Mr Beast, whose actual name is Jimmy Donaldson now has 112 million subscribers. The Swedish competitor PewDiePie has 111 million, which was overhauled by him as the most-subscribed-to individual on the video-sharing platform. He became the highest-paid YouTube star in January, pulling in a cool $54 million in earnings last year, more than any YouTuber ever.
Donaldson, who also runs YouTube channels Mr Beast Gaming, Beast Reacts and Beast Philanthropy, has also introduced Mr Beast Burger, an app-based meal-ordering service and an interactive games company. After spending more than $3.5 million, he lit up controversy last year, recreating every challenge from his Netflix show Squid Game. If most YouTubers are creating scrappy, Independent Cinema, Mr Beast is producing the 21st century equivalent of massive-cast, massive-set musicals from Hollywood’s golden age. He even has a 60,000 sq foot studio from which he plans and shoots his YouTube content.
In 2019, during a very public competition between Kjellberg and the Indian music and production company T-Series, on which channel would be the first to reach 100 million subscribers, Donaldson videos supporting Kjellberg and bought radio advertisements and hoardings urging people to subscribe to him. He unabashedly splashes the cash on his videos, offering a $1million Prize for a hide and seek. He reportedly spends upto $10,000 dollar on the design of each of his video thumbnails, the small squares designed to lure viewers in.
In a world where digital creators are now more akin to business tycoons, Mr Beast isn’t just top of the subscriber league table. He is one of the nascent industry’s sharpest business minds. Posters of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are on the walls of his office. He’s rich : Forbes estimates he earned $54 million last year. Hr also runs a successful fast food franchise, Mr Beast Burger, which operates from ghost kitchens in existing restaurants.
He started a philanthropic organisation in 2020, that has since donated 2 million meals to needy people in North Carolina. He launched a campaign, Team Trees in 2019, to plant 20m trees in the United States. So far, 24m have been put into the ground.
Tags : Mr Beast, YouTube, PewDiePie