I believe it's pretty cut and dry.
If you're an online empire like Game Grumps, a network does a lot for you. They get you sponsors, hooked up with events, throw capital your way to make more content, deal with content-theft, and pretty much all things legal.
I have no idea how deep the exclusivity runs ... i.e. if he and Suzy had a flesh and blood child, would it be owned by the network? I think the easiest assumption to make is this : If he's planning on posting it to his youtube channel, game grumps, or any other channel that he owns AND is managed by his network, it's exclusive to Youtube (through which the network is managing the finances).
Posting elsewhere would dilute the potency of views intentionlly bottle-necked through the sources (in this case, youtube) chosen by the representing network.
Networks pretty much make money 3 ways: a) They take % of what your channel makes view the Youtube ad rev matrix. b) They get sponsorships from third party companies and products to which they either promote or include in their content . c) They garner capital from other entities express intent to expand (i.e. Google giving millions to Machinima ... there were a number of these cases).
But for 99.9% of content makers even with a million+ subs, networks pretty much do one thing. For 10%-20% of your total youtube ad rev (month in and month out), they send you a tax form every year. And that's about it.
The single greatest benefit, in fact what I've come to find to be the ONLY true and steady reason to seek out a network is how it affects yours ability to monetize. I don't know if it's since changed, but a few years ago, in order to successfully run ads on your videos (without a network) the Google Youtube team would have to approve it manually.
On numerous occasions (before content-id) plenty of Hollywood clips and other copyrighted material would show up with ads, however tons of creators would be rejected with original content ... it happened to be several times. In general, the process was such a crap shoot and sometimes very tedious. Basically, the google youtube ad approval team was either a bunch of fucking stupid bots, or even fucking more stupid humans.
But with a network (and I believe ANY network) ... you simply click "monetize" and done.
sorry for the long answer, laying in bed sick-ish .... gotta get up and work!!!!! <3
M
At 1/29/15 09:35 AM, TurkeyOnAStick wrote:
At 1/29/15 09:22 AM, TomFulp wrote:
To my understanding Ego and RubberNinja have exclusive network deals.
I still can't begin to get my head around this, since I don't fully appreciate how networks a) make money, b) prevent their artists from using other sites, and c) have any use to anybody.
It's this weird politics which makes people jump to conclusions about why artists do what they do.