MrBeast — whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson but is actually YouTube’s biggest star — is opening a MrBeast restaurant in a New Jersey mall in 2022. Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for MrBeast Burger
Google bought YouTube in 2006 for 1.65 billion US dollars (the equivalent of around 1.53 billion euros).
Now, according to analyst Michael Nathanson, YouTube could be worth up to 400 billion US dollars (371.2 billion euros).
Youtube is really big! And yet, from an economic perspective, it goes under the radar for many people. That’s strange.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Youtube is the largest video platform in the world. It is the second largest search engine in the world and plays a huge role in culture. But most of you don’t pay nearly enough attention to YouTube from a business perspective. But Wall Street does: Analyst Michael Nathanson has published a new note in which he estimates that YouTube as a standalone company could be worth up to $400 billion (or €371.2 billion).
As a reminder: Google hat Youtube bought almost 20 years ago for 1.65 billion US dollars (1.53 billion euros).
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We could spend a lot of time here explaining Nathanson’s calculations and assumptions. He assumes that YouTube will have generated an operating profit of $5.5 billion (€5.1 billion) in 2023 on sales of $45 billion (around €41.7 billion). He also believes the company’s future growth will be fueled by subscription services like YouTube TV as advertising growth slows.
But let’s be honest. These numbers are unlikely to stick with many of us. Just as the enormous size of YouTube seems to go unnoticed by politicians like the US Senate Judiciary Committee. He held a big one in January hearing on “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” They grilled the CEOs of Meta, Snap, Tiktok and other platforms and left YouTube out of the picture.
The CEOs of Discord, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter and Meta at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2024. Not pictured because he was not present: the CEO of YouTube. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
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So let’s try this argument: You know how people like me spend a lot of time tracking who’s “winning” the streaming wars? Put YouTube next to all the big players and you’ll realize that it’s ridiculous to have a discussion about streaming wars without talking about YouTube.
An example: If you take Netflix (261 billion US dollars, or around 242 billion euros, market capitalization) and Paramount (8 billion US dollars), Warner Bros Discovery (21 billion US dollars, or 19.4 billion euros) and Fox ($14 billion (12.9 billion euros)), you get a company with a total value of about $300 billion (278.4 billion euros). If you want, you can add Roku (ten billion US dollars or 9.2 billion euros). This still doesn’t come close to the value of 375 to 400 billion US dollars (or 348 to 371.2 billion euros) that Nathanson talks about on YouTube.
Or, alternatively: You could combine Comcast (172 billion US dollars or 159.6 billion euros) and Disney (224 billion US dollars (almost 208 billion euros). Then you would have a 396 billion US dollar company or a 367.5 billion euro companies. (You would also see a fun wrestling match between Disney CEO Bob Iger and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who have long been enemies.)
Or if you move away from the streaming landscape and look at another company: McDonald’s. Market capitalization: around 203 billion US dollars (188 billion euros). If you take Disney and McDonald’s together you end up with 427 billion. According to Nathanson, YouTube is “only” 27 billion behind.
But these two companies don’t just rely on media to make their money. Disney also sells cruises and theme park tickets, and Comcast is one of the largest broadband providers in the United States. So if you’re talking about video, the internet, advertising, audiences and value creation and not YouTube? Then you’re doing something wrong.
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