Economics
Vessel: A YouTube Rival That Wants to Be the Streaming HBO
Hulu's former chief executive officer has reassembled much of the same team to change the economics of making and watching Web video
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Vessel, a video-sharing website spawned by the former chief executive officer of Hulu, launches today, Jan. 21, on a limited basis but with an enormous goal—to change the business of online video.
The site aims to be an HBO for the world of increasingly professional but free Web video—a premium site with exclusive content that users will pay for. For $2.99 a month, viewers will get as much as three days of early access to a library of videos from such creators as fashion video blogger Ingrid Nilsen or YouTube personality Connor Franta. In exchange, Vessel is offering creators 70 percent of all advertising revenue and 60 percent of subscription revenue, above the 55 percent cut of ad revenue they ordinarily get from YouTube.