Amassing 60.1 million subscribers on YouTube was enough for one investor to say “Let’s Goooo!” to the popular “Dude Perfect” YouTube channel to the tune of $100 million to $300 million.
The channel that first went viral with its videos of basketball trick shots and has since racked up 17 billion views on videos featuring stunts from flipping water bottles on staircases and game tables to stereotypical behavior on the beach scored a nine-figure cash infusion from private equity firm Highmount Capital.
Comparing the idea behind the 15-year-old channel to the births of WWE, Netflix and even Disney, Highmount Capital said in a statement that “sometimes the unobvious ideas are the ones that transform our culture. We believe this type of transformation is occurring right now within the creator economy.”
Highmount called Dude Perfect a “media juggernaut at the intersection of sports and comedy” that has “captured the imagination of fans with billions of views, partnerships with leading companies, a top selling toy line, and a global live tour.”
The channel is the 34th most popular on YouTube, according to data from Social Blade. CNBC said the Frisco, Texas-based channel has 25 employees and has inked a series of brand partnerships, including their own smoothie at Smoothie King, a line of Nerf products and even their own board game. They plan a retail store, their own streaming platform launch and have even talked about building a $100 million theme park.
Top athletes, celebrities and sponsors already work with the channel — one recent video featured one of the Dudes trying to hit a baseball thrown by World Series champion pitcher José LeClerc of MLB’s Texas Rangers — Highmont said in its statement, which added that the private equity firm aims to “invest in transformational companies.”
“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,” Coby Cotton, one of the Dude Perfect founders, told CNBC. “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.”
In addition to Coby Cotton, the Dude Perfect team includes Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney, Garret Hilbert and Cody Jones. The dudes met in 2009 at Texas A&M University.
Highmount noted that the total addressable market for the creator economy has grown to $250 billion from almost zero 10 year sago — and cited a Goldman Sachs report that said it could reach $480 billion by 2027. YouTube alone contributes $35 billion to the US economy and supports the equivalent of 400,000 jobs, the statement said.
The investment firm also pointed to the growing impact that online influencers have on consumers, and to the fact that large brands from Visa to pro sports teams are shifting significant advertising and brand partnership spending to creators.
“While it wasn’t obvious at first, Dude Perfect is transforming from YouTubers to a media powerhouse,” the company said, most notably because it has “built an exceptionally loyal and trusted brand with one of the most coveted categories — kids and families.”
Highmount said its investment is the start of a long-term partnership that will involve building a management team that can capitalize on current and future opportunities and help Dude Perfect engage with their fans “in new and magical ways.” While the company said it was putting “nine figures of capital” into the venture, CNBC put the price tag between $100 million and $300 million.
“Whether it’s toys, or food and beverage or whatever, it’s really just letting families bond with you and with each other,” Highmount Capital co-founder Jason Illian told CNBC. “They built such a tremendous business now that we want to run in parallel with those and let those grow even faster.”
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