There’s a meta moment in Season 8 of “Jet Lag: The Game” when the stars of the unscripted travel competition series are seated on a plane behind a fan watching an episode of the show on the streaming platform Nebula. Catching a “Jet Lag” viewer in the wild would have been unthinkable when the series bowed in 2022. But not anymore.
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Nebula is part of a wave of streamer startups that are owned by content creators and cater to niche audiences and passionate fandoms. The list also includes Dropout (formerly known as CollegeHumor) and Beacon, a tabletop roleplaying game-focused service that evolved from the YouTube channel Critical Role (which boasts 2.3 million subscribers).
These outlets bill themselves as vehicles for reaching the super fans of their niches, and they wear their independence like a badge: No venture capitalists or pesky parent companies to answer to.
Sam Reich, CEO of Dropout, draws a sharp distinction between his service and a broad-based player like Netflix. It’s the difference between “a brand play and a utility play,” he explains.
“Netflix is trying to be people’s answer to TV, which is not what we’re trying to be. We are trying to be a very specific brand that stands for something creatively, that folks are excited to subscribe to, to hear our voice,” Reich says.
Dropout, which costs $5.99 a month, is best known for the Reich-hosted game show “Game Changer” and the Dungeons & Dragons series “Dimension 20,” hosted by actor and game master Brennan Lee Mulligan. The fandom around “Dimension 20” is strong enough that a January 2025 live taping at Madison Square Garden sold out when tickets were released in April.
Reich says subscriber numbers for Dropout, which launched in 2018, are in the mid-to-high six figures, with viewership growing by 600% over the past three years. In April, hours watched reached nearly 8 million.
The powerful fandom of Dungeons & Dragons is fertile ground for subscription streamers. From the D&D-focused Critical Role team, Beacon launched in May priced at $5.99 per month. Critical Role co-founders Travis Willingham and Marisha Ray have not disclosed Beacon’s subscriber count, but they say the initial engagement has been “overwhelming” and reaffirms their choice to add another streamer to the market.
“We were going through YouTube or Twitch or Twitter — a third-party app or company that gets in between us and them,” Willingham says. A dedicated subscription platform allows them to “establish that intimacy, that thread.”
Adds Ray: “We’ve always had a really strong mantra that we want to allow our fans the flexibility to choose how they wish to support us, whether that be subscribing to Twitch or buying a T-shirt. All of that went into Beacon, where we looked at it like the bonus features you would have on a DVD back in the day.”
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Like Dropout, Nebula (priced at $5 monthly) has surpassed the 500,000-subscriber mark since its 2019 launch, per CEO Dave Wiskus. Thanks to the success of “Jet Lag” and other originals, the service has more than tripled its customer count from last year, while maintaining a single-digit churn rate and profitability. In the past year alone, Nebula’s revenue has more than doubled, according to Wiskus, and the business sees about two-thirds of its subscribers signing up for annual memberships.
While initially launched as a streamer with a focus on content from YouTube stars, who own the platform, Nebula has rapidly expanded its brand over the past year: The team led by Wiskus and chief content officer Sam Denby (creator and host of “Jet Lag: The Game”) has launched a film studio, opened a news division in partnership with Morning Brew and struck a deal with Spotify.
What’s leading to the growth of small platforms like Dropout and Nebula is in large part their indie status, according to Wiskus.
“The great thing about not having millions and millions of dollars in cash on Day One is that we didn’t have that money to spend on Day One,” Wiskus says. “When we hire, it’s because revenue has grown enough for us to hire. When we go out and greenlight new Nebula originals, it’s because the budget is there.”
At the same time, Nebula and Dropout are eager to find ways to work with bigger names in entertainment. Dropout mounted an Emmys FYC campaign for its programs this year. Nebula is in talks with “Hollywood power players” for new projects, Wiskus says.
“We’ve made a concerted effort, as I think Dropout has, to reach for legitimacy. We acknowledge the importance of legitimacy,” Wiskus says. “There’s a Hollywood machine out there, and if we think that the solution for us is to load up a truck and pull up next to the bank, blow a hole in the wall and loot the vault — it doesn’t really work that way. What we’re doing is a heist, and that requires slow, methodical thinking and becoming friends with the right people.”
While Nebula, Dropout and Beacon forge distinct paths in a crowded mega-streaming landscape, other indie creators are entering with their own subscription-based models, including Watcher Entertainment and The Try Guys’ platform 2nd Try.
“The more folks in this space, the better, because it sends audiences the message that services like us ought to be a part of their new cable package,” Dropout’s Reich says. “I’m not interested in a world where Dropout is the only niche streaming service you subscribe to. I’m interested in a world where you have three or four or more of them.”
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