From MrBeast creating theworld’s most expensive reality TV showand Jake Paul’srecord-breaking clashwith Mike Tyson to the British supergroupSidemen’s Netflix deal, YouTube’s superstar creators are taking over mainstream television.
Last monthNetflix launched the second series of Inside, the Sidemen’s reality show that was a hit when the first run of episodes premiered on YouTube.
The deep-pocketed streamer has such confidence in the format from the septet – whose members include the content creator, rapper and some-time boxer KSI – that it has already commissioned a US version, which is to be broadcast later this year.
The TV breakthrough comes just weeks after the Sidemen, who have more than 150 million YouTube subscribers,sold out the 90,000-seat Wembley stadiumfor a charity football match against a YouTube Allstars team.
Attenders and players at the 18-goal extravaganza included Paul, whoseNetflixboxing match against Tyson in November made history as the most-streamed sporting event ever. The world’s most popular YouTuber, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, also played at the Wembley game.
Donaldson, who is touted to become the Google-owned video sharing platform’s first billionaire creator, sparked a bidding war for his$100m (£75m) TV debut Beast Games, which recently set the record as the most expensive reality show.
The success of the show, a take on Netflix’s hit Squid Game that reportedly provided Amazon with its biggest-ever subscriber uptake, has MrBeast touting the next two series at $150m a pop.
When the Sidemen appeared at a recent Netflix event that showcased this year’s programming highlights, one member quipped that they had signed up with Netflix “for the money”.
Jordan Schwarzenberger, the Sidemen’s manager, says: “Creators are looking to evolve and enhance the level of what they are doing and finding partners to help them do that. Beast Games, Inside, you need partners to fund ambition. There is only so much you can-self fund, self-run, it’s about how can we elevate the production. [These deals] are another string to the bow and a sign of growing ambition.”
Netflix continues to power ahead too, and on Thursday revealedquarterly revenue of $10.54bn, passing expectations. The company has forecast revenue will rise to $11.04bn in the three months to the end of June, “driven primarily by membership growth and higher pricing”.
Long gone are the early days ofYouTubewhen wanting to create a business as a creator or influencer was viewed with scepticism, and subscribers were notched up with budget content filmed on low-tech mobile phones.
MrBeast spendsmore than $1m to create each video, watched by his 375 million subscribers, while Sidemen has a production team of more than 100.
“The internet is now mainstream media and we are also really seeing the quality of content on YouTube entering a new level,” says Brandon Baum, a British YouTuber specialising in visual effects who hasmore than 15 million subscribers.
“Every video we create takes four to 10 weeks, and a team size of five to 15 people. I have a team of 30. They all come from a TV background. The skills that creators have learned for YouTube audiences now does apply to other areas and platforms. This is the first time I’ve really seen other broadcasters, streamers and studios really embrace it.”
The quality of content and, equally importantly, the vast, mostly young global audiences the top creators have amassed have become a must-have for broadcasters and streamers looking to boost subscriptions and viewers.
Despite the eye-watering price tag of Beast Games, on which Amazon reportedly still made a $100m profit, the cost of getting creators on to television is typically a fraction of the budgets needed for major films and premium TV shows featuring A-list casts and top quality production.
“They want something from each other,” says Ben Woods, a creator economy analyst at MIDiA Research. “There are really big creators who aremainstream intellectual property in their own right nowand they want to fully exploit that.
“With that comes audiences who will follow and engage with them regardless of the platform they are on. That is why Wembley sold out for a creator football match, and the Tyson fight did such good numbers for Netflix. For mainstream media and streamers they represent an effective way of getting younger viewers on to their platform and watching their content.”
The blurring and merging of YouTube and its thriving creator economy with TV has been coming for some time. The platform is the most streamed service on smart TVs in the US, according to Nielsen.
And last month Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief executive, said TV screens had officially overtaken mobile phones and desktop computers as the primary device for viewing the platform’s content in the US.
YouTube says that between 2021 and 2023 it paid more than $70bn to creators, artists and media companies. And for those who have made it big – Forbes lists MrBeast as theworld’s most successful internet creator, making an estimated $85m last year – the commercial opportunities appear almost endless.
MrBeast has lent his brand to everything from clothing toburgers, and even joined a consortium considering apotential bid for TikTok’s US operations, which faces the threat of closure from a federal law if it remains owned by a Chinese parent company.
And the Sidemen havealmost notched up a Christmas No 1, produced trading cards, opened a chain ofrestaurants called Sides, which has inspired a frozen food and sauce range, developed the vodka brand XIX and launched a $25m venture capital fund called Upside.
“The YouTube business is the engine room for everything else,” says Schwarzenberger.
MIDiA Research forecasts that by 2031 video creators globally will make almost $64bn in revenue from their core businesses, compared with the $30bn the market was valued at three years ago.
The lure of fame and fortune, the growth of YouTube and platforms such as TikTok, and the increasing ease of producing content through the introduction of technology such as artificial intelligencew, will continue to fuel a boom in those looking to become creators.
By 2031 there will be an estimated 696 million video creators of all stripes, up from 239 million in 2022, according to MIDiA.
“The creator economy is still a young thing and only a minority will become superstars,” says Woods. “With all the entertainment options out there, there is only a finite amount of audience time. The next layer down are probably able to make a living out of it. And then there are those where it is more of a side hustle, or who unable to push through that threshold to hit that tipping point of audience on their platform.”
YouTube does not reveal revenue figures for specific creators but says that in the UK there are more than 80,000 YouTube channels that have more than 10,000 subscribers, more than 15,000 channels that have 100,000-plus and more than 2,000 channels that pass the 1 million-subscribers mark.
“I think there has been this penny slowly starting to drop over the last year in the TV industry,” says Schwarzenberger. “There are only a handful of creators with the infrastructure and professional operations that can engage at a top level. We are the guinea pigs of this [transition to TV] and it is going to raise confidence among creators that maybe they can do it too.”