Football star Cristiano Ronaldo recently joined forces with the YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, and crashed viewership from the start. The video is an interview of the football icon from around the world with the number one YouTuber, receiving more than 4 million views in just three hours to show the immense power of both personalities.
Portuguese 5-time Ballon d’Or winner Ronaldo, who currently has 281m followers on Instagram, 158m on Facebook, and 80m on Twitter, created his channel in the first half of this year. Within just several months, Moe managed to achieve the subscribers’ count of 67.5 million people, thus becoming a record holder of growth rate on the platform.
Controversial YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson aka Mr. Beast, who staged and donated $100,000 to charity in a single video in mid-2021, seemed surprised at how quickly Ronaldo has had his back. “I expected 20-30 million subscribers in the first month,” he said. I was utterly surprised when you reached the population of 60 million. The prior record for monthly addition was of 20 million—and that was us!”
Such partnership proves that Ronaldo remains a marketable icon beyond football playing circles. Cristiano Ronaldo lost his place in Europe’s best clubs, but his popularity around the world has not diminished. He is now still able to gain audiences’ attention through different forms of media and makes him more and more a part of popular culture.
For MrBeast, the partnership shows how sports and digital entertainment can bolster each other, and this is arguably the new model for global media entertainment of the future. But by doing so, this duo has raised a high bar for creation and celebrities who aim to entertain viewers all across the world.
