Supposedly, this online celebrity, whose annual income exceeds 100 million yuan, has long been short of money, but as a result, he ran out to cry poverty. What is going on?

"Mr. Beast" once earned over 100 million yuan a year

Text | Sister Bing

Every day, fans at least 1 million, go out to video, send luxury cars, cash.

The office doesn't even have a desk, but his annual income is even stronger than that of a listed company. He is "The Beast."(MrBeast), the world's largest Internet celebrity. There are more than 800 million fans on the whole platform. What concept? Equivalent to one tenth of the people in the world pay attention to him! Hyperthyroidism brother has to bow down in front of him.

A proper young man in a small town has become the king of global traffic. He dares to spend three or four million dollars to shoot any video and provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses, such as "buried alive for 7 days", "hunted by FBI killers" and "trains against tanks", etc., which are full of drama and visual impact, and make the audience's blood boil, and they often smash hundreds of millions of broadcasts.

The live-action version of Squid Game becomes a phenomenal video

In 2021, the "money-selling fanatic" made a real-life version of "Fish Game", the video carefully accompanied by English, Spanish, Indian subtitles, so that the global audience can watch the players for millions of dollars in bonuses to crack the bloodstream, resulting in the global playback of 4 billion times, becoming phenomenal works.

Supposedly, this online celebrity, whose annual income exceeds 100 million yuan, has long been short of money, but as a result, he ran out to cry poverty. What is going on?

¡°The Beast¡± story.

"Mr. Beast" is only 27 years old, but he has created a huge business empire

The world's largest media blogger Mr. Beast, real name James Stephen "Jimmy" Donaldson, was born on May 7, 1998, in Kansas, United States, and grew up in Greenville, North Carolina.

The story begins in a garage in North Carolina in 2012.

Donaldson, a 14-year-old teenager addicted to Internet, was one of the first players on YouTube. He posted game videos and some funny content under the name "MrBeast6000", but there has been no improvement.

Until 2017, an absurd video of ¡°From 1 to 100,000¡± suddenly turned red¡ªhe had a lot of attention on the camera¡¯s continuous counting of 40 hours, a behavioral art that would ¡°polarize boredom¡± and accurately hit the audience¡¯s Huntsman psychology.

Since then, in order to attract everyone's attention, "Mr Beast" decided to take a special route from the media, which is to send money, pay money ...

One day, ¡°Mr. Beast¡± drove a Lamborghini, and the assistant driver was all a box of dollar coins with drums.

He randomly parked the car next to a couple of men and women, and asked them directly if they didn't know who they were or whether they were his fans.

Upon seeing "Mr. Beast", the girl immediately pulled out her cell phone with excitement and told him that she was his die-hard fan.

"Mr. Beast" gives money to fans on the spot

"Mr. Beast" was not polite either. He took out a stack of hundred-dollar bills from the cardboard box and stuffed them directly to the girl, which was almost $5,000.

However, the boy next to him is not very lucky. Because he is not his fan, he lost the opportunity to pick up $5,000 for nothing. Presumably, he must regret it and beat his chest.

Then, he drove his Lamborghini around the street, claiming to be an online car driver. The first person to get a taxi gave him this Lamborghini.

"Mr. Beast" gave netizens a Lamborghini

Many netizens felt that he was in the bucket, and did not think that he really gave the luxury car to the first lucky kid.

If you think this is even the pen of the Turkish, then it is really small, the operation behind it is even more luxurious! he calls himself "YouTube's biggest philanthropist", through video funding the poor, disabled people, etc., and also donate to the construction of a well to solve the African water crisis.

Since then, his content has completely moved towards the "money-burning mode": he bought an island at a lot of money, used $5 million to reproduce the real scene of "Squid Game", recruited challengers to compete, and finally gave the winner a grand prize.

The bonus pool in the program is full of tests on humanity.

Later, he also engaged in many competitive games, such as losing weight without going out of the circle, completing various sports challenges, prison challenges, etc. without going out of the circle. As long as he persisted until the end, he could get tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. High bonuses ranging from thousands of dollars. There must be brave men under the heavy reward, and those who participate in the competition try their best, which makes people's hearts surge. These creative and novel contents have made the video playback volume of "Mr. Beast" continue to hit a new high, and his fans on various platforms are also rising.

"What people remember is not how much money I spent, but whether I dare to do what others dare not do." In an interview in 2025, "Mr. Beast" revealed the core logic of content creation. The cost of this single-episode video is as high as US $4 million, which is equivalent to the "Hollywood-level" content investment of a small movie production fee, allowing him to set a record of over 400 million YouTube subscriptions in 2025, and the number of fans on the entire network has exceeded 800 million, becoming the world's largest blogger.

Lost traffic, earned into chocolate jars

Surprisingly, ¡°Mr. Beast¡±¡¯s extreme pollination video column has been losing for three consecutive years, with the total cost of video production to surpass $100 million in 2024 alone.

What's even more surprising is that with the annual income of $200 million from selling chocolate, he still became a monopoly.

Mr. Beast's chocolate sales are amazing

While colleagues are still divided by platform subsidies and advertising, Mr. Beast has long established a unique business closure. In 2024, the revenue report showed that of its $6.5 billion total revenue, video advertising was divided into just 10 percent, while the self-made chocolate brand Feastables contributed 40 percent of revenue to become a real ¡°cash cow.¡±

In the $1 million challenge video, the winner¡¯s rewards shift from cash to chocolate gift boxes, this ¡°content implant¡± makes the product quickly out. The re-buy rate is high, profitable, and the supply chain is stable.

The refinement of this pattern lies in the "double-directional counterfeiting": video losses exchange the mental occupation of 800 million fans, while chocolate profits and counterfeiting content creation, forming a benign cycle of "content flow - product transformation - counterfeiting content".

In addition, Mr. Beast has further expanded its business map to other areas.

He launched MrBeast Burger fast-food, which suddenly burst for the American who love hamburgers, and is said to sell more than a billion dollars a year, in terms of joint-name toys, data platform Viewstats and other business components, making his revenue more diversified.

He borrowed money from his mother for the wedding.

Mr. Beast married his girlfriend.

In 2025, the "Mr. Beast" step greater. he entered the Chinese website, quickly accumulated ten million fans, and also opened the live show in July, in addition to chocolate, and the launch of co-brand clothes, the single market sales exceeded 200 million yuan, strength cannot be underestimated.

In 2025, he also encountered a series of legal troubles. In early May, his production company was brought to court by the Mexican government. In short, the local authorities wanted him to promote Mayan cultural sites, but he filmed a video promoting his own chocolate. The prosecution said Donaldson violated the rules of archaeological shooting and made money with "the cultural heritage belonging to all Mexican people".

Five other players who participated in Game of the Beast have sued Mr. Beast¡¯s production company in court, saying the show had been subjected to ¡°long-term abuse¡± and harassment.

The former employee of Mr. Beast exploded, shooting in bad conditions: long hours of insomnia, food shortages, and even health risks.The data showed that in his Amazon show, the participant¡¯s injury rate was allegedly higher than the industry average of 20%.This not only affected the team, but also affected the fans ¨C the ¡°extreme challenge¡± we saw, which may hide real pain.

Despite being labelled charity, his video content has been criticized as ¡°taking someone else¡¯s life for traffic,¡± and some challenges have been considered too extreme.

In fact, this pursuit of stimulation has triggered aesthetic fatigue in the audience, with the average retention rate of new videos in 2025 dropping by 12% compared to last year.

"Mr. Beast" needs to borrow money from his mother for a wedding

Because of a lot of lawsuits for making programs, "Mr. Beast" blacked himself out. The outside world claimed that he was worth $1 billion, but he really didn't have any money himself, because all the money he earned was used to make videos. He's still looking to borrow money from his mom for the wedding.

Do you believe it?

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