Makes me think of Critical Role funding their first season with a kickstarter campaign. They raised $11.3 million, and got the job done, plus made them some decent money. Granted it was an animated series, so production costs would be lower than anything comparable in live action. But even by animated show standards, that’s a fraction of a shoe string budget to put out A+ quality content. Which makes me think there’s a lot of money being siphoned off by production companies initially.

What that doesn’t tell us is if there’s the same level of graft in residuals. I’d strongly suspect it, but without real streaming data, there’s no way to tell, which is exactly how the streaming companies want it. At some point, either because of a strike, or contract negotiation, streaming companies are going to have to give up that data. We’ll see how long that takes.