Beatles manager Brian Epstein made a catastrophic merchandising deal in 1963, giving away ninety percent of the band's merchandising rights to a company called Seltaeb for a mere handful of upfront cash.

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Beatles manager Brian Epstein made a catastrophic merchandising deal in 1963, giving away ninety percent of the band's merchandising rights to a company called Seltaeb for a mere handful of upfront cash. As Beatlemania swept the entire globe, generating millions of dollars in sales of wigs, lunchboxes, and t-shirts, the most famous band in human history saw almost none of the profits from their own branded plastic junk. Epstein was a brilliant promoter but apparently skipped the day in business school where they teach you not to sign away the most lucrative revenue stream of your career for the equivalent of pocket change. The band lost an estimated one hundred million dollars in the sixties alone, proving that being a musical genius does not inherently protect you from getting absolutely fleeced by guys in cheap suits writing terrible contracts