MrBeast’s ambitious game show Beast Games became a huge success when it debuted on Prime Video in December 2024. Quickly turning into one of the platform’s biggest premieres, the unscripted show even garnered significant attention from fans. However, behind the scenes, the show put a major financial strain on Jimmy Donaldson’s wallet.
Appearing on Steven Bartlett’s Diary Of A CEO podcast, the YouTuber thus revealed how the show cost him well over $100M—far more than what Amazon MGM Studios had boasted offering him. Further, sharing the estimated expenses for just two episodes, MrBeast revealed how he ended up spending more than The Office and Stranger Things S1’s entire budget.
MrBeast lost millions over the crazy expense of his Prime Video show
Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast is often known for pushing the limits when it comes to his YouTube content. But with his latest Prime Video project, Beast Games, he might have pushed his own bank account too far. Sitting for an interview with Steven Bartlett’s Diary Of A CEO podcast, Donaldson thus revealed the jaw-dropping amount that he didn’t hesitate to spend on the production of his Prime Video show.
In 2024, MrBeast’s unscripted game show, Beast Games, premiered on Prime Video, wherein 1,000 people competed for the biggest cash prize in history—$10M. Considering Jimmy Donaldson’s high-stakes financial gamble, and the show’s suspense, the Amazon Prime show became a massive success on the streaming platform. However, the YouTuber admitted that it wasn’t a sensible financial decision.
I lost a ton of money filming that show, so that came out of my pocket because we spent way too much money on it, I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show, I’m an idiot. So episode one we spent over $15M on those towers, building them, that was the most towers ever built, the most hydraulic press used.
We had to put up all the screens, I mean that was that’s like arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history that was just episode one and that’s just the construction of the set. That’s not including when we we gave away over $20M, I think over two million was in episode one, and then episode two we have the city which was $14M set build.
So it seems that while Amazon MGM Studios backed the project, MrBeast confirmed that the money they offered wasn’t enough to cover the full cost. As a result, the YouTuber ended up spending a huge chunk of his own fortune to bring his ambitious reality competition to life. And now, despite being the richest YouTuber and his show garnering millions of views on Prime Video, the financial burden left MrBeast struggling.
2 episodes of Beast Games cost more than The Office and Stranger Things S1’s budget
Based on the estimated expense of set building that MrBeast handed out during the podcast, it stands at roughly $49M, give and take $50M, for the first two episodes of Beast Games. Now, that seems like a staggering sum of money that even Hollywood producers might hesitate to spend. Certainly, because two of the most renowned and beloved shows, The Office and Stranger Things didn’t have the guts to spend so much.
For reference, The Office was said to have spent an estimated $2M per episode in the later seasons, whereas, Stranger Things season 1 spent about $6M per episode (via Variety). Now, based on these estimates, The Office S8 consisting of 24 episodes cost around $48M, whereas Stranger Things S1 consisting of 8 episodes cost another $48M. In comparison, just 2 episodes of MrBeast’s show blew past these numbers.
For me, it was about making season one as good as possible. I can’t let the YouTube community down because creators don’t have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms. If I fail, it’s over; no streaming platform is ever gonna touch a YouTuber ever again.
But despite spending millions of dollars from his own fortune and suffering heavy losses, MrBeast claimed to have no regret regarding Beast Games. Since the unscripted game show opened doors for other creators to collaborate with streaming platforms, Jimmy Donaldson admitted to being happy about it. Eventually, DailyMail reported how the Prime Video show broke 44 Guinness World Record titles during filming.
Beast Games is streaming on Prime Video.
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