In the first few months after it opened to creators, Vessel has turned heads by enlisting an impressive roster of creative partners, many of whom post their videos to the new video platform before sharing them anywhere else. Vessel’s potentially lucrative revenue sharing model has been a big selling point, and we now have a definitive example of the kind of money Jason Kilar and his team are throwing around. In SEC documents, DreamWorks Animation discussed a $2.6 million sum Vessel will pay out to to AwesomenessTV partners over a three-year span.
DreamWorks, which owns AwesomenessTV, revealed some of its finances in a federal document addressed to its board of directors. In one section, the studio mentions payments made from Vessel to creators partnered with AwesomenessTV. According to the document, Vessel will “provide for minimum payments of approximately $2.6 million during the next three years to AwesomenessTV clients, with additional payments depending on applicable advertising and subscription revenues.” A portion of that total has already been paid out: “An aggregate of $349,040 was paid by Vessel in 2014 with respect to these agreements and an aggregate of $297,250 has been paid in 2015 as of the date of this Proxy Statement,” reads the document.
These payouts are likely related to the multi-million dollar guarantees Vessel reportedly made to high-profile creators as it looked to build its user base in 2014. While AwesomenessTV doesn’t itself directly receive funds from Vessel, it receives a portion of the payouts Vessel makes to its partners thanks to the revenue sharing agreements AwesomenessTV has signed with those creators.
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The close partnership between Vessel and AwesomenessTV is no surprise, since Kilar, the co-founder of Vessel, is also on the Board of Directors at DreamWorks. However, to our knowledge, this is the first time specific numbers related to Vessel’s financial dealings with creators have been made available.
$2.6 million may seem like a hefty total, but Vessel, which raised $77 million in funding in 2014, has a deep war chest. The startup platform added to its funding this year with an additional $57.5 million round led by Institutional Venture Partners.
DreamWorks’ SEC filings also include another document that offers up some financial details of its 2013 acquisition of AwesomenessTV. At the time, the base price of the deal was reported at $33 million, with an additional $84 million in incentives made available. Judging from the document, DreamWorks ultimately paid $80 million in incentives to AwesomenessTV shareholders:
“We acquired all of the outstanding equity interests in ATV for initial cash consideration of $33.5 million. In addition, pursuant to a written amendment to the original merger agreement, we made an additional agreed-upon fixed cash payment of $80.0 million to the former ATV stockholders (substantially all of which was paid in December of 2014) in lieu of any contingent consideration potentially payable by us as specified under the original merger agreement.”
Tubefilter has reached out to both Vessel and AwesomenessTV for comment.
