In a yesterday’s story by Reuters, Dot Com Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said only a “moron†would buy YouTube. Cuban explains that YouTube will be no more because it will be sued into oblivion.
“They are just breaking the law,” Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. “The only reason it hasn’t been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue.”
That seems to make sense – YouTube is not profitable and has limited cash. Winning a lawsuit is one thing, collecting on it is another. While YouTube does have many copyrighted materials on the site, I also see more and more user created content. Cuban seems to have a problem with this as well.
“User-generated content is not going away,” he said. “But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of Aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance?”
“Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?” Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
I don’t know what rock Mr. Cuban has been hiding under but you can so tell he hasn’t really look at YouTube lately. 60,000 viewers? I guess he wasn’t among the 15 million viewers who watched the Lonelygirl15 video blog, or the 33 million plus to the Evolution of Dance. Numbers like these would qualify as hit TV shows on the major networks.
It is easy to understand why Mr. Cuban feels threaten by YouTbue. His new HDNet venture competes for the same advertising dollars that YouTube will be going after. He cautions advertisers against investing heavily into viral campaigns on YouTube but touted opportunities to run commercials on his HDNet network.
More than a few people call Rupert Murdoch a moron for paying $580 million for Myspace. Who is laughing now? Someone will buy YouTube. And someone is going to make a massive amount of money off it. It’s just a matter of time. Check out this Forbes feature on The YouTube Revolution.
Maybe what Mark Cuban is most upset about is that not a single show on his HDNet network approaches the viewership of one Lonely girl. 60,000 viewers? Will the real moron please stand up?