Whether you subscribe to MrBeast or not, by now we’ve all heard of Beast Games – the most expensive game show in history.
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, has the most subscribers on YouTube – 362 million followers that he gained primarily through hosting his own competitions which involved him giving eye-watering sums of money away and incredible prizes, like an island in The Bahamas.
He’s given away tens of millions of dollars on his own, but for Beast Games he teamed up with Amazon Prime to award the winner of the show with $10 million… although there’s a catch.
Beast Games
First, let’s get into what the game show is and what it consists of.
Inspired by the Netflix series, Squid Game, the games stage elaborate challenges and tasks for participants.
In total there were 1,000 contestants competing in gruelling physical and mental challenges to be in with a chance of bagging the top prize fund, $10,000,000 – and with it airing on Amazon Prime in December, it has become the biggest ever cash prize in reality TV.
Spoiler alert! The finale saw the last standing six players which was then whittled down to just Jeffrey Randall Allen and Twana Barnett.
(X/@MrBeast)
Allen, who identified as player 831 in the game, had to guess which of the 10 briefcases in front of him had a $10 million cheque inside that had been concealed by Barnett.
He guessed correctly and eventually won the huge cash prize.
How much the winning contestant took home
After finding out he won the $10 million, he soon after discovered that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which administers and enforces US federal tax laws, actually staked claim to a large portion of it.
In fact, the taxman has taken home just under half of it.
Taking to Twitter, an account tweeted: “The winner of MrBeast’s $10,000,000 ‘Beast Games’ prize will only receive $5.03 million after taxes.”
It garnered a sharp response from MrBeast, he wrote in quotations ‘Only’ accompanied with a crying face emoji, suggesting that Allen wasn’t as hard-done by as the Tweet made out.
The ‘Solitary Experiment’ on the show (Amazon Prime Video)
Fans’ reaction to the cash prize
Thousands of fans flooded to the comments, with one posting: “Yeah, only. You have 10 million and they only got half. So it’s only relative to the stated amount. This is about how bad taxes are, not you.”
A second typed: “That’s still a HEFTY slice off the top even if there’s 5 mill left.”
With a third penning: “Same time.. 50% tax is pretty bonkers.. I can see 1/3rd at most. And the fact that were programmed to think 1/3 tax is a good deal, shows how far taxes have gone…”
Meanwhile, fans suggested the real winner was the IRS.
One joked: “Amazing. So technically IRS is also competing silently.”
“Congrats to the IRS for winning Beast Games,” another added.
MrBeast has faced criticism after he revealed the eye-watering amount he spent on a new series.
YouTube star MrBeast is known in the space for his big-budget productions and has truly transformed the way people consume content on the platform.
He has raised the level of content creation for other users after spending millions on each of his unique concepts.
However, in a new series with Amazon Prime Video, the creator has taken the budget to a whole new level.
Beast Games is coming to the subscription-based platform on December 19, with a series that appears to be inspired by Netflix’s Squid Game.
MrBeast – real name James ‘Jimmy’ Donaldson – dropped the trailer yesterday (December 8), and the reactions have been a mixed bag.
MrBeast has 335 million YouTube subscribers (X/@MrBeast)
While some can’t wait for the series to drop, others have hit out at the amount he spent on the production.
Taking to X, MrBeast wrote: “I spent over a year creating this 10 episode competition series, breaking 40 world records, building the craziest sets in entertainment history, featuring 1,000 players, and a $5,000,000 grand prize!”
The teaser showed contestants wearing blue tracksuits, similar to the ones we saw in Squid Game.
Players will face challenges that involve monster trucks, a pirate ship and jumping out of a helicopter.
Beast Games will land on Amazon Prime Video on December 19 (X/@MrBeast)
In a separate post showcasing his jaw-dropping set, MrBeast added: “We spent $14,000,000 building a city in a field for the contestants in Beast Games to live and compete in… December 19th is almost here.”
But the huge amount of money didn’t exactly land the way he might have hoped it would.
One user replied: “You could have re-built real cities in North Carolina.”
Another said: “You can do far better and more useful things with this amount of money.”
While a third added: “Think of the good that could do this Christmas to someone’s life.”
Someone else penned: “I am sorry but one 25 minute video is not a good way how to spend 14 millions. You can do far better and more useful things with this amount of money.”
To which MrBeast responded: “Hmmm, it’s almost like this is a 10 episode Prime video show I made and not a 25 minute YouTube video lol.”
Some fans have hit out on the amount of money spent on the series (X/@MrBeast)
However, some fans came to his defense.
“I mean, you are making a series, so it will be expensive. The trailer does look cool, so I will check it out when it’s released,” one commented.
In September, a lawsuit was filed against MrBeast, his production team, and Amazon, after a contestant who took part in the show claimed they were deprived of medical care, food, sleep and ‘the necessities of basic hygiene’.
However, MrBeast has quashed these claims.
He said: “We have tons of behind the scenes dropping when the show does to show how blown out of proportion these claims were.
“Just can’t release it now because it would spoil the games.”
If you’ve been on YouTube recently you’re probably familiar with the grinning face of James Donaldson, better known as MrBeast.
Donaldson has become one of the most successful YouTubers out there, drawing in a staggering 308 million followers on his account.
The YouTuber has built his appeal on his enormous giveaway videos, involving prizes worth staggering amounts of money.
These have included outlandish competitions, including one video where people had to stay in a circle, with the last one there being the winner.
Of course, at the end of each day the circle got smaller.
On another occasion the YouTuber even staged a Squid Game style competition.
Though it’s important to note that in this version it was just a squib that went off when someone ‘died’, they weren’t actually murdered.
Now, the YouTuber has opened up about how he found success.
MrBeast recently gifted a series of luxury cars to 10 lucky fans. (Don Arnold/WireImage)
As with anything, MrBeast started relatively small.
He shared that at first his brand deals would be in the region of around $5,000, which is pretty decent but a long way from the huge amounts of money his channel now turns over in giveaways alone.
As a way to get more views, however, he would film himself just giving the money away to a random person.
MrBeast told FULL SEND PODCAST: “So the first time I got a brand deal is 10 grand, well it’s five grand, and I was like double it and I’ll go give it away.
“So I literally I just gave away all my brand deals every single time I got one so I did that and the next time.
The YouTuber appeared on the FULL SEND PODCAST. (YouTube/FULL SEND PODCAST)
“I just literally, I would just do a brand deal give it away and then the next brand deal was bigger and I just did that for like two years straight.”
The technique clearly worked for him, and he deployed it back when being a YouTuber wasn’t quite so big of a things as it is now.
He said: “It’s like that was like insane and people won’t understand it’s just a different time now, like it’s cool to be a YouTuber now, it’s like it’s known we make money, how we make money everything.
“Back then you would have to like have f**king five-hour arguments 100 days in a row just to convince your mom that YouTube is a thing, you know, which you just don’t have to do anymore.
“It was just a different time for us.”
When Urooj Khan won a prize playing the $1 million Chicago lottery, he was obviously in high spirits.
However, in a surprising turn of events, the 46-year-old dry cleaning businessman ended up dead a few weeks later.
Back in 2012, Khan bought a winning ticket that offered him the prize of $600,000. After agreeing to take the lump sum, he took home almost $425,000 after taxes.
Speaking of his winnings at the time, Khan, who was originally from India, said: “Winning the lottery means everything to me.”
He added that he would put some of his winnings into his business and donate money to a children’s hospital.
His winner’s cheque was issued on July 19, the day before he died, but was cashed on August 15.
Urooj Khan bought a winning ticket that offered him the prize of $600,000. (Getty Stock Image)
Khan bought the lucky ticket from a 7-Eleven shop in June that same year. However, just weeks later his death would arise suspicion.
Initially it was believed he had died of natural causes. However, an autopsy was carried out after one of his relatives brought their concerns to the police.
As a result, the Chicago Police Department launched an investigation into Khan’s death. Following a toxicology report it was confirmed that he died due to cyanide poisoning.
“It’s pretty unusual,” Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina said, commenting on the rarity of cyanide poisonings. “I’ve had one, maybe two cases out of 4,500 autopsies I’ve done.”
Poisons expert Deborah Blum spoke to the Associated Press at the time and said cyanide would taste strongly bitter.
The Chicago Police Department launched an investigation into his death. (Illinois Lottery)
She said: “It essentially kills you in this explosion of cell death, you feel like you’re suffocating.”
The expert explained that ingesting cyanide disrupts the ability of cells to transport oxygen around the body, causing a sudden, violent death. A lethal dose can kill someone in just five minutes.
Khan’s wife, Shabana Ansari, spoke to local media about how he became ill.
She said he became unwell around 3am, approximately six hours post-dinner. Ansari mentioned that he was in severe distress before he collapsed.
“I can’t believe he’s no longer with me,” she said.
Ansari described him as a ‘great person’, before adding: “Nobody could be his enemies.”
Over a decade since the incident and, despite an investigation, no arrests have been made in connection to the death.
Someone who won a Mega Millions jackpot has revealed that winning the huge amount of money isn’t as good as you’d expect.
Okay, I’m sure many of us would agree that our lives would be substantially better if we had a vast amount of money in our bank accounts, but is all that comes with being rich a good thing?
Well, this person’s experience seems to have been both good and bad.
Taking to Reddit yesterday (September 9), an anonymous poster opened the floor for people to ask questions about what it’s like winning a Mega Millions jackpot.
They wrote: “In 2016, I won the MegaMillions jackpot and took home, after taxes, mid-eight figures. Ask me anything!!!”
Like many of us would do if we all of a sudden became drastically richer, this jackpot winner offered to financially help out their family – but things quickly turned sour.
Discussing some of the lifestyle changes they’ve faced post-win, the Redditor shared: “After I won, I met with my parents and siblings. I told them what had happened and made the offer to set each of them up with a new house and to establish trusts for each of my nieces and nephews to attend university.
“They filed a lawsuit to try to place me in conservatorship to take control of my asset.”
The Redditor says they won the Mega Millions jackpot in 2016 (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A judge ‘laughed them out of the courtroom’, however, and the person has since cut all ties with their family.
Asking what their relationship was like with their family before they won an eight-figure sum, the winner replied: “My family was always toxic and the relationship was always strained. I expected them to not be satisfied with the offer I made to them, but I didn’t expect a legal knife in the back.”
While falling out with your family is never an easy situation, this person said that their mental health has ‘improved exponentially’ since becoming estranged from them.
They discussed the matter on Reddit and let others ask them questions (Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
And it wasn’t just their family that tried to sponge off them, their friends did so too.
“I also approached a group of friends with a proposal to start a logistics consulting firm,” they explained. “I offered my friends six-figure salaries, profit sharing and bonuses. They said no, but asked me for the cash instead.”
Now the Redditor has changed their name and hasn’t spoken to any of their family and friends since.
