Beginning from his bedroom in Greenville, North Carolina, YouTuber MrBeast now owns the platform’s largest channel, surpassing a “rival” account this weekend in a long-tracked battle for subscriber count supremacy.
MrBeast, the professional moniker of 26-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, dethroned the Indian music label T-Series over the weekend when his account exceeded 266 million subscribers, a figure that’s since risen beyond 270 million. Donaldson celebrated the milestone on X, formerly Twitter, writing: “After 6 years we have finally avenged Pewdiepie,” referring to the Swedish content creator who previously had the most-subscribed account before T-Series eclipsed it in 2018.
Throughout his ascent, Donaldson has remained in Greenville, home to East Carolina University and roughly 90,000 residents. He moved to the Eastern North Carolina city as a child and began posting videos to YouTube as a teenager. His first viral success came in 2017, when he painstakingly counted to 100,000 in front of his computer screen over the course of 40 hours. Later stunts grew in complexity and budget, with many featuring large prize giveaways, zany premises and elaborate sets. His most recent uploaded video chronicled two contestants earning US$10,000 each day they lived in a forest.
In a February interview with Time magazine, Donaldson said he generates between US$600mil and US$700mil annually but that his production company hasn’t been profitable as it reinvests what it earns back into videos. MrBeast’s North Greenville filming studio includes a 50,000 square-foot warehouse called Studio C where he and his team construct surreal sets and fly in contestants from across the country. Last year, his team acquired more land around the studio — to the curiosity, and at times frustration, of neighbours.
Thousands followed the race between MrBeast and T-Series, with some posting 24/7 livestreams of each channel’s subscriber tallies. As the gap for No. 1 narrowed this week, MrBeast attracted a record number of followers, Donaldson said, and he ginned up interest by posting a meme illustrating his team chasing T-Series with a message, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
MrBeast toppled T-Series at a moment of change for the North Carolina content creator. In March, Donaldson announced a deal with Amazon MGM Studios to create an event called “Beast Games” with 1,000 contestants competing for US$5mil. Last month, he ended his company’s long-time relationship with the talent agency Night Media, telling Bloomberg he wanted to “start building my own internal team.”
And while Donaldson will continue to head his enterprise, MrBeast hired former Shutterfly CEO Jeffery Housenhold to be chief operating officer last month, Business North Carolina reported. On his LinkedIn account, Housenhold stated his new employer “is the most watched person in the world.” – The News & Observer/Tribune News Service
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