Revenue shares are often used in industries such as game development, wherein a studio lacks sufficient capital or investment to pay upfront, or in instances when a studio or company wishes to share the risks and rewards with its team members.
This method accounts for about 80% of affiliate marketing programs,[1] primarily dominated by online retailers such as Amazon and eBay.
Web-based companies such as Helium, HubPages, Infobarrel, and Squidoo also practice a form of revenue sharing, in which a company invites writers to create content for a website in exchange for a share of its advertising revenue, giving the authors the possibility of ongoing income from a single piece of work, and guaranteeing to the commissioning company that it will never pay more for content than it generates in advertising revenue.
In 1981, for example, the Scottish Premier League changed its policy from splitting a match's receipts evenly between its two competing football teams over to a system in which the hosting team could keep all the proceeds from matches hosted at its facilities.
This move is generally believed to have negatively affected the league's parity and enhanced the dominance of Celtic F.C.