- Amazon's "Beast Games" show with the YouTuber MrBeast has faced safety concerns and negative press.
- The show, announced in March, was meant to boost Amazon's video ad sales with a $5 million prize.
- Insiders say the show was risky from the start, with the streamer ceding control to MrBeast's team.
Amazon's coming reality show with YouTube's biggest star, Jimmy Donaldson, known online as MrBeast, was supposed to be a bold bet on the future of TV. But it's started to turn into a massive headache for the tech giant.
Amazon announced the show, called "Beast Games," in March and said it would offer a $5 million cash prize — believed to be the biggest in TV history. It seemed like a coup for Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon MGM Studios, who needed a hit, especially as Prime Video was about to make its first big pitch to the TV-ad-sales community.
"We are excited to work with Jimmy and his talented team to bring his brilliant, high production, and stakes-raising concepts to 'Beast Games' for our global customers to experience," Salke said at the time. "Beast Games" was part of a celebrity-studded slate Amazon presented at its TV-upfronts debut in May.
But a public-relations catastrophe surrounding the show — and a reckoning around Donaldson — have raised questions about its advertising prospects and launch date.
Two Amazon insiders said the show faced risks from the start, with Amazon agreeing to give Donaldson creative control and approval over ad sponsors as part of its effort to land the deal during a competitive bidding process.
"We really need a hit," one Amazon insider said. "So they just let him do whatever." The insiders spoke with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the show.
Amazon declined to comment to BI.
"Beast Games" was supposed to kick-start Amazon's video-ad-sales efforts, attracting a wide audience and advertiser appeal. Despite being a dominant spender on entertainment content, Prime Video has faced questions about its popularity with viewers. Nielsen's The Gauge indicated the service accounted for 3.1% of streaming-TV viewing in June, after YouTube's 9.9% and Netflix's 8.4%.
One top ad-holding-company buyer briefed on Amazon's pitch for "Beast Games" earlier in the spring told BI he was impressed but described it as expensive compared with other prominent TV-show sponsorships. Amazon pitched the show as a sponsorship with the chance to have products integrated into it for advertisers spending upward of $10 million.
"They're getting smart about packaging," the buyer, who asked for anonymity to discuss private negotiations, said. "They're starting to act like a TV player."
The agency ultimately ended up passing, the buyer said.
But the positive sentiment around the show was thrown into question when The New York Times dropped a bombshell report this month centering on safety concerns about the production of "Beast Games." The Times reported that over a dozen people who participated in the show's first installment said that they didn't get enough food or medical care and that some competitors were injured from the physical challenges. Donaldson's camp, repped by the crisis-PR pro Matthew Hiltzik, said only a handful of people were injured and blamed a lot of execution problems on local staffers in Vegas hired to handle shooting for the show.
Whatever the cause, the negative press attention couldn't have helped the show's advertising prospects. The first Amazon insider said that the streamer had been close to closing deals but that people in the company suspected that the controversy had been hampering the negotiations.
"It's going to be a mess," this person added.
A second Amazon insider said producers were already talking about making a Fyre Fest-like documentary about "Beast Games."
The controversy raises questions about what happens next for 'Beast Games'
A complicated reality show like "Beast Games" would typically go through careful legal vetting to identify and manage inherent risks — something Amazon's own reality-show experts who work on hits like "Shark Tank" and "Survivor" would know.
"All you do is go through worst-case scenarios and work backwards from there," the second Amazon insider said.
In this case, MrBeast's team was in control — not Amazon.
With the show in production and a lot of money on the line — Puck reported that Amazon had paid nearly $100 million for the show — it's hard to imagine "Beast Games" getting canceled. But Mike Hopkins, the senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, is all over the situation, the two insiders said. One added that there'd been discussions of pushing the still unannounced launch date to distance it from the PR fiasco.
The insiders said they also worried that the situation could give Amazon higher-ups an excuse to cut Amazon MGM Studios' budget for unscripted shows, or entertainment spending altogether, especially as live sports are becoming costlier and devouring a bigger share of media companies' content spending.
Amazon is still one of the biggest spenders on content these days as other media companies cut back. Citing an estimate from Ampere Analysis, Reuters reported that the company is thought to have increased spending by $1.7 billion, to $13.6 billion, on sports and entertainment content. The report added that Amazon planned to more than double its theatrical releases, to 16 in 2027 from six in 2024.
Amazon has made a largely positive impression on advertisers in selling ads in Prime Video, thanks to the platform's big ad-supported audience, large sports footprint, and prices that are competitive with other streamers. Amazon also has a broad portfolio, including Twitch and Wondery, that advertisers can use to extend their ad buys, and the ability to tie ads to sales results.
"They seem like Teflon," a third Amazon insider said of the company's ability to survive controversies and the likelihood that it could shrug off the MrBeast drama.
