk away from YouTube. Their audience is there, and so is their control. “You’re still playing on someone else’s playground, but YouTube is not telling you what to post on your channel,” Wescott said. Wescott also called brand endorsements the “dirty little secret” of the business, saying they make up 90% of creator revenue.

The takeaway

When platforms start fighting over creators, creators gain leverage. But this fight also shows how fast a platform can change the rules on the people it depends on. Whether you post on YouTube, OnlyFans or anywhere else, the smart move is the one Spotter president Nic Paul described to THR: think like a CEO, own your audience and know exactly where your next paycheck is coming from.

Image: A YouTube Silver Play Button award on a beach, photo by LocoWiki (CC BY-SA 4.0), resized, via Wikimedia Commons.