It's been a rough few weeks for MrBeast and things are only getting worse, as Cristiano Ronaldo has broken his record as the fastest-growing channel on YouTube by gaining 20 million subscribers in 24 hours.
MrBeast—real name Jimmy Donaldson—holds the record for the most subscribers on YouTube, with 311 million at the time of writing. According to Forbes, in 2022 he was earning $54 million a year, mostly from ads on his YouTube videos.
The YouTuber has been lauded online for his generosity and the quality of the content he's produced but in recent weeks, he has been referred to as a "fraud" by some for allegedly staging content and accused of knowingly hiring a registered sex offender.
Now Ronaldo could take his crown as the person with the most subscribers on the platform.
Newsweek emailed spokespeople for MrBeast and Ronaldo for comment on Friday outside of normal business hours.
After Ronaldo announced his new YouTube channel, UR Cristiano, to his 636 million Instagram followers on August 21, his subscriber count grew instantly. Ronaldo reached 10 million subscribers in 12 hours, whereas it took MrBeast 132 days to hit that milestone on one of his channels.
Within 24 hours that number had jumped to 20 million. Comparatively, MrBeast's record for the largest single-day subscriber growth was close to 2.1 million.
Since Ronaldo gained so many followers in such a short time frame, YouTube rewarded him with a Golden Play Button—which is given to YouTubers with over one million subscribers—within the day.
The soccer star's follower count has kept growing and at the time of writing, his channel had 30.8 million subscribers.
British broadcaster Piers Morgan even shared his thoughts on the news. Resharing a post on X that read "Mr. Beast set the YouTube record of gaining over 20M subscribers in a 28 days period. Cristiano Ronaldo beat it in ONE day," Morgan added: "Nuts!"
Ronaldo has an incredibly loyal fan base who helped him reach this impressive milestone. After his channel was announced, the soccer player's fans flooded the comment section of MrBeast's video "7 Days Stranded In A Cave," uploaded on August 17.
"Ronaldo Is Coming [laugh crying emoji]," one comment reads
"Mr Beast vs Cristiano is ready to start," said another.
This news comes after MrBeast has found himself embroiled in controversy after controversy. The Youtuber issued an apology after a video resurfaced online of him using racial and homophobic slurs. He acknowledged the video in a statement provided to Variety by his representative.
On top of this, a person claiming to have worked for MrBeast accused the social media star of having prior knowledge of the allegations that have been leveled against his collaborator Ava Kris Tyson.
Tyson, who made regular appearances on his channel, has faced scrutiny for her interactions with someone using the social media handle LavaGS which started when he was 13 and Tyson was 20.
This isn't the only concerning allegation that has arisen as another former employee—who goes by the username DogPack404 on YouTube—accused MrBeast of hosting "illegal lotteries" and staging content, while another accused him of knowingly hiring a registered sex offender.
In a video on the platform, DogPack404 interviewed former MrBeast employee Jake Weddle, in which Weddle claims that in the past, MrBeast knowingly employed a registered sex offender.
The allegations don't end there. On August 2, a New York Times article reported on the alleged poor treatment of contestants on the set of Beast Games, a real-life version of Netflix's hit show Squid Game. According to the publication, over a dozen former contestants said that "they had not received adequate food or medical care and that some competitors had suffered injuries from the physical challenges."
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