Cinema vs Youtube: Weighing film platform distribution options

By Emmanuel Okonkwo

FOLLOWING the cinema battle in Nigeria, a lot of people are now saying filmmakers should put their films on YouTube instead of fighting the cinema battle in Nigeria. Someone told me that Omoni Oboli and many others are putting their films on YouTube, so why can’t everyone do the same.

First of all, YouTube is a great platform, but it is not exactly a great platform for filmmakers who work with high budgets.YouTube films have their own budgets.

And speaking from experience, I have been on YouTube for years. Our series on YouTube, Class of Secrets, has over one million views, so I know how much a film makes on YouTube and how one makes money there.

Let us go into the business side of it. Most films are made with a budget and with a platform in mind. If you are making a movie for cinema, the budget is not the same as the budget for a YouTube film.

A cinema film will cost you nothing less than 100 million naira if you want to compete properly. So imagine spending 100 million naira to make a film and then putting it on YouTube. It will take a miracle to make back that money through YouTube alone.

This is why filmmakers who work with that kind of budget do not rush to YouTube. When they finish such a film, the first plan is to go to the cinema and see if they can recover half of the budget or, in some cases, all of it.

Do not forget that most of the money made in the cinema does not go to the filmmaker. A filmmaker collects only between 30 to 35 per cent of the cinema revenue. The rest goes to the cinemas and to the Federal Government of Nigeria through taxes and other deductions. So when you see a film making billions in the cinema, do not think the filmmaker is counting all that money.

If the film performs well in cinema, the next hope is distribution and licensing. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime may give a deal of two to three years.

This can be exclusive or non-exclusive. Exclusive means the film stays only on that platform for that period, while non exclusive means the filmmaker can still open other doors after that deal. From such a deal, a filmmaker is hoping to earn between $10,000, $30,000 to $50,000 depending on the strength of the film and the negotiation. If you take the film to some African-owned streaming platforms, you are looking at between $5,000 to $30,000.

I will not mention names.

So if a filmmaker is looking to distribute further, they consider other platforms like airlines, hotels, and television stations. This is done to recover more money before the film becomes old.

If the film did not make enough in cinema, the filmmaker prays that distribution and licensing will cover the gap. It is usually after all these windows close, sometimes after several years, that YouTube becomes an option.

This is why Kunle Afolayan put October 1 on YouTube after more than ten years. The film had already travelled and earned money in other places, and YouTube became the final window to squeeze the last bit of profit. This model works mainly for films made for cinema.

Even Funke Akindele does not put her high budget cinema films on YouTube. Some projects like Jenifa’s Diary were made for YouTube because the budget matched the platform. But you cannot expect her to drop a big film like Everybody Loves Jenifa on YouTube and hope to recover the cinema-level budget. The budget to YouTube-return ratio is not realistic.

So, when you tell filmmakers to put their big films on YouTube, you are indirectly telling them to drop their budgets and create films designed for YouTube returns. On YouTube, how much do we even make.

For mostly Nigerian viewers, a filmmaker earns between $0.47 and about $10 to $12 per 1,000 views, depending on several factors. Those factors include the age of the viewers. They include the location of the viewers.

They include the duration of the video and how long people watch the video. They include the average retention time of the viewers. If people watch less than 30 percent of the film, the filmmaker makes less money.

Another factor is audience behaviour. If viewers skip ads, the revenue drops, but if they click on ads, the revenue increases.

So let us do simple maths. If a filmmaker spends about ₦5m, which is a common YouTube film budget, they need at least 1 million views to break even. To reach that, they must maintain an average RPM of around $1.50 to $12 per 1,000 views.

That is just to break even, not to profit.

So how can you spend ₦10M, ₦15M, ₦50M, or even ₦100M making a film and expect to make back the money through YouTube alone. It is unrealistic.

YouTube has its own economics.

Cinema has its own economics.

And both require different budgets, different strategies, and different expectations. If you try to use a cinema budget to chase YouTube returns, the mathematics will embarrass you.

* Okonkwo is a filmmaker and critic