Meanwhile, the majors and large indies get considerable pay-offs for supplying their hefty back catalogue, filled with heritage acts – many of whom no longer exist.
Jerry Seinfeld collected $1 million per episode, in addition to a hefty back-end haul, for the show's final season.
It stands to reason that most fans at Madison Square Garden didn't come primarily to hear the new stuff, so Flowers and Co. dutifully stormed through their hefty back catalog, drawing heavily from their 2004 debut, Hot Fuss.
Budgets for period dramas vary widely, typically in the $20 million to $50 million range, with stars sometimes taking a heftier back-end deal — such as a percentage of box-office receipts — to help lower upfront costs.
Tory hedge fund and multimillionaire donors will face no similar restrictions, leaving boards free to write hefty cheques backing the Tory party.
Rowe has also poached at least two key members of staff from his former employer and has hefty financial backing from a business consortium behind the new paper.
IDC's Rau agrees that a "compatible base of software" is essential to the success of the project, but is more optimistic that China's hefty state backing could make the difference.
But with its powerful momentum, strong management and hefty financial backing, the firm certainly has a chance of becoming the dominant platform for local service businesses to pull in the punters, much as Amazon has come to dominate online shopping for all sorts of physical goods.
Its investors take hefty risks typically backing unproven companies with unproven products or services and often end up losing money.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that when they open their first store today, in San Francisco's design district, they'll do it without the hefty Silicon Valley backing that most fast-growing companies tout.
