YouTube’s biggest star MrBeast is facing complaints about the safety of contestants from the preliminary round of his ambitious “Beast Games” game show, which boasts 1,000 competitors hoping for a $5 million grand prize.
Some contestants complained online and to other YouTube influencers that they lacked regular access to food, water and medication during early production at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and that some competitors were injured during the production.
A spokesperson for MrBeast said his team is reviewing the process and soliciting attendees’ feedback ahead of the next phase of production in Toronto.
The stakes for “Beast Games” aren’t just high for the contestants, but for MrBeast himself, whose real name Jimmy Donaldson, as well as the recipients of his brand of “stunt philanthropy” that often entails direct gifts of cash or even houses. The complaints about the “Beast Games” production coincide with Donaldson’s acknowledgement this week that he used racial and homophobic slurs years ago in recordings he made as a teenager.
The show, which has already been picked up by Amazon Prime Video to air in 240 countries, is part of Donaldson’s cultural expansion beyond YouTube — where his channel has 307 million subscribers, including countless young consumers who already purchase his Feastables line of candy or the burgers that bear his name.
“My goal is to make the greatest show possible and prove YouTubers and creators can succeed on other platforms,” Donaldson said in a March press release from Amazon.
Donaldson’s companies cast 2,000 people to take part in an initial tryout of sorts at Allegiant Stadium in July, with 1,000 of them presumably advancing to the actual show. Amazon Prime Video was not involved and did not respond to a request for comment.
A MrBeast spokesperson said Friday that the promotional video shoot was “unfortunately complicated” by extreme weather, the widespread CrowdStrike outage that wreaked global technological havoc and “other unexpected logistical and communications issues.”