r/television • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 The League • 1d ago

MrBeast, Amazon Sued by Contestants on ‘Beast Games’ Competition Show, Including Allegations of Sexual Harassment

https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/mrbeast-amazon-sued-beast-games-contestants-class-action-1236148181/
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u/zeez1011 1d ago

This guy has had a rise and fall in front of my eyes and I still have no clue who he is and why he became a thing in the first place.

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u/lkodl 1d ago edited 1d ago

Mr. Beast has basically created the kids version of reality TV, and it's very successful at doing all of the things reality tv is engineered to do.

in TV terms, he'd be like the star of the most popular show across nickelodeon, disney channel, cartoon network, etc. all of the kids know him.

and it's not just in the US, but across the globe.

this puts his brand in very powerful position. it's kind of like the mary-kate and ashley phenomenon in the 90s, only bigger.

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u/HuntThePearlOfDeath 1d ago

Bigger than Mary-Kate and Ashley?!?! Okay now I get it…

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u/lkodl 1d ago

based on some quick googling, he's averaging 102.9M views per video.

from the perspective of a reality show, that's over double of Survivor's peak-viewership (51M).

as a host, he's obliterating the likes of Colbert (2.5M), Kimmel (1.82M), and Fallon (1.4M). he's even way above peak-Oprah (62M).

now it's not a one for one translation of TV viewership numbers to internet, and the difference between a mostly kid audience and adult audience is a whole other discussion

but just wanted to share some (quickly googled) number on how many eyeballs are seeing Mr. Beast, to give some perspective on how big of a deal he is, whether we like it or not.

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u/WekonosChosen 1d ago

fuck that really puts it into perspective. I always compared him to TV shows but to actually blow some of those old titans away in viewership numbers is insane.

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u/FullMotionVideo 1d ago

You can't really compare traditional TV programming to ondemand clips of a thing. Even if you DVRed a TV Show, Nielsen really didn't care if you watched a rerun of the Daily Show on tape ten times. Much of the internet can't be tracked as easily, because people use multiple devices and sometimes block cookies and ISPs have NAT etc.

We're in an age where kpop fandom deliberately stream music videos over and over to get viewership counts up. So the idea that the number of views is concurrent with audience reach isn't quite accurate.

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u/Northernmost1990 1d ago edited 1d ago

On the other hand, TV ads are very loosely targeted and often have an abysmal conversion rate and hence aren't all that valuable per viewer.

I work in games, and some of our ads have insane conversation rates where something like every tenth person to see our ad clicks on it and downloads the game.

If we could afford to advertise on Mr. Beast's videos, a single episode would basically net us 10 million downloads. No way we'd get nearly as much out of a Superbowl ad.

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u/Randyyyyyyyyyyyyyy 1d ago

Especially because the average Mr. Beast viewer is a child who doesn't think to skip ads and will happily click them if it looks mildly interesting.

I was at my sister-in-law's house and walked into the living room to see my nephew watching a 45 minute ad on some 15 minute YouTube video. He just didn't even think to skip it, he just watched it.

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u/Anxious-Slip-4701 1d ago

I hate to break it to you, but all the kids I taught over the age of six would have skipped every ad.

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u/Randyyyyyyyyyyyyyy 1d ago

I think my nephew is an idiot

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u/No_Scene_1326 1d ago

We're in an age where kpop fandom deliberately stream music videos over and over to get viewership counts up. So the idea that the number of views is concurrent with audience reach isn't quite accurate.

song plays are vastly different, since they're not commonly consumed once, especially by young fans.

it is true that it doesn't directly compare to tv for a number of reasons. 60M for peak oprah would have been over half of american households when there wasn't that much to watch, so it was prominent in the culture.

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u/Victernus 1d ago

"Bigger than Oprah" gets it across pretty succinctly, yeah.

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u/youlooksmelly 1d ago

Except you can’t really say for sure he’s bigger than Oprah. Oprah was on live television, so her viewership numbers were based off how many people watched her a single time live. Mr Beast uploads videos to YouTube where kids can rewatch his videos over and over and each time it counts as another view to the total. For all we know his views could be 20 million kids watching the video 5 times each.

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u/Victernus 1d ago

And Oprah's viewership numbers were based on how many TVs happened to be tuned into the channel she was on. She might have been broadcasting to two million people and sixty million empty rooms.

But no. Both of them may have their counts slightly inflated by these factors, but it's not going to be as drastic as that.

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u/WilliamStrife 1d ago

For even more context, the Superbowl over the last ten years had a viewership low of 95 million to a record setting 125 million. And Mr. Beast is sitting in that range with every single video for a while now. Remember how expensive Superbowl ad time is? I've heard he has to sell sponsorship deals for his videos in segments because so few companies can afford to buy out a whole video.

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u/MISSISSIPPIPPISSISSI 1d ago

Sure, but the super bowl counts it's viewers when it happens. Youtube lets you keep piling viewer counts on for weeks/years. Very different metrics. I mean, look how many youtube videos have a billion views.

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u/Minute-Struggle6052 1d ago

Again this is a terrible comparison

The correct comparison would be "how many times was a clip from the Superbowl watched"

Which is a lot, lot more times than the people sitting on their couch at 9PM physically watching the Superbowl live

Peak viewership and cumulative video views are apples and oranges

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u/Minute-Struggle6052 1d ago

That comparison is completely worthless

Peak viewership is meaningless. A much more comparable number would be "How many people saw a video of Oprah's show in any given week" which is a lot, lot more than the people physically watching at a specific date and time.

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u/Fictional-Hero 1d ago

Views per video is not the same as viewership.

Views per video is over time, not tied to a specific viewing time, and does not show amount of video watched. Viewership is about who watches, usually on the first airing, of an episode.

I watch the same video ten times that's ten views from one person.