66 | forbes india august 4, 2017- Damian Lillard
Athlete US $38.4 mln - The Chainsmokers
MusiciAns US $38 mln - Shah Rukh Khan
Actor IndIa $38 mln - Jennifer Lopez
MusiciAn US $38 mln - Novak Djokovic
Athlete SerbIa $37.6 mln - Amy Schumer
coMediAn US $37.5 mln - Tiger Woods
Athlete US $37.1 mln
Though unlikely to do hard time after
his recent DUI incident, Tiger isn’t out
of the Woods just yet: He could be
in jeopardy of losing some of the en-
dorsements that account for a stagger-
ing 99.7 percent of his total earnings. - Salman Khan
Actor IndIa $37 mln - Neymar
Athlete brazIl $37 mln - Bill O’Reilly
PersonAlity US $37 mln - Dolly Parton
MusiciAn US $37 mln
Country’s queen hit the road in style,
grossing mid-six figures per city across
63 dates during our scoring period.
Thanks to the tour and income from
her Dollywood theme park, the 71-year-
old makes the list for the first time in
her career. - Ed Sheeran
MusiciAn UK $37 mln - Dwyane Wade
Athlete US $36.2 mln - Fernando Alonso
Athlete SpaIn $36 mln - Sean Hannity
PersonAlity US $36 mln
If You Build It,
they Will Come
Knowing terrestrial talk shows won’t last forever,
Ellen DeGeneres created a platform for the streaming age.
Now other top stars are following her leadBy Madeline Berglast year, when barack
Obama awarded Ellen
DeGeneres a Presidential Medal of
Freedom to celebrate her past, the talk
show host offered a glance into her
future. She gathered fellow honourees,
including Bill Gates, Diana Ross and
Michael Jordan, in the West Wing to
take on the Mannequin Challenge—a
viral video trend wherein subjects set
an elaborate scene and hold poses as
cameras roll.
Hours later, the 30-second
clip was streaming on El len tube,
DeGeneres’s platform for exclusive
content and original series.
Ellentube, launched in October
2014 to offer bite-size content
directly to fans, got a boost when
DeGeneres established the Ellen
Digital Network in May 2016 in
partnership with Warner Bros.
Her network, which also folds in
the website for her television show
and her official YouTube page, makes
the 59-year-old DeGeneres a pioneer
in the new streaming economy.
“The social platforms gave talent
the opportunity to cultivate and have
a direct relationship with fans,” says
Jason Klein, co-founder of media
analytics firm ListenFirst. “Now that
the talent has that audience, why
not take the fans to platforms they
own and control 100 percent?”
DeGeneres’s network serves as a
blueprint for other members of theCelebrity 100. Kevin Hart (No 98,
$32.5 million) has amassed a huge
social following (35 million on Twitter
and 53 million on Instagram) and
will soon launch Laugh Out Loud,
a streaming comedy network.
Lions gate and his own Hartbeat
Digital teamed to form the joint
venture, putting up $40 million to
create original content and procure
streaming rights to existing material.
Much like Ellentube, the network
will have a free ad-supported
tier, but Hart will also offer a
subscription-based premium option.
“I understand the direction in
which the television business is
headed,” he had said last year. “I see
this big new space toward which
audiences are starting to gravitate.”
So does the world’s second-
highest-paid actor, fellow Celebrity
100 list member Dwayne ‘the Rock’
Johnson (No 22, $65 million). While
his streaming earnings thus far have
been negligible, his Seven Bucks Digital
Studio is setting him up for success.
Its YouTube channel, which streams
premium Rock-related content and
fully produced mini-series, gained
more than 2 million followers in the
past 12 months. “That’s the wonderful
part about being in this business,”
Johnson told Forbes.com five years
ago as he emerged into superstardom.
“I love knowing the audience and
listening to the audience.”
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