Here's a question for the lawyers in the house!
Doug DeMuro is a popular car reviewer on YouTube. He also owns a car auction website, Cars & Bids. I have no idea if these are organized as separate businesses, but given that they both seem to have employees that would seem to be logical way to do things.
He posted this video today in response to people asking him why his YouTube channel hasn't reviewed the Tesla Cybertruck yet. His answer is that he wants to, but he didn't want to do it until someone brought him a Cybertruck to sell on his auction website. His reasoning is that reviewing a Cybertruck he had a stake in the sale of would drive bids on the auction, increasing both the seller's profit and his own. I don't disagree with that.
But strictly from the perspective of his YouTube channel, the time to review the Cybertruck would have been right when it shipped. That's when views, and hence ad revenue, would have been the highest. He believes it's worth it to him to have his YouTube channel forgo those views (and the associated ad revenue), in order to drive up profits when the day comes he has a Cybertruck whose sale he gets a piece of.
My question is, if you own two businesses, what's the legality of having one deliberately forgo profit to increase profit for the other? I assume the answer mostly comes down to structural factors -- are the two companies organized separately? Do they have additional shareholders/stakeholders other than him personally? etc. But it would be interesting to hear from people who know more about this subject than I do.
(My guess is that this boils down to the sort of thing a lawyer would tell you that you can probably get away with, but that you shouldn't say you're doing out loud in a YouTube video. But that is an uneducated guess.)
https://youtu.be/7iqz-mlYwRo?si=iEXO6e60u8cV0GJe
Jason Lefkowitz /
npub1na…ar3s2
2024-03-10 20:47:42
Author Public Key
npub1na4ep09zgyk2dglssm565fqvky2r7r8mq4vxppyjmm63aeqsth2quar3s2Published at
2024-03-10 20:47:42Event JSON
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"content": "Here's a question for the lawyers in the house!\n\nDoug DeMuro is a popular car reviewer on YouTube. He also owns a car auction website, Cars \u0026 Bids. I have no idea if these are organized as separate businesses, but given that they both seem to have employees that would seem to be logical way to do things.\n\nHe posted this video today in response to people asking him why his YouTube channel hasn't reviewed the Tesla Cybertruck yet. His answer is that he wants to, but he didn't want to do it until someone brought him a Cybertruck to sell on his auction website. His reasoning is that reviewing a Cybertruck he had a stake in the sale of would drive bids on the auction, increasing both the seller's profit and his own. I don't disagree with that. \n\nBut strictly from the perspective of his YouTube channel, the time to review the Cybertruck would have been right when it shipped. That's when views, and hence ad revenue, would have been the highest. He believes it's worth it to him to have his YouTube channel forgo those views (and the associated ad revenue), in order to drive up profits when the day comes he has a Cybertruck whose sale he gets a piece of.\n\nMy question is, if you own two businesses, what's the legality of having one deliberately forgo profit to increase profit for the other? I assume the answer mostly comes down to structural factors -- are the two companies organized separately? Do they have additional shareholders/stakeholders other than him personally? etc. But it would be interesting to hear from people who know more about this subject than I do.\n\n(My guess is that this boils down to the sort of thing a lawyer would tell you that you can probably get away with, but that you shouldn't say you're doing out loud in a YouTube video. But that is an uneducated guess.)\n\nhttps://youtu.be/7iqz-mlYwRo?si=iEXO6e60u8cV0GJe",
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