YouTube is offering some of its largest creators multi-million-dollar packages to keep their work off Netflix, according to reporting first Several agreements are said to be close, and none have been signed
The offers reportedly take three forms: direct financing for a creator’s shows, a share of the platform-wide brand deals YouTube negotiates with advertisers, and upfront cash. In exchange, YouTube wants windows in which the work stays on YouTube alone.
That is a departure for a company whose creator relationship has, for two decades, been an ad revenue split and very little else. Individually negotiated show funding is closer to how a studio commissions than how a platform pays out, and it puts YouTube in the position of picking which channels get capital.
The reported downside is the part that has drawn attention. Creators who take Netflix money alongside a YouTube deal are said to risk losing access to YouTube’s marketing pushes, its major events, and a cut of those platform brand campaigns, which are the promotional levers that do not show up on any invoice.
Neither company has commented publicly on the terms, and the accounts rest on people familiar with the negotiations rather than documents. What YouTube has not reportedly asked for is total exclusivity, only a period of it.
Netflix, for its part, has been buying on the opposite basis. Its deals with YouTube creators are non-exclusive licences, letting the creator keep the channel, the ad income, the sponsorships, and the merchandise while Netflix pays for the right to carry the library.
That structure is why the raid has worked. A creator asked to choose between platforms will usually choose the one that made them, but a creator asked to accept a second cheque for content they were making anyway has no reason to say no.
The names have accumulated over 18 months. Netflix signed Ms. Rachel in early 2025 and Mark Rober that August, added the Stokes Twins in July, and has deals involving the Sidemen, Rhett & Link, Jordan Matter, and Nick DiGiovanni, alongside podcast properties including The Bill Simmons Podcast and The Breakfast Club.
It has also been buying podcasts wholesale, including a $100m arrangement that brought Jay Shetty to the service through Spotify. The pattern is consistent: licence the audience rather than employ the talent.
Netflix says it is working. Its mid-year What We Watched report credited Ms. Rachel’s videos with 126 million views on the service in a single reporting period, which is a large number for content that remained freely available on YouTube throughout.
None of this is happening because YouTube is losing. YouTube’s total revenue passed $60bn in 2025, more than Netflix took in the same year, and the company says it has paid more than $100bn to creators over four years.
What is at stake is attention rather than revenue, and specifically the advertiser argument that YouTube is where a given audience can be found. A show that also runs on Netflix weakens that pitch, even if the YouTube version keeps every view it had.
YouTube has been tightening elsewhere too, having recently doubled the entry requirements for the same Partner Program. The platforms have converged on the same instinct, which is to pay more to fewer people, and X reached it from the other direction when it ended broad revenue sharing in favour of paying only for original work.
There is a precedent for how this ends, and it is not from television. The music industry spent the 2000s discovering that exclusivity windows are expensive to buy, difficult to police, and resented by the audience, which is roughly the order in which those problems arrive.
Neither YouTube nor Netflix has confirmed any of the terms reported this week. The test will be whether a creator large enough to have both offers on the table decides that a period of exclusivity is worth more than a second buyer.
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