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Good Bad Billionaire
MrBeast: The business of going viral
00:46:03
From pranks to philanthropy: how MrBeast built a billion-dollar media empire
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- [00:00]
Simon Jack
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
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- [01:10]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
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- [01:19]
Ing Singh
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- [01:22]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
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- [01:48]
Ing Singh
It's 2023. A young man is lying down in a black suit. A fly lands on cheek and he doesn't bother swatting it away. It's the first living thing he's seen in days.
- [01:59]
Simon Jack
That's because our man is lying in a glass coffin buried under 20,000 pounds of dirt. From a walkie talkie, a group of excited young men tell him he's just hit 200 million subscribers.
- [02:10]
Ing Singh
He turns to the camera and says, Verizon 5G home Internet is exactly what it sounds like. It's wireless Internet for your home.
- [02:17]
Simon Jack
And with that one line, he's made a million dollars. But that is pocket change for this first YouTuber billionaire.
- [02:26]
Ing Singh
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode we take a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
- [02:32]
Simon Jack
We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million onto a billion.
- [02:36]
Ing Singh
My name is Ing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.
- [02:39]
Simon Jack
And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.
- [02:41]
Ing Singh
And on this episode we have someone who I have to admit, initially passed me by when they became quite so famous.
- [02:47]
Simon Jack
I think that's right. I mean, this was a whole category of things you can do to make money that once upon a time didn't exist. And the, the first time I became aware of it was when I became aware of how big YouTube was becoming and how many viewers it had. And I asked friends and family, I said, what are people watching on YouTube? And back came the answer.
- [03:08]
Ing Singh
It's the YouTube channel. MrBeast well, Jimmy Donaldson's YouTube channel is the most popular YouTube channel on earth. It's got almost half a billion subscribers.
- [03:17]
Simon Jack
He's been described as the mozart of the attention economy. And he once said, once you know how to make a video go viral, it's. It's just about how to get as many out as possible. You can practically make unlimited money.
- [03:29]
Ing Singh
He is currently worth $2.5 billion, according to Fortune magazine. Although there is some debate over this, which we will get into.
- [03:36]
Simon Jack
His YouTube channel is known for extreme personal stunts like being buried alive for seven days. The game show style content with prizes of millions of dollars, homes, cars, even a private island.
- [03:47]
Ing Singh
And he's also known for videos where he gives huge sums of cash to those in need. But his charity for content model has made people wonder. Just a billionaire who's just reshaping capitalism.
- [03:59]
Simon Jack
Yeah, some people have called it charity, Paul. He's just monetizing charity to ultimately sell more adverts.
- [04:04]
Ing Singh
Well, let's understand who MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson really is.
- [04:13]
Simon Jack
James Stevenson Donaldson, nicknamed Jimmy, of course, was born in 1998 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. His parents are both in the military when he was young, so he was looked after by au pairs nannies for much of the time. He's the middle child of three siblings. As a child, the family moved three times around the southern United States. So according to his mother sue, there were no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. It was really just us.
- [04:36]
Ing Singh
Jimmy's parents split up in 2007, right when he was around 8. Sue actually wrote a book about the domestic abuse she says she experienced, which his dad Charles hasn't publicly commented on. And Jimmy won't discuss his father in the media, but he has no longer any contact with him. Sue retired from the military and the family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where she headed up the Reserve Officers Training course.
- [04:58]
Simon Jack
At the university Jimmy attended attended a local Christian private school. It was conservative. Punishment for bad behaviour was writing out Bible verses. He has described himself as an introvert, he often talks about how difficult he finds casual conversation, which is kind of weird for what he does. He didn't have many friends, he says, and rarely went out with other kids on the weekend. But he loved sport, especially baseball. And around age 15, though, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, autoimmune inflammatory bowel condition. That meant he had to drop out of playing sports. So more time inside at home.
- [05:30]
Ing Singh
And he spent a lot of time indoors on his computer on YouTube. So as this whole episode is about how to get rich and getting rich off YouTube, let's do a quick kind of potted history of the platform. So YouTube was founded in 2005 as a site for sharing videos uploaded by users. And it adopted the slogan broadcast yourself. And through the late 2000s, a lot more people were spending their time online. It grew really rapidly.
- [05:55]
Simon Jack
And Google came in and bought it for $1.65 billion. And everyone at that time, I remember thinking, gosh, that seems a lot of money for something which is basically people posting videos of themselves. But I can tell you right now, that conservative estimate of what YouTube is worth is something like $500 billion, like half a trillion. It's one of the most successful platforms ever invented.
- [06:15]
Ing Singh
And it's funny because I remember when YouTube first came out, the overall vibe that it had was sort of. Do you remember that TV show, America's Best Home Videos? Yes. Where people would send in home videos of their auntie falling flat on her face after Thanksgiving. That kind of thing, like goofy stunts.
- [06:29]
Simon Jack
Bloopers.
- [06:30]
Ing Singh
Bloopers, yeah.
- [06:31]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
And.
- [06:31]
Ing Singh
And I do remember people saying at the time, how much is this going to be worth? This is literally just a single television show's worth of material on the Internet.
- [06:39]
Simon Jack
Yeah, but it's got a very interesting economic commercial model. Basically. YouTube gives. Gives channels 55% of their ad revenue. It keeps the other 45%. And initially, only a few high profile channels could monetize their videos. But within a few years, there was a whole new wave of creators who post videos and turned posting videos into the job that we know is today. This is not the first time we've come across this sort of thing. What's amazing is that all these creators, they're all posting their own content and they're all inadvertently working for Google in a sense, because that money goes to YouTube, which goes to Google.
- [07:16]
Ing Singh
Well, by 2010, Justin Bieber was releasing his song Baby. YouTube was becoming recognized as a legitimate pipeline to creating pop stars. At the same time, there was a new Kind of star being created. A YouTuber called PewDiePie launched his channel in 2010, commentating on people playing video games. And at the start of 2013, this creator had 4 million subscribers. By the end of the year, he had 20 million. He was the most subscribed to YouTube channel.
- [07:42]
Simon Jack
And this is the world that Jimmy grew up in. He was a fan of PewDiePie. At age 11, he uploaded his first videos of himself playing Minecraft and Call of duty. Age 13, he started a new channel, which he called Mr. Beast. He tried video game commentary, which seems nuts to me, but I know it's incredibly popular. And then he made videos estimating how. How much money YouTube has made. Quite interesting. He made hundreds of videos with minimal traction. But Jimmy has been described, those that know him, as obsessive. And with sport no longer an option because of his Crohn's disease, he turned his fixation into YouTube and how it works.
- [08:18]
Ing Singh
After graduating from school in 2016, Jimmy enrolled in Pitt Community College. But he didn't actually go to classes. Instead, he thought that by studying YouTube, he could understand its algorithm and learn the secret to viral hits. And his worst intro series of videos poked fun at other YouTuber introductions and how they introduce themselves on video. It proved relatively popular and very meta. And he got his first check from YouTube when his channel, Mr. Beast, crossed 10,000 subscribers. But, you know, this was barely more than pocket money at the time. Still, Jimmy continued experimenting. He slowly made incremental gains in subscribers.
- [08:54]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and then he did something that quite a lot of our billionaires did. He told his mom he wanted to drop out of College and pursue YouTube full time. She told him that if he wasn't studying, he had to move out. So he did. At this point, he had around 250,000 subscribers. He wasn't making much from the adverts, enough to scrape by, though. So he moved into an apartment with friends who are similarly YouTube obsessed. And Jimmy said that for a few years, he was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality. Important word here, studying the YouTube algorithm.
- [09:27]
Ing Singh
Their research, Jimmy and his friends, was almost scientific. So they would take, for instance, thousands of thumbnails from YouTube, which is the kind of little image you see that acts as the COVID for the video to see if there was a correlation to the brightness of the image to how many views it would get. So for videos that got over 10 million views, they would count how often they would cut the camera angles.
- [09:47]
Simon Jack
That's so interesting, because one of the things I noticed about watching Some of the videos for this, it's the number of cuts, the use of animation, how long you stay on a single frame. It's, you know, it's a blizzard of visual stimulus. In January 2017, he released a video called I counted to 100,000. That's exactly what it sounds like. He actually sit there for 40 hours and at the end he looks delirious at the camera and says, what am I doing with my life?
- [10:13]
Ing Singh
It's almost a bit like performance art in a way.
- [10:15]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it is. And it got six and a half million views in a week. I mean, he said it calls it performance art. It's sort of. There's a kind of morbid fascination or macabre fascination with watching someone doing something really boring.
- [10:27]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I also think, you know, the numbers obviously helps. Right. You know, if you released a video called I counted to 100, nobody will watch it. But the fact that it's a huge number that's almost kind of inconceivable, sort of helps. I mean, I remember when I was in Germany, we always got told, if you're going to put a number on the COVID make sure it's a big one.
- [10:46]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [10:46]
Ing Singh
And it just sucks people in.
- [10:48]
Simon Jack
I have to take this moment to say that I actually did something a little similar to this.
- [10:52]
LinkedIn Ads Sponsor
Did you?
- [10:53]
Simon Jack
I said 10,000 times in a row on camera. I know I did it when I was younger because there was a program about world records and someone had written into this thing called the Record breakers and said that my teacher said 150 times in a row. And asked the editor of the Guinness Book of World Records whether this will world record. He said, no, it sounds a lot. There's no official record. And I was only 7 years old. And I said 10,000 times. Wrote into the record breakers and said, I'm delighted to inform you I've shattered that record. And they wrote back and said, there's no official record, but this is certainly the most we've ever heard of. Now, I think it's unlikely that anyone ever broke that record.
- [11:32]
Ing Singh
Wow.
- [11:33]
Simon Jack
So as far as I know, that record still stands. What a shame YouTube wasn't around to capture those magic moments.
- [11:39]
Ing Singh
It is a shame YouTube wasn't around. You could have been the Mr. Beast of counting.
- [11:43]
Simon Jack
Well, sadly, I'm not. But this act of endurance was a formula he'd repeat over and over other videos, including reading every word in the
- [11:50]
Ing Singh
dictionary, watching Jake Paul's rap video, it's everyday, bro, for 10 hours straight. And alongside these endurance stunts, he's also Making the kind of things that would appeal to teenage boys. And actually, the first time I heard of MrBeast was through my teenage cousins. He microwaved an iPhone. He wrapped himself in cling film kind of funny, silly, goofy stunts. After that accounting video, however, Jimmy hit a million subscribers. And crucially, for his business model, it also brought him his very first brand deal. It was a company called Quid, which is an app for trading digital collectible cards. It gave him $10,000 for sponsorship, and what he did with that 10 grand would eventually change the course of his life.
- [12:29]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and in fact, in the opening of his next video, he counts piles of cash and tells the audience, this is not my money. This is a new weekly series where I get companies to sponsor my videos and I give a hundred percent of what they pay me away to Rand people. After he talks about Quid for a couple of minutes, we get to the heart of the video. He walks up to a homeless man who's holding a cardboard sign in the middle of a busy road. Jimmy hands him an envelope stuffed with $10,000. And at first, the man is in shock and disbelief. Then he hugs Jimmy. Jimmy talks to him. The man describes falling on hard times. It's heartbreaking, it's warming. The video is low quality, but Jimmy comes across as, you know, sweet and kind, and, you know, that becomes a bit of a pattern or a kind of you like an exemplar for some of the stuff he does in the future.
- [13:17]
Ing Singh
Yeah, and the video did resonate with people. So Jimmy did set about making more of this kind of content. He gave $1,000 to multiple homeless people. There are videos titled tipping Uber drivers 10 grand and tipping Waitresses With Real Gold Bars. And I think it's worth reflecting on exactly what the videos look like as well, because I think if you haven't actually watched MrBeast content, you might be listening to all this and thinking to yourself, I mean, he's basically just making television, but for YouTube. But actually, when you watch a MrBeast video, like a recent one, involved sort of fake crashing a plane in the wilderness and getting people to survive for as long as possible, that is essentially a television show that probably has been done before. But the MrBeast version of that is rather than spending time dwelling on any of the characters, you know, building up a rapport with the audience, like getting into their backstory. You don't know any of these people's names? No, they are just kind of characters in a MrBeast video, almost like video game NPCs in a sense.
- [14:12]
Simon Jack
Oh, that's interesting. Like non player characters.
- [14:14]
Ing Singh
Exactly. So the stories don't really matter. What matters is how many of them survive the numbers involved, the big cash prize. It's not really about telling stories as much as it is about the stunt itself.
- [14:25]
Simon Jack
Yeah, well, it worked because he's soon earning $100,000 a month from his channel through advertising and sponsorship. But he was plowing those profits back into the content. By the end of 2018, he released a video boasting he'd given away a total of a million dollars.
- [14:39]
Ing Singh
He was also starting to grow the business side of MrBeast, which was becoming more than just Jimmy himself. So he was hiring school friends to help him plan and film the content. They began appearing with him on camera. This kind of crew of mates is a very big part of the MrBeast kind of universe. And he was also professionalizing as a content creator. So he signed with a Dallas based talent management and digital marketing agency. So he's kind of smartening up in a way.
- [15:05]
Simon Jack
It's interesting, this kind of, if you like, zoo of people he gets around in the entourage. That becomes quite a. And to me it reminded me of an earlier generation of this kind of stuff. Do you remember the Jackass series where it was basically. Basically a bunch of young men doing dumb stuff?
- [15:20]
Ing Singh
Yeah. Like I think some of the old Jackass stunts were things like we rode a shopping trolley into each other, that kind of stuff.
- [15:28]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it was sort of quite high peril stuff and a lot of people got injured in there. And obviously we'll talk about some of the safety issues later. But there was also this charitable element which I don't remember from Jackass because he posted a video giving his mum $100,000 in cash at she refused. He said, if I don't give it to you, I don't have a viral video. And that's all important, of course. And she laughed and said, you're using me for views. To which she responded, yes, but you get money too, so we're both happy. And it was the equivalent of Sue's entire year's salary. So she retired and joined. Can't beat him. Join him. Join her son's burgeoning company.
- [16:01]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I mean, even from the start of Mr. Beast's career, you know, when he's posting videos, commenting on other YouTubers videos, there's a real element of meta to all the stuff that he does.
- [16:10]
Simon Jack
Yes.
- [16:10]
Ing Singh
You know, he knows that people are watching. He knows it's attention that makes the videos worth it. And so, you know, it was working because, you know, he's an exponential growth. He's actually said the beauty of YouTube is double the effort is a double the views. It's like 10 times the first million subscribers you get will take years, but the second will come in a few months. So by the end of 2019, YouTube announced that a Mr. Beast video was the most popular of that year, which they measured in likes, and it was called make this video the most liked video on YouTube. The whole meta thing.
- [16:41]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
Right.
- [16:41]
Ing Singh
The video actually involves seven young men being egged in various ways and it got 11 million likes. So to put this all into context, Game of Thrones, one of the most successful television shows of all time. The finale got 19 million. Succession season two finale got 1 million.
- [16:58]
Simon Jack
And they got 11 million for people throwing eggs at each other.
- [17:00]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I mean, the disproportionate rate of investment to actual output. You have to admire it.
- [17:06]
Simon Jack
There were fewer dragons in the egging series.
- [17:09]
Ing Singh
Exactly.
- [17:10]
Simon Jack
And MrBeast also made the top 10 most VOT viewed creators list, a staggering 2.2 billion total views, making him number seven overall. And just shows what a massive shift we are seeing in the way content is consumed, created young people moving away from legacy media. And I think I'm right in saying that in the latest broadcast figures, YouTube actually became the most watched channel on TV. And that's not on people just on their phones or on laptops. That is people watching YouTube on the TV set in the corner. Because obviously smart TVs have apps and you can do that. So YouTube is now just a colossus which other content creators are having to work with and put their content on to get to their audiences.
- [17:53]
Ing Singh
Yeah, you may very well be watching this content on YouTube, actually, which just goes to show how times have changed. Yeah, but by this point, MrBeast videos were very high production value. He said that they take months of prep. A lot of them take four to five days of relentless filming. There's a reason other people don't do what I do. And a single video was now costing him on average $300,000. The most expensive was $1.2 million, a million of which was given to the contestant who could, as you can guess, keep his hand on a stack of cash for the longest amount of time. But Jimmy doesn't have to wait for a commissioner to greenlight his ideas and give him the money. You know, he doesn't have to hire big crew. It's basically Jimmy and his friends filming mostly in Greenville, not Hollywood or London. So now we get to the coronavirus pandemic, which legacy media found very challenging. It's hard to go on a shoot when everything's on lockdown. Traditional television was even more exp and
- [18:49]
Simon Jack
with more people, especially kids, during the pandemic sat at home in front of a screen, the viewership exploded. By the end of 2020, he had 50 million subscribers and was named creator of the year at the Streamy Awards, which are the Oscars of YouTube.
- [19:03]
Ing Singh
That year, he also launched another channel, MrBeast Philanthropy, and it became home for his more philanthropic videos, like giving 20,000 shoes to kids in Africa and I adopted 100 dogs. That channel gives 100% of its ad revenue, merch sales and sponsorship to charitable causes.
- [19:20]
Simon Jack
Okay, but. And let's keep the totaliser on what Jimmy is actually earning at this point, because time and again he stresses that he plows all this money back into his channel, saying money's a vehicle to do bigger videos, make better content. At the end of 2020, Forbes included him on their list of highest paid YouTube stars for the first time at number two Australian. Number two, having made $24 million that year. So even if he's spending a large chunk of that on his content, it's pretty safe to say that at this point. Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, is a millionaire, age 22.
- [20:05]
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- [21:10]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
Host unforgettable backyard barbecues with savings from Whole Foods Market. Get the good times going with made in house chicken or pork sausages and
- [21:18]
Ing Singh
ready to cook kebabs for hassle free flavor.
- [21:21]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
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- [22:39]
Simon Jack
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- [23:12]
Ing Singh
Well, let's take MrBeast from a million onto a billion. Like so many of our billionaires, Jimmy's first move was to diversify into the consumer market. So in 2020, he launched a company called Mr. Beast Burger as a ghost kitchen concept. You know, it allows fans to order branded meals, an app fulfilled by about 1600 partner restaurants around the United States. So it's kind of like a modern day franchise system. He drives demand through his audience by talking about it. Other restaurants handle the production and shares in the profits. And a video of the launch event got 200 million views on his YouTube channel. You know, he's basically got his own billboard advertising system working for him here. And they sold over a million sandwiches in the very first couple of months. And within a year and a half he'd made 100 million in revenue. So. So, you know, that's a good amount of money.
- [24:00]
Simon Jack
But it wasn't all plain sailing. Customers started complaining the food was disgusting, revolting. They were posting images of raw meat. And Jimmy told a fan on Twitter, you know, the problem with Beast Burger is I can't guarantee the quality of the order when working with other restaurants. It's impossible to control it. Sadly, you could have seen that coming. Jimmy sued the company, Virtual Dining Concepts, who he'd partner with to do all this. The lawsuit claimed the company was. It has irreparably harmed his reputation. And it's interesting for creators, they are the product, right? So their reputation is everything. So getting associated with disgusting burgers is a problem. The other company, Virtual Dining concepts, countersued for $100 million, claiming Jimmy was trying to bully the company into a better deal. And actually, this legal battle is still ongoing, despite a judge urging them to settle it.
- [24:49]
Ing Singh
Well, when the burgers were flaming out, Jimmy pivoted to launch something different, a chocolate bar brand called Feastables. Have you ever tried this?
- [24:56]
Simon Jack
I haven't, but I have seen it pop up Relentless in his videos. They waste no opportunity to promote it.
- [25:03]
Ing Singh
Well, the brand has quickly become dominant, so it counts for roughly 70 of his revenue. In its second year, it secured deals like a jersey patch with the Charlotte Hornets, a sports team. It's also actually, in comparison to Beast Burgers, gained an unusually strong fan base. Supporters have organized supermarket displays like they've gone into supermarkets and just, like, put a little display of the chocolate bars themselves.
- [25:26]
Simon Jack
So you have. You have an army of promoters for your brand as well, with this kind of business model, don't you?
- [25:30]
Ing Singh
You've Beast Army. Well, and then Jimmy expanded into Lunchly, which is a joint venture with other YouTubers, KSI and Logan Paul, which combines Feastables with their prime drinks. I mean, as you can imagine, this product drew quite a lot of complaints.
- [25:45]
Simon Jack
I remember Prime Drinks because there was a period when I was going into my local shop and they were selling out of this drink called prime, and it was very expensive.
- [25:55]
Ing Singh
It was so expensive.
- [25:56]
Simon Jack
I couldn't believe that people. I was like, why? How on earth did this happen? Cause I hadn't seen any advertising for it.
- [26:01]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
It.
- [26:02]
Simon Jack
I'm absolutely certain that I'm, you know, explaining the reason now for something they could not fathom at the time.
- [26:08]
Ing Singh
Yeah, it's all on YouTube being advertised to essentially kids. It's a chocolate bar and an energy drink. Not exactly the kind of thing children should be consuming en masse. So you know, overall, there were wins and loses for Jimmy's business portfolio.
- [26:21]
Simon Jack
But back on YouTube, he was reigning supreme. By the end of 2021, he spent three and a half million dollars recreating the popular Netflix series Squid Game. And that was a massive TV phenomenon. Let' explain for those who haven't seen that smash hit, what it was about.
- [26:36]
Ing Singh
It was huge. So it's a Korean drama about a fictional game where people who are hard up in their luck compete for a huge cash prize. And they compete in these sort of games based on childhood games. You know, things like Tug of War. Tug of War, for instance, or Grandma's
- [26:55]
Simon Jack
Footsteps, when you have to walk when someone's not looking, and then when it turns around, if you're still moving. But if you, if you mess up on this game, there are deadly consequences.
- [27:04]
Ing Singh
Yeah, exactly. So if you lose the game, you die. And the idea is to be the last person standing. So a massive hit and originally intended to be a critique of capitalism.
- [27:12]
Simon Jack
Yeah, well, interesting, isn't it? So, well, let's get on to that, because I think we can have that very debate right here. Because Jimmy took on 456 people to be the competitors to compete for $456,000 across the same type of games that were on Squid Games. Although in this version, mercifully, people didn't die if they had lost. But the video went mega viral. It currently has 900 million views. That's almost a billion insane numbers. And that video arguably was the thing that brought him to the attention or into the mainstream. Views across his channel, double from the previous year, and he was now very much a celebrity. But more exposure meant more criticism.
- [27:51]
Ing Singh
Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, like I said earlier, Squid Game, the television show was about a critique of capitalism, of the kind of society that drives people to take part in such an extreme game at the expense of their lives. And a lot of people felt that Jimmy had completely missed the entire point of the original series. MrBeast's version turned it into an entertainment, into spectacle. It basically replicated the very thing that the show itself was describing, because it
- [28:18]
Simon Jack
was basically a system which had left some people with nothing left to lose and therefore would risk it all on remarkably small odds of gaining some pot of money at the end. And there was a kind of, of, as you say, late stage capitalism desperation about it, which meant to be a critique, but the, the derivative of it was insanely popular. It wasn't people saying, oh, I see what they're doing there. That's not for me. What A terrible route we're going down as a society. It's like, yes, I want in. Especially in one where I don't have to die.
- [28:52]
Ing Singh
Yeah, exactly. It reminds me a little bit of how the original book and movie American Cycle was meant to be a searing critique of toxic masculinity and was instead adopted by. By the very manosphere that it probably would have critiqued itself.
- [29:05]
Simon Jack
Yeah, gosh, good parallel.
- [29:07]
Ing Singh
Still, you can argue no one died in MrBeast's squid game.
- [29:09]
Simon Jack
It's consensual entertainment and it's a lot of laughs. Well, Jimmy himself dismissed some of these criticisms, saying, the guy who made Squid Games, the show literally said, I like these people recreating the show. What the Squid Game creator said was a little more nuanced. He said, I think all of it is very much in line with the capitalist society that is depicted in Squid Game. I actually think it enforces it and makes the message even greater. So they go amplifying original point.
- [29:34]
Ing Singh
Well, squid game cost Mr. Beast millions to make, but it's also worth noting that he subsidizes all this more expensive content with cost efficient gaming and reaction channels which just feature him and his mates. It's also worth noting he achieved such a big global audience. All those millions of views, because his channels are dubbed in multiple languages.
- [29:53]
Simon Jack
I can attest to that because I was trying to watch some of this and I couldn't get it off the Korean translation. So it is, when I went to change it, it was in literally dozens of languages.
- [30:03]
Ing Singh
Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Japanese. You know, he's got a kind of global reach. And at this point, you know, there's more money than ever being made by content creators on YouTube as more viewers and advertisers choose this platform over traditional Media. So in 2022, YouTube took in nearly 30 billion in ad revenue.
- [30:24]
Simon Jack
Wow. That year, Jimmy earned $54 million, including 32 million from ads across the channel, 9 million from sponsored content. And for the first time, Jimmy was the top earning YouTuber. Earnings like that put him even ahead of huge social media influence like Kim Kardashian. We've done an episode on her. More traditional names like Angelina Jolie, Billie Eilish and Jimmy said a lot of people still see YouTubers as a subclass of influences. They still just don't truly understand the influence a lot of creators have.
- [30:56]
Ing Singh
Yeah, because Jimmy is not a glitzy, glamorous Kim Kardashian guy.
- [31:00]
Simon Jack
No.
- [31:00]
Ing Singh
You know, he just looks like, like a regular guy. If you didn't watch MrBeast content. You probably would walk past him on the street.
- [31:06]
LinkedIn Ads Sponsor
Yeah.
- [31:06]
Simon Jack
You could see him at a bus stop and you wouldn't stop and look twice.
- [31:09]
Ing Singh
And you know, I have to say maybe this is a little bit harsh, but he's not the most charismatic guy on YouTube. There's a lot of people who comment quite regularly on how he doesn't appear to smile with his eyes.
- [31:19]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it's also. But I think going back to his childhood, there is something about the sort of, you know, the lonely introvert. He's bored off his trolley and trying to find something, something to literally soak up the time. I think that's quite an appealing thing for some people. And we didn't play the multi, multi millionaire because he said he's got, you know, made 54 million in one year. But he said I don't have access to any of my bank accounts. I have a chief financial officer and everything, but my mum is the one who has access to the master bank account. His mum's title is actually chief compliance officer but many employees say she's effectively in charge of charge of human resources, although a spokesperson says she's not. By 2024 he had 300 employees on his production team plus 200 or more at Feastables. So it's no, it's certainly not a one man band.
- [32:08]
Ing Singh
By this point he'd established a holding company, Beast Industries. He remained founder but he brought in professional executives to help him run the company which was expanding, building huge new content facilities in Greenville. And this is interesting, Jimmy wants his hometown to become a content creator. Hub. The company's then president said the biggest parallel I could draw is to Tyler Perry in Atlanta. We've done him on good, bad. Billionaire, the movie producer in mogul. Jimmy's creating his own studio system here and new producers come to Greenville to give in. Housing, good salaries, three months to prove themselves.
- [32:43]
Simon Jack
It's the way that people used to flock to the Paramount lot in Hollywood. They're flocking to Greenville.
- [32:48]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
Yeah.
- [32:49]
Ing Singh
And the producer who worked for MrBeast has said you get all these people in a town where there's not much else going on but the job job. If you can show them you're a real believer in the beast way of doing things, you are rewarded.
- [32:59]
Simon Jack
But in a cover interview with Jimmy, Time magazine reported that of the dozen former employees Time interviewed, most had no problem with Donaldson, but described a company culture that was toxic with a lot of bullying. A spokesperson for Mr. B said the company has high standards for performance and not everyone is best suited for this work.
- [33:17]
Ing Singh
Many of Those employees signed NDAs and wouldn't go on the record with Time magazine magazine. But some former employees have said that Mr. Beast saw itself as separate from the rest of the entertainment industry and sometimes didn't prioritize safety and work culture. They reported concerns over limited training, a resistance to hiring experts for stunts which have included explosives, fast cars, heavy machinery. A spokesperson has said safety is incredibly important and taken very seriously, and medics and experienced professionals tailored to the needs of production on every set. Adding the company is OSHA compliant. That is a set of safety rules.
- [33:53]
Simon Jack
Yeah, boilerplate statement over there. And so let us go then on to Jimmy's biggest and perhaps most controversial piece of entertainment to date. At the end of 2024, Beast Games was released. Created, host and exec, produced by Jimmy. The premise is 2,000 people competing for $5 million in prize money. Essentially just a bigger version of Squid Game. But instead of doing what he'd done his whole career, which has released this independently on YouTube channel, this was commissioned by and released on Amazon Prime. This is a big change.
- [34:26]
Ing Singh
Yeah, I mean, you know, previously he kind of prided himself on being separate to the entertainment industry. And, you know, while Amazon prime is relatively new as a streaming Service Compared to MrBeast, it operates a lot more like a legacy media channel. The appeal for Amazon is obviously really clear. Jimmy is incredibly young. He's got a really loyal audience. But Jimmy was also getting a kind of new audience who are older, more traditional. And he said you can tell a phenomenal story in a 30 minute YouTube video, but with an extended series, you can get more people invested in the brand. And also, there was another reason that it appealed to Jimmy, because Amazon paid really well.
- [35:04]
Simon Jack
Yep, it is a multi trillion dollar company. And Amazon paid around $100 million for the first season of Beast Games. Staggering amount of money for a single season of unscripted content. Right from a YouTuber who's never made, you know, mainstream TV. But for Amazon, a $2.8 trillion company, $100 million is actually pretty cheap.
- [35:24]
Ing Singh
Yeah, drop in the ocean. Beast Games was filmed in a gigantic football stadium in Las Vegas, where the 2,000 contestants lived for days sleeping on the grass. They had to surrender their phones and medication while competing in physically demanding challenges, sometimes staying awake for up to three nights. More than a dozen participants told the New York Times that they experienced inadequate food or medical care. They cited long gaps between meals, delayed access to medication, even clean underwear.
- [35:54]
Simon Jack
Oh, dear. Some competitors also suffered injuries from the challenges, which were very physical and there were some hospitalizations. One contestant said, we were treated horribly. They took on this challenge of 2000 competitors. They should have known they needed an enormous crew to handle this career correctly. Spokesperson for Mr. Beast said contestants have been offered three meals a day. The shoot was complicated by the crowd strike incident that crashed millions of window systems, plus extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues. They added that Mr. Beast had started a formal review and taken steps to ensure that we learn from this experience. While Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment,
- [36:32]
Ing Singh
Beast Games opened the floodgates to more discussion, more reporting online online about whether Mr. Beast was a force for good in the world or something way more sinister.
- [36:41]
Simon Jack
Yeah, people starting to question his philanthropic motivations. One of the videos he released on his philanthropy channel caused criticism across newspaper columns and social media called A Thousand Blind People See for the First Time. And Jimmy arranged for a thousand people to have cataract surgery on their eyes. I've seen this. And there's a whole series of people peeling off the bandages and they can see for the first time. It's quite clear to me, me watching bits of that, that quite a lot of these people were, I would say, socioeconomically challenged. Did you get that sense?
- [37:14]
Ing Singh
Yes. Yeah. There's a real sense of. I mean, inadvertently, and I don't think he intended to do this when making the video. It is an indictment of the American health care system that all these people who had really good reasons for wanting to see. Wanting to see their kids, you know, just couldn't get the access to health care or have the money to fix themselves.
- [37:34]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [37:35]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
Yeah.
- [37:35]
Simon Jack
It's a tricky one, isn't it? Because I. I imagine that almost every one of those thousand would be very grateful for the procedure. When questioned about this, Jimmy said, I know myself. I don't have anything to prove to anyone. I think what I've done speaks for itself.
- [37:48]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I mean, on one hand, so the Advertising revenue from MrBeast's philanthropy means they can deliver millions of meals to people. Millions of trees are planted, millions of pounds of trash removed from the ocean. These are all things they say they've done. You can also see from the way that Jimmy and his friends who help out hosting the video. Video, they seem genuinely touched to be in contact with these people who are seeing for the first time. But something about the Mr. Beast formula of fast cuts and high emotion and numbers and spectacle, when applied to something like some people's disability.
- [38:20]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [38:21]
Ing Singh
You know, for a lot of people, this philanthropy just feels exploitative Exploitative is interesting.
- [38:26]
Simon Jack
I just, I wonder whether this generation of YouTube viewers thinks differently about what exploitation means. They think differently about what privacy means. What of your personal details you're prepared to share. They feel differently about what selling out, if you like, means. All of those concepts. Slightly different, I think.
- [38:47]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I mean, you know, you Talked about how MrBeast content is sort of similar to Jackass.
- [38:51]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [38:52]
Ing Singh
But I really struggle to think that Jackass people like, you know, Johnny Knoxville would feel comfortable at any point doing a stunt, turning to camera and say this video was funded by Verizon 5G Internet. They would never do that. They would think that was deeply unusual. Cool.
- [39:06]
LinkedIn Ads Sponsor
Yeah.
- [39:07]
Ing Singh
But, you know, Mr. Beast exemplifies a generation where that isn't such a big deal. We've been talking about these concerns, but it's worth flagging that a lot of the fan base just doesn't seem to care about this kind of stuff, you know. Season one of Beast Games became one of Amazon Prime Video's most viewed shows. Amazon's renewed it for two seasons. Meanwhile, Jimmy's own channel has continued to grow. By 2025, he became the first YouTuber to hit 400 million subscribers. And Beast Industries that year was vast, valued at $5 billion.
- [39:36]
Simon Jack
Amazing.
- [39:37]
Ing Singh
So Jimmy owns about half of that company, making him a billionaire worth about $2.5 billion at the age of 27 years old.
- [39:45]
Simon Jack
It's astonishing. It's just incredible. And it's rapid. It sounds exhausting because every moment you've got to outdo yourself. That's one of the things, isn't it, that everything's got. He pulls it back in to do bigger and bolder and more grabby and sort of more controversial and more eyeballs and. And then have to do it all over again. And it's kind of, you know, having, having to sort of keep the. The beast, if you like, having to feed the beast in itself is a full time job.
- [40:10]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I mean, there's a kind of horror film in that, isn't there?
- [40:13]
Whole Foods Market / Bilt Sponsor
Yeah.
- [40:13]
Ing Singh
Where kind of Mr. Beast stands and slowly goes insane trying to keep up.
- [40:29]
Simon Jack
Age 27, Jimmy Donaldson is a billionaire. Let's now take him beyond a billion.
- [40:34]
Ing Singh
Well, interestingly, there's actually some debate as to whether Jimmy is actually a billionaire. What? Okay, I know. So his.
- [40:40]
Simon Jack
Why are we bothering with this then?
- [40:42]
Ing Singh
Well, I mean, this is interesting because some people say he is and some people say he isn't. So this kind of billionaire status has kind of gradually emerged into the picture. So Fortune have outright named him a Billionaire because of this, because of his company as the they began valuing Beast Industries. Forbes, however, which we use quite a lot on this show, haven't formally updated his net worth to over a billion.
- [41:03]
Simon Jack
Okay. It's worth noting so many of our billionaires are declared so on paper they have money in the bank. It's because of the value of the stake they have in a company. Time and again we've seen billionaires declare how cash poor they are. Even people like Elon Musk or Gymshark's Ben Francis, because they're saying, I can't go and spend this money. It's in the shares in my company. Jimmy's particularly insistent on this. He says, technically everyone watching this video has more money than me in their bank account. If you take away the equity value of my company, as in what's worth my company's worth, that doesn't buy me McDonald's in the morning, you know.
- [41:35]
Ing Singh
Jimmy still has grand ambitions though, because Mr. Beast, and this is truly kind of remarkable, is becoming a banker. So Beast Industries has expanded into financial services by acquiring Step, which is a banking style platform aimed at teens and young adults. There's no age requirement to sign up for it with millions of millions of users. So this move kind of places Jimmy in a much more tightly regulated, regulated space. He has ambitions to expand into lending, potentially cryptocurrency. Obviously, marketing crypto to children is not without any controversy. Even Senator Elizabeth Warren has formally questioned Jimmy in a letter. And a spokesperson for Beast Industries has said the company's main motivation was to improve the financial future of the next generation. Adding the company is reviewing all existing offerings and marketing to make sure they meet very high quality standards and comply with applicable laws.
- [42:27]
Simon Jack
It's interesting that because you've seen quite a few companies try and break into the financial services area with particularly sort of younger branded things like Monzo, like Revolut taking on the old banking establishment. What some of them have found is that having a banking license and going into financial services is incredibly tightly regulated. And it's not as much, not as freewheeling as you as some other industries. So we will watch that one with interest. Also, once you get finance involved, scandal is never usually far away. Bad things can happen quickly.
- [42:59]
Ing Singh
Well, it's financial journalists like you start sniffing around.
- [43:01]
Simon Jack
Exactly. So it's time to score Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast on our billionaire categories. And this is a bit of fun where we score people from 0 to 10 on categories including wealth, controversy, power and legacy. So let's start with wealth.
- [43:17]
Ing Singh
Well, probably worth two and a half billion. Not a clear consensus by any means. But, you know, having said that, he's still only 27.
- [43:24]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [43:25]
Ing Singh
So he's got a long way to go.
- [43:26]
Simon Jack
Yeah. He's explicitly said profit is not the goal. Goal expansion is. Money is a tool for him to accomplish his goal of dominating YouTube.
- [43:35]
Ing Singh
Yeah. I wonder if actually when we're scoring him on wealth, we should take into account the fact that so much of his content is about wealth. It kind of makes sense in that way why he's gone into banking because all of his content is so driven by numbers and money.
- [43:48]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [43:49]
Ing Singh
It's almost like a children's book. Do you know what I mean? It's like so and so went to the dollar store, then we went to the $10 store. It's almost like you're teaching children to counter.
- [43:58]
Simon Jack
Yes. Okay. So wealthies actually plays a part in the draw, doesn't it, on some of this stuff, you know. You know, compete for $5 million. And he's made a lot very young. So I'm going to give him a five.
- [44:12]
Ing Singh
I mean, I think I'll probably. I'll give him slightly more. I'll give him a 6 out of 10.
- [44:15]
Simon Jack
Okay.
- [44:16]
Ing Singh
Because I feel like he exemplifies a very different kind of approach to wealth. Maybe one that we haven't really seen on the show before.
- [44:23]
Simon Jack
That's true.
- [44:24]
Ing Singh
His entire life is about acquiring big numbers and big things, you know, but not in the sense that he's buying a Maserati. Yeah, he's just peddling that message to
- [44:33]
Simon Jack
people, but almost in a sort of frivolous way. It's important, but and frivolous at the same time. It's kind of. It's a weird combination. Okay. Five for me, six for you. Controversy.
- [44:43]
Ing Singh
I mean, there's been quite a few, you know, concerns about safety and labor practices at the company. All those complaints that were raised after the filming of Beast Games.
- [44:54]
Simon Jack
And like, like anyone who lives by the online sword, sometimes you can die by it. People have dug up stuff, comments he's made in the past. Some racist, some homophobic language he's used in the past.
- [45:05]
Ing Singh
Yeah. He's since apologized for them, a spokesperson has said. He was a teenager. Like many kids, he used inappropriate language while trying to be funny.
- [45:13]
Simon Jack
But he's not a sort of rage baiter, is he, in that same sense, or a kind of someone who's trying to mobilize sort of racist or homophobic feelings in order to generate rage content and views?
- [45:24]
Ing Singh
No.
- [45:24]
Simon Jack
Okay. And of Course, the criticisms of the philanthropy stuff as being charity porn. Some people have called it poverty as spectacle. You could. You could call it, you know, which is defiant about. So I think he's a pretty controversial character, I don't think. I think that to someone of my age, he's kind of fascinating and controversial character in a way that he probably isn't to his own audience.
- [45:47]
Ing Singh
Yeah, that is true. I mean, if you've grown up watching Mr. Beast, you probably are able to brush off these criticisms quite easily because you're well and truly buried in the universe there. You know, all of this stuff makes sense to you.
- [46:01]
Simon Jack
So because I'm older than you, I have to give a higher score for control of something. I'm going to give him a seven.
- [46:06]
Ing Singh
I'll give him a six out of ten.
- [46:08]
Simon Jack
Okay, fine. Order is restored. We got that one right.
- [46:11]
Ing Singh
Next we come on to Power, which is an interesting one because you could look at the numbers that MrBeast pulls in and say, this guy is bigger than any platform, any media channel on the face of the planet.
- [46:24]
Simon Jack
I think if you went into the offices of senior media executives around the world, they would be terrified of Mr. Beast. He, in a way, embodies something a bit bigger, which is the incursion that things like YouTube have made in traditional media landscape. And therefore, in terms of power. Power. They would say that what he represents is changing their entire industry and is massively powerful. I'm going to give him high numbers for power. I'm going to give him an eight for power.
- [46:52]
Ing Singh
Wow. I think I'm going to give him an eight as well.
- [46:54]
Simon Jack
Okay. And then on Legacy, this is an interesting one because one wonders whether some of these famous things, stunts that he's done for Mr. Beast will just be like, I don't know, are they going to stand the test of time?
- [47:08]
Ing Singh
Who knows? I mean, he's certainly gonna go down in the history books for having been the person to understand YouTube and juice the algorithm in a way that not very many content creators have done successfully or ever since. So I think his legacy is probably gonna be pretty high. But in terms of an artistic legacy, I mean, is anybody going back and re watching any of the videos time and time again like they do with any kind of treasured childhood films? I don't really think so.
- [47:38]
Simon Jack
I'm trying to think who the Mr. Beast of the last was. And, you know, I'm struggling to find that there is such a person. Really.
- [47:46]
Ing Singh
No, I don't think it existed because something like YouTube didn't exist.
- [47:49]
Simon Jack
No. Fair enough. Okay, Legacy, I think the jury's out on that. I'm gonna go straight down the middle and say five.
- [47:55]
Ing Singh
I'm gonna score him slightly higher, I think, because he was, I guess, one of the first content creators to truly go viral in a way that made everyone sit up and take notice.
- [48:06]
Simon Jack
People say he's the Mozart of the attention economy. So will he have the same legacy as Mozart? I wonder?
- [48:11]
Ing Singh
Will they be playing Mr. Beast videos to small babies and toddlers to make them smarter? I don't actually think so, but I'm still going to give him a high point for Legacy. I think I'm going to give him a 6 out of 10.
- [48:24]
Simon Jack
So those are our scores. What do you think? Is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Let us know what you think. Email. Good, bad, billionaire. That's one word@BBC.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001917, 6861176 and three us what you think.
- [48:42]
Ing Singh
And don't forget to include your name as we may read it out on a future episode.
- [48:46]
Simon Jack
For example, James from Florida emailed us. Hi Simon and Zing. Love your podcast and I listen during my evening neighborhood walks here in Central Florida. It makes my daily 7,000 step target go by much faster. Glad to hear it. I just finished the episode on Rupert Murdoch's story and found the quote, About 90% of the best deals are offered to the top 2% quite striking. Nobody's been calling me with deals and now I know know why.
- [49:10]
Ing Singh
Same he goes on to say following that, I was wondering if you could look into whether Dolly Parton is a legitimate billionaire. We love her upbeat personality, her positive approach to life and she scored big on her rags to riches journey. We even visited Dollywood during a recent visit to Tennessee. Great place, highly recommended. Oh, I wish I could go. I have shared your podcast with many friends and family members. Thank you, James. So once you reach a billion listeners, I'll be looking forward to that sign, autograph. All the best from central Florida. Keep the shows rolling out.
- [49:40]
Simon Jack
Well, thanks for that. And we looked into this. Unfortunately Dolly is not yet a billionaire. She's worth around $500 million. So she's halfway there.
- [49:49]
Ing Singh
But there's still time. Dolly working nine to five.
- [49:53]
Simon Jack
Okay, so who have we got Next
- [49:55]
Ing Singh
episode we have got the youngest self made female billionaire and she pioneered this industry that is absolutely booming in the States right now. Prediction markets.
- [50:05]
Simon Jack
So this is where you can trade whether events happen or not, almost anything, whether a president wins an election or indeed gets ousted from power or which
- [50:17]
Ing Singh
designer a celebrity is wearing on the red carpet.
- [50:20]
Simon Jack
Who's going to be the next Bond? You name it.
- [50:23]
Ing Singh
Everything is tradable.
- [50:24]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And her name is Luana Lopez Lara. She's next up on Good Bad Billionaire. Good Bad Billionaire is a big BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The editor is Paul Smith and it's
- [50:36]
Ing Singh
a BBC Studios production for the BBC World Service. The senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manell.
- [50:51]
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