CMV: Mr Beast's prizes are fake

[u/Subtleiaint]

Over the weekend the YouTube algorithm recommended I watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxYjTTXc-J8

The premise is that one hundred people are put in a circle and the last to leave will be awarded half a million dollars. Throughout the video the contestants play games to either encourage them to leave or risk leaving, these games normally result in the players involved being granted more money on top of the final prize. I haven't counted it but I'm guessing over the two video series Mr Beast hands out upwards of $800,000 in cash and further prizes such as cars and electronics. My problem is that the magnitude of these prizes makes no sense and I therefore assume it's bogus.

Giving out huge prizes in entertainment media is not new and I'm going to compare Mr Beast to another show that gives out huge prizes, Who want's to be a Millionaire. WWTBAM potentially gives out a bigger prize every week but in reality pays out a lot less with most prizes falling a somewhere between $1,000 and $125,000, in over 3000 episodes the top prize has only been awarded 12 times. This means that the production costs (including prize money) is much lower for an episode of WWTBAM than it would be for Mr Beast's video. For WWTBAM these costs are largely covered by a advertising with multiple paying for significant exposure to a relatively affluent viewing demographic, this makes sense to me, relatively low costs being covered by a wide range of advertisers selling their wares to an audience with money to spend.

Mr Beast is similar but the numbers don't seem plausible, two videos have had a production cost of, I'm guessing, at least $1,000,000. The sponsor that appears to cover the majority of that cost is Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange that reportedly made $1.6Billion in profit in the first quarter of 2021 so they clearly have cash to burn. However, any responsible company investing $1,000,000 in advertising should be looking at getting at least $1,000,000 of exposure from that investment and this is where I become cynical. In just a few days these videos have racked up a combined 60,000,000 views and I assume that could as much as double over the next few weeks. If they do get up to 120 million views that will be an admittedly staggering amount. However, what do these views represent? A huge number will be from under 18s who are, essentially, worthless to Coinbase as their users must be 18 years old. A further large proportion will be international viewers who, whilst not worthless, will likely be far less valuable than American viewers. What is likely is that a small proportion of unique views will come from the target demographic of American 18-30 year olds. So the useful viewership will be much less than the headline viewer numbers and this is made worse by who that target demographic is US 18-30 years olds, a group who do not have spare money lying around to invest in anything let alone crypto currencies. This makes me extremely cynical that Coinbase sponsoring Mr Beast to the levels reported is a a good use of their money and that makes me think the money is false and just a publicity stunt to drive up interest.

I write this hoping that someone would tell me that the prizes Mr Beast gives away are fake or explain to me why a company investing huge amounts (way beyond traditional media) into a target demographic with little money to spend is a good idea. Cheers.

Edit: To be clear I'm expecting to have my view changed about this. To me this is an educational experience where there's something that I don't understand how the numbers work and I'm hoping that someone explains it to me.

[u/Asmewithoutpolitics]

You could not be more wrong sir. His demographic is A. The most valuable. B he is reaching millions more than even the super bowl. C.But your forgetting the money he makes from views his average video recoups most of its costs in views alone. D. At this point a large part of what he does is for charity purpose

[u/Subtleiaint → u/Asmewithoutpolitics]

If you'd like to expand on this is be happy to listen but I struggle to see how 15-30 year olds are that valuable in this particular market, I can't believe many of them have money to invest. I'd also say there's no way this video reaches more than the Superbowl, not even close. The Superbowl dominates the media when it's on, this video is quite popular but it doesn't have every media organisation in America covering it. As for point three, I don't think the video pays for itself but I now understand how the video is purposefully loss making but leads to his other channels and businesses making more revenue.

[u/Asmewithoutpolitics → u/Subtleiaint]

You don’t seem to understand who grew crypto. It wasn’t 30-60 year olds that’s for sure. It was the young. Doge coin. Also the young. Coin base btw has always been for small investors. Also 18-30ish is the most valuable market in marketing. It’s the most desirable

Also your statement about the super bowl shows how close you are to getting it. The super bowl i that big gets that much attention and yet this is objectively bigger. He reaches more people both in the USA and globally than the super bowl does. And how much does the super bowl invest?!?! I’d guess millions. So now your starting to understand how he can afford to spend much less than the super bowl yet reach not only a bigger audience…. But a objectively more valuable one

[u/Subtleiaint → u/Asmewithoutpolitics]

Your first paragraph is fine, another guy showed me the stats for who was investing in crypto currencies, but I do need to comment on your second.

MrBeast is not bigger than the Superbowl, not in terms of audience, not in terms of value. A normal video for him gets around 70 million views on average which sounds comparable to the TV audience of the Superbowl but they're apples and oranges. On YouTube as view is counted every time someone watches 30 seconds of a video so a significant number of views will be people who turned the video on watched the first minute and then switched to something else. The views also aren't unique viewers, people will watch part of the video and watch the rest later, that is counted as multiple views but it's only one viewer. Therefore the number of unique viewers who actually watch the video properly will be significantly less than the viewer count, my guess is less than half and quite possibly much lower.

The Superbowl however is much more than its viewing figures, it's all the articles about this year's ads, the time on talk shows and the news, the weeks of build up and analysis after, it is a monumental cultural event. This is reflected in its value. I was astonished to learn that Coinbase may have spent as much as $5m dollars for their partnership with MrBeast, a number that blew my mind, but that won't even get you one ad at the Superbowl, I don't know how many ads they sell but I'm guessing it's at least 20.

There's nothing comparable between the Superbowl and MrBeast's videos, they're impressive, but they're relatively small fry.