MrBeast, the YouTube superstar known for his challenge videos, has a new trial on his hands: negotiating a union contract with IATSE.
The YouTuber’s Amazon Prime Video competition show Beast Games has voluntarily recognized an IATSE union and is negotiating a labor contract, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Negotiations are taking place after a group of crew members on the set of the show’s third season began organizing with the crew union. Filming is primarily taking place in the hometown of Mr Beast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson: Greenville, North Carolina.
Beast Games, a spectacle of over-the-top competition, offers 1,000 contestants the chance to win a $5 million prize with other high-value prizes being doled out in the process. THR has reached out to MrBeast and Prime Video for comment.
The unionizing push is a high-visibility one for IATSE, which has sought to adapt to a changing entertainment landscape by targeting YouTube and new media content, video games and visual-effects work for organizing. While Beast Games is in effect a traditional competition show produced in part by a streamer, its host and executive producer is an icon of YouTube, with 483 million subscribers on the platform.
That popularity has translated into streaming success, at least according to Prime Video. The platform reported that Beast Games became its most-viewed unscripted series in history, with around 50 million viewers, after its debut in 2025. Prime Video game Beast Games a two-season renewal in the spring of 2025.
But there have been growing pains for the MrBeast brand in the process, with the first season of the show marred by allegations, reported by The New York Times, that a promotional shoot in Las Vegas, where 2,000 candidates were whittled down to 1,000, did not provide enough food or appropriate medical care. A contract for this shoot, according to the Times, stated, “I understand that such activities may cause me death, illness, or serious bodily injury, including, but not limited to exhaustion, dehydration, overexertion, burns, and heat stroke.”
A MrBeast spokesperson told THR at the time that the filming was “unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues” and that a review process had been initiated. The subsequent production on the first season, primarily based in Canada, did have telecommunications union NABET-CWA on set.
Season two of Beast Games debuted on Jan. 7 and concluded on Feb. 25.
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