YouTube sensation MrBeast is making his debut as a television host, with his controversial Amazon Prime show Beast Games landing on 19 December.
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, is the biggest YouTuber in the world and currently has more than 300 million subscribers to his account. Much of his content revolves around expensive stunts, featuring hundreds of people and philanthropy projects.
In March, he announced he was teaming up with Amazon MGM Studios to create a reality competition show called Beast Games. The show promises the winner a prize of $5m (£3.94m), the biggest prize in streaming and television history.
According to Amazon, it will see “1,000 contestants compete in nail-biting, physical, mental, and social challenges”.
The release adds: “Week by week, contestants will use their strength and wit to stay in the game, with the hope of being the multi-million-dollar winner.”
However, despite the sheer size of the production and the historic prize on offer, Beast Games has been dogged with controversy since it began shooting and is now facing a lawsuit lodged by five unhappy contestants.
The suit alleges that Amazon and MrBeast’s production company have failed to pay minimum wages and overtime; failed to prevent sexual harassment; subjected contestants to “infliction of emotional distress”; did not provide meal breaks, rest breaks or access to basic hygiene and that contestants were exposed to “dangerous circumstances and conditions as a condition of their employment”.
Inadequate food
In August, The New York Times reported that contestants on the show did not have adequate access to food and medical care.
“We signed up for the show, but we didn’t sign up for not being fed or watered or treated like human beings,” one contestant said on the condition of anonymity, as they had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
One meal, described by several different contestants, consisted of a small portion of cold oatmeal, a few pieces of raw vegetables and a single hard-boiled egg.
Contestants reported being fed these small meals twice a day, although a spokesperson for MrBeast maintained they had been offered three meals a day.
Complaints about medical care and hygiene
Several contestants said that they had sought out production staff for assistance with medical care, food and hygiene issues, only to find that staff members were unhelpful and seemed to be disorganised.
A lengthy report from Las Vegas 3 News on 26 September said that staff who worked on the show had called it “beyond embarrassing” and that it was the most “unprofessional” production they had ever worked on, with some calling for Donaldson to be “blacklisted”.
The report claims that contestants were not allowed to bring any belongings, including medication, with them into Allegiant Stadium, where 2000 contestants were based for a preliminary qualifying “episode” for the show intended for YouTube.
The majority of contestants were staying at the Rio and Luxor casinos where the production medics were also based but they had “no idea that [some contestants] were at other casinos”.
A medic named Mona claims “their stuff was supposed to be turned into us and never was” and that “everything was on the fly”. She added: “We didn’t have a real understanding of what they expected, or even if they knew what they were expecting. I don’t think that it was planned out because all the information was not given.”
Another contestant wrangler, Kara, who worked at Allegiant Stadium between 18-21 July, said there was also a huge sanitary issue with the portable toilets used on set.
She claims that she only saw the portable toilets emptied once during the four days on set which resulted in overflowing. Kara added on the third day: “We had a guy come up to us with his sleeping bag, and his sleeping bag was covered in excrement.”
Kara also said that an unnamed contestant wrangler was threatened with “termination” after they refused to clean up the mess, despite not being given the proper equipment to deal with human waste.
A third contestant wrangler, Hannah, who was in charge of guiding and coordinating contestants, said that she felt “unprofessional” after she was left without any call sheets and that she “should have had more protocols to help me [do my job]”.
She also claims that one contestant had a seizure and “they just left him there” with the incident only being brought to their attention an hour later with the community ambulance medical team then treating the patient.
MrBeast and Amazon sued for ‘chronic mistreatment’
In September, Variety reported that MrBeast and Amazon had been sued for “chronic mistreatment” and sexual harassment.
The suit alleges that Amazon and MrBeast’s production company have failed to pay minimum wages and overtime; failed to prevent sexual harassment; subjected contestants to “infliction of emotional distress”; did not provide meal breaks, rest breaks or access to basic hygiene and that contestants were exposed to “dangerous circumstances and conditions as a condition of their employment”.
In a statement, attorneys for the anonymous contestants said: “While participants knew upon signing the contract at the production’s inception that they were facing a potentially long and challenging competition, they allege getting a lot more than they bargained for.”
They added: “Several contestants ended up hospitalised, while others reported suffering physical and mental complications while being subjected to chronic mistreatment, degradation and, for the female contestants, hostile working conditions.”
A separate plaintiff, identified only as “Contestant 5”, said that she only joined Beast Games because she was a fan of MrBeast’s YouTube videos and that they made her “smile during the Covid-19 pandemic” but felt that she was treated like “less than nothing” while on the show.
She added: “As one of the women, I can say it absolutely felt like a hostile environment for us. We honestly could not have been respected less – as people, much less employees – if they tried.”
The lead counsel for the plaintiffs, Robert Pafundi, said in a statement: “As extreme as the allegations against defendants are here, the law could not be more clear. Participants entered into contracts and they were promised compensation for their services. Their expectation of compensation, along with them being consistently under the control and supervision of the production staff, makes them employees under California law. As such, they were entitled to and denied, certain protections. And when you add to that the extreme neglect, degradation, harassment and inhumane conditions — it’s quite simply a massive dereliction of duty, for which the defendants must and will now be held accountable.”
MrBeast responds
In a statement given to The Hollywood Reporter in August, a spokesperson for the YouTuber said: “The MrBeast promotional video shoot, which included over 2,000 participants, was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues, which we are currently reviewing, but we are grateful that virtually all of those invited to Toronto for our next production have enthusiastically accepted our invitation.”
“We have communicated directly with 97 per cent of the 2,000 people who attended to ask for feedback, have launched a formal review of the process, and have taken steps to ensure that we learn from this experience and we are excited to welcome hundreds of men and women to the world’s largest game show in history.”
Donaldson has not formally commented on the allegations but, on 25 November, he responded to a post on X/Twitter writing: “We have tons of behind-the-scenes [clips] 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.”
The Independent has contacted MrBeast and Amazon for comment.
