system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
It was $50 million over 4 years (so $12.5m/year) to pay for Crowder and his ~25 person professional staff (plus extra security people for events). After taxes and expenses like that, it’s actually an extreme lowball compared to what Crowder brings to the table. Imagine walking into a Bugatti dealership and offering $100,000. Like yeah that sounds like a lot, but it’s incredibly insulting to the other side. 

Also, he’d relinquish control of almost all of his social media, and have no ability to grow or defend his personal brand in the event they part ways after years. The penalties for getting deplatformed added up to over 100% of the contract value. I didn’t see any concessions in the term sheet, and Daily Wire CEO admitted that was what they scraped together as a bare minimum acceptable offer. Not exactly a good look or way to treat a “friend of 10 years” by lowballing him. I think it’s just insulting and adds way too much risk to crowder to defend himself in the event he gets deplatformed early on and can’t leave the contract for 4-6 years.

Finally, the reaction by the Daily Wire has been really immature. Crowder never called them out, and many were speculating that it was Fox, or TPUSA, or many other media groups in his original video. TDW made the decision to out themselves and then have their staff lambast him all over social media (including attacks on his person, his fans, cussing, etc.). Yeah Crowder shouldn’t have recorded the call, but it’s one person versus a giant company. They present themselves as a startup media company, but they’re owned and backed by a fracking/LNG billionaire. For me, it’s hard to root against the one person who still hasn’t attacked any of them personally.

Edit: The sheet also would have started Crowder out at either -20% or -25% since he’s been deplatformed by YouTube for a while. No clue why they snuck that in there. Doesn’t seem to be negotiating in good faith. They should have offered a decent % of the contract value be guaranteed due to the estimated 350k Mug Club subscribers that would move over to DW+ to watch Crowder.
gpt
1) The amount could’ve been negotiated, and Crowder could’ve opted to use the Daily Wire’s resources for stuff like production and security. It seems like DW didn’t put this in the term sheet because Steven likes to product his own shows. In which case, he should have brought that up and had a separate clause to have that all funded somehow.
2) If they parted ways, Steven wouldn’t become any less relevant. Anyone who likes Steven for Steven would still follow him, and he can easily run marketing himself after his contract expires. DW would’ve only made his reach even bigger. 
3) The penalties could’ve been negotiated. Crowder could’ve asked for them to sum up to 100% or less instead of 150%. This is how business works, you start with an offer that may not be great for the other side, then you negotiate. It’s not because you don’t trust them, it’s because you know they’re going to ask for more when they can. 
4) I disagree with you calling the reaction immature. The DW has been nothing but mature, IMO. They claimed responsibility for the contract because they wanted to be transparent. It doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate about who wrote the contract. In all of their responses, they were incredibly kind to Steven and gave him the benefit of the doubt, even going so far as to say that he is a great guy and that every conservative should subscribe to mug club. Remember, they were friends with him before all of this happened. I think what really ticked them off was the fact that Crowder tried to spin this into a promotion for mug club and also recorded his conversations with Jeremy KNOWING that he wanted to use it against DW. That is despicable IMO and a betrayal.