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I am fascinated by the number of people that I know who actively use YouTube as their primary source of entertainment. It feels like the next frontier of breakout stars and content creation is fully upon us. Well, it has been for years now, but I think advertisers and investors are finally catching up to the market demand. Channels like Mr. Beast, Ryan’s World, and Like Nastya make bank every year, with ad revenue, sponsors, merchandise, and more. I have friends and relatives – all Millennials if that makes any difference – who use YouTube for 90% of what they watch.
Dude Perfect is another popular YouTube group, and the latest to score some big capital for their business venture. The channel, which has more than 60 million subscribers, is made up of five men out of Frisco, Texas, and has been around since 2009. The group has done TV appearances, scored brand deals with companies like Smoothie King and Nerf, and done live tours. Just like Mr. Beast, they have a full operation with 25 employees. And not to bury the lede here, but they just secured an investment from a private investment firm to the tune of somewhere between $100 and $300 million.
Popular YouTube group Dude Perfect, which first rose to popularity for its basketball trick shots, has secured a significant nine-figure investment, in the range of $100 million to $300 million, from private investment firm Highmount Capital. The investment will support Dude Perfect’s exploration of new strategic opportunities and expansion beyond the creator economy.
“We’re really excited to try to unlock some of the vision and stuff that we were afraid would only be dreams up to this point,” says Coby Cotton, a co-founder at Dude Perfect. “We’re really just looking to scale a lot of the things that up until now, we’ve just never even had anywhere close to the capability to do.”
Dude Perfect has five members – Coby Cotton, Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney, Garret Hilbert and Cody Jones. They met at Texas A&M University and launched their YouTube channel in 2009. The videos went viral, leading to television appearances, brand deals with major advertisers, and live tours. The Dude Perfect YouTube channel has over 60 million subscribers with over 17 billion views. It’s the 35th most-subscribed channel, according to data from Social Blade.
Dude Perfect is more than just a YouTube channel. With a team of 25 employees based in their headquarters in Frisco, Texas, they have secured various brand partnerships, including their own smoothie at Smoothie King, a line of Nerf products, and even their own board game.
“Whether it’s toys, or food and beverage or whatever, it’s really just letting families bond with you and with each other,” said Highmount Capital co-founder Jason Illian. “They built such a tremendous business now that we want to run in parallel with those and let those grow even faster.”
The investment is in a long-term hold structure. Highmount Capital plans to be a long-term financial partner with Dude Perfect and sees the group expand outside of posting online. The team’s future has been dubbed “Dude Perfect 2.0” and consists of plans to open a retail store, to launch a streaming platform, introduce a line of toys and games in Walmart, and even envisions a $100 million theme park.
“It will be continued watching, but also give families, in particular, a chance to touch and feel what they’ve come to love from Dude Perfect,” said Cotton. The Dude Perfect team has become adept at family-friendly entertainment, which has been key in attracting more advertisers on YouTube.
“The next generation is not coming in and flipping on cable TV,” said Illian. “They’re pulling in their phones, and they’re subscribing, they’re following. And these are the people they’re listening to.”
Dang, that is a lot of money to build out their brand. A retail store, streaming platform, Walmart line, and maybe even a theme park? That is bonkers! Although it’s been around for almost 20 years, YouTube still feels a little bit like the last new at-home entertainment frontier, you know? (I’m not including TikTok or other apps that you use to consume content from your phone.) People can create, share, and own their content at relatively low overhead to begin with while learning to navigate the algorithm to gain traction. It reminds me of what blogs did back in the early 2,000s. And if you can parlay that into a nine-figure investment deal, then that’s the dream right there.
I had to chuckle at that list of their names…You can hardly get any more Texan than that! 😆 (I say this as someone married to a Texan)
100% same reaction!
LOL same
The only more Texas name i can think of is Rooster Macconaughy
Dude perfect actually did the admin work on a fundraising race at my kids’ elementary school. I had never heard about them before and was pleasantly surprised with how well everything worked out. It seems they have their fingers in a lot of pots.
Same at my kid’s school! The kiddos loved the Dude Perfect fundraising prizes .
I just recently saw a Dude Perfect/Smoothie King billboard outside of Nashville.
I have no idea who they are, im a young genXer and always thought my kids were waisting time watching youtube, but they knew, and I know now, youtube is great
I am practically a dinosaur and I love YouTube. Yoga with Adriene Jessica Valant and The Girl with The Pilates Mat are my faves. I have had such improvements to my physical health and it’s free. 😚
Have you tried Heather Robertson?
I haven’t but I will check it out. Thanks for the tip
LOVE Jessica Valant Pilates! I think I was informed about her on Celebitchy a couple of years ago!
YouTube is my go-to for workouts. Jessica for Pilates and FitbyMik for weights. Awesome!
Yoga with Adriene (and Benji!) all the way! Plus, as an old, I’ve got a friend my age whose main source of entertainment is YouTube. She’ll be thrilled to know she’s cutting edge!
I love Yoga with Adrienne! I do her Bedtime 20 minute routine every night to stretch and wind down.
Newspapers and magazines soon discovered that when the real money came along Google started taking all the money for themselves Good luck to them
Good for these guys!
My boomer husband is on YouTube for hours daily. He watches investment, body hacking and Pandas (the childhood illness not bears) videos on 1.5 speed and then gives me the cliffs notes. I use it for range of motion, surfing and lifting videos and meditation. I’ve taught yoga since 2003 and often recommend Yoga w Adriene to beginners as it is such a solid channel. My 9 year old and I watch Mr beast and AliA and Roblox gamers together.
We don’t pay for ad free so if our family is any indicator YouTube is still in its growth phase. No way it’s maxed out.
I have never heard of Dude Perfect. Like, ever. After reading the excerpt here I still don’t know what Dude Perfect is or what they do (other than create videos). So while I’m happy for them I’m surprised at how poorly written this article is. It makes me wonder if the journalist used AI to do the bulk of the writing and they did some editing.
Ditto. I have no idea what their channel is about or what content they offer. I just see that they’re Aggies living in Frisco and assume it’s something right wing (bc Frisco, which I knew when there was nothing but a grocery store there, is the heart of MAGA land and Aggies tend to be very conservative).
Looking at the slideshow that I assume is from their offices I was wondering if they employ anyone other than white men.
And really, their name is ‘Dude Perfect’. Not even interested.
Same. I doubt it’s a channel for me, regardless, based on the name, but want to now what this allegedly extremely popular thing is.
Just a reminder behind the smiles: Dude Perfect are fundamentalist Christians.
I was definitely getting a trumper vibe as soon as they said “Texas A&M.” The doofy names just confirmed it.
People can’t help what names they get. You can hate Trump and not be an asshole that looks down on people for their name. Boo on them for being fundamentalist, that’s disappointing but not surprising. They do trick shots and reaction videos, so making a basket shooting from the top of a football stadium type of thing. I prefer them over a lot of YouTube crap. They had a video channel of some kind that bars subscribed to, where it’s just folks doing amazing feats in their sports.
Figures. I noticed all the references to ‘family’ entertainment.
my husband watches them occasionally but I don’t see the appeal at all. They’re so LOUD. Plus they seem super fratty.
Now I know that as well I’ll definitely be encouraging him to turn off.
Ugh, so gross. Oh well, that saves me the effort of looking for their videos.