South Park just agreed to a $1.5B deal over 5 years to stream on Paramount+. Might be the most valuable streaming show after previous deals with Hulu ($192m) and Warner Bros ($550m). Show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone get 50% of revenue due to one of the most lucrative clauses in TV history from their first contract. Here’s the backstory. In 1995, Parker and Stone created an animated short called “The Spirit of Christmas”. It went viral and two years later Comedy Central offered them a 10-year deal for their pitch of what became South Park. The pair negotiated a fortuitous clause: they were guaranteed 50% of all revenue *outside* of broadcast TV (back then, there wasn't much outside TV so Comedy Central ceded the deal point). Over the next decade, South Park became a cultural mainstay. Along with The Daily Show, it turned Comedy Central into a cable beast. When the contract came up for renewal in 2007, Comedy Central wanted to renegotiate the "50% of non-broadcast TV revenue" portion of the deal. It was clear thay clause would be quite valuable with digital video on the rise (YouTube was founded in 2005; Netflix launched streaming in January 2007). But Parker and Stone had too strong of a hand. Not only did they keep the "non-broadcast TV revenue", they also added "50% of all digital ads" to the deal. Parker and Stone were making $25-30m a year just on broadcast but ads became interesting with the rise of digital. South Park was regularly pirated onto YouTube so — in 2008 — they put all the episodes online for free (South Park Studios), making millions from digital ads. That was just an appetizer, though. The "50% of non-TV broadcast revenue" exploded in the past decade. In addition to the $2.2B in streaming deals they’ve done (Hulu. WarnerBros, Paramount+), Parker and Stone also signed a $935m overall deal with Paramount in 2021 to keep making shows through season 30 and 10+ South Park films (this revenue is 100% to them). That deal is up in 2027 and they are negotiating with Paramount’s presumptive new owner Skydance on another huge deal. They are probably already each worth $1B+, but that next overall deal will guarantee it….and we keep getting them as equal-opportunity offenders and Cartman fart jokes, incredible. *** More on the $1.5B Paramount+ streaming deal via LA Times: