YouTube recently announced a revision to their Partner Program that includes several major changes that are negatively affecting the advertising revenue of many Pro Wrestling related accounts.
Independent Promotion AI Wrestling confirmed on Twitter that YouTube has officially classed Wrestling as ‘Not Advertiser Friendly’ and put all Wrestling related videos into the ‘Restricted Mode Category’ — essentially killing off the monetisation of wrestling-related videos on YouTube.
.@YouTube categorized wrestling in the not advertiser friendly/restricted mode category and killed off monetization cc:@beyondwrestling
— Absolute Intense Wrestling (@aiwrestling) April 13, 2017
WWE has a wildly popular YouTube channel, with over 15 million subscribers and over 11.4 billion Youtube views in 2016 resulting in millions of dollars in annual revenue. WWE is a large enough company where they can probably strike a deal with Youtube to skirt these new restrictions, but many smaller independent publishers will not be able to.
To put this in context: Pro Wrestling Sheet founder Ryan Satin also confirmed that a recent video for his channel had reached around 100,000 views and he had only made around 14 cents from advertising revenue. Other publishers of wrestling content on Youtube are experiencing similar drop offs.
https://twitter.com/ryansatin/status/852561833714110468
https://twitter.com/ryansatin/status/852575978882605056
This turned out to be accurate. Devastating setback for a promotion that went "all in" on @YouTube for 8 years. Back to the drawing board… https://t.co/FlgUpNT6k0
— Beyond Wrestling (@beyondwrestling) April 13, 2017
NoDQ's channel has seen a major decline in ad revenue over the past week. Hopefully @YouTube will resolve this soon. https://t.co/GcshmYN7Ft
— NoDQ.com: WWE and AEW news (@nodqdotcom) April 13, 2017
Well this is super shitty :( https://t.co/p7YF5LDZy2
— Jason Solomon ?? (@solomonster) April 13, 2017
Our YouTube channel have been hit as well, and we make facts about wrestling
— SportsEntertainment (@SportTainment) April 13, 2017
https://twitter.com/JimmyTehFreak/status/852624691869233153