YouTube is upending Hollywood — and Alphabet might be the best entertainment bet

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The creator economy has turned the entertainment industry on its head this year, with YouTubers now directing box-office hits. Are entertainment giants like Disney (DIS) and Netflix (NFLX) still the stocks to buy?

Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management CEO Ross Gerber and his expert panel weigh in on the rise of creator-led projects taking hold in the film industry.

Today’s Market Hang panel consists of Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman, Business Insider Today executive editor Dan DeFrancesco, Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield, and SlateStone Wealth partner and chief market strategist Kenny Polcari.

Then you have Obsession made by a YouTuber cost $100,000 to make and makes $500 million.

Right. Yeah.

Right. And this is exactly what’s killing Hollywood, right? Is YouTube. And Netflix is trying to look more like YouTube, and YouTube is becoming Hollywood. And so, YouTubers, like, like this happened to me a couple years ago. I went to the Super Bowl in LA and I was sitting in my section and these kids kept going up to these kids that were sitting near me and wanting their autograph. I had no idea who these people were.

YouTube.

And and and I was like, and kids were like crying and like, oh my god. I’ve never heard. They were YouTubers, right? So I I I asked the kid. I go, what the hell do you do that all these kids keep coming over here? They’re crying, they’re so happy to meet you. He’s like, yeah, we do a comedy skit on YouTube.

And these guys were making bank.

Yeah, there’s your answer. There’s your answer. You buy Alphabet not Netflix.

That’s what I’m saying.

Is that the answer?

They weren’t even that said, it’s a creator economy. And that is what I got out of Hollywood in this conference from last week, that the creators are now back in control and it is not this ecosystem where we decide everything anymore. Now the creators are making the money and people go directly to the creators, and then Hollywood’s finally figuring out, well, maybe we should make a movie with this guy or a show with this guy or whatever.

Well, and their content, a big part of it is it’s just cost controlled. It’s just guys or girls with an iPhone and they get a million views. What why does a social reckoning cost $200 million dollars? Maybe there just needs to be in a higher rate world, you know, where where higher quality wins, like maybe there just needs to be some some discipline, right?

And like if you look at Disney and you break it up, you’re going this stock should be 40% higher.