Even if this is true, the ceiling is very high. Look at the current top earners on Patreon, with a known per month figure:

https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators

* Chapo Trap House, 3 hosts - 170k/month

* The Tim Dillon Show, 1 host - 121k/month

* AdeptusSteve (I couldn't figure out how many people, possibly 1 guy making some sort of porn game?) - 103k/month

* Flagrant 2, 2 hosts - 98k/month

* Tiny Meat Gang, 2 hosts - 82k/month

* Cum Town, 3 hosts - 81k/month

Note that the dollar amounts of most of the people on that list aren't visible and I cut them off at 80k/month.

People are willingly chipping in to help creators making 1M/year, not including sponsorships, live shows, etc.

And there are some multimillionaires that could likely make it work. If the Spotify deal hadn't happened, Joe Rogan almost certainly could have.

Unrelated comment about the list: of the Patreon categories, podcasters are predictably over-represented. But I am surprised by the number of "adult games" on the list. I didn't realize how popular these were.