Why Most Celebrity YouTube Channels Fail (And The Ones That Don't)

Colin (0:00)

Round one, we have Cristiano Ronaldo's channel with 83 million subscribers against Kevin Hart's new golf channel with 83,000.

Samir (0:08)

All right, so today, we are ranking celebrity YouTube channels in search for the best celebrity YouTuber. Now, this is a conversation that we've been having in our office, probably this whole year, as we've seen more and more celebrities join YouTube. So we're bringing you into this conversation. We're also bringing our team into the conversation. We got Kish.

Kish (0:27)

What's going on?

Samir (0:28)

We got Sid. And we have producer Connor. Yo, Kish, what are we looking for?

Kish (0:32)

The goal should be that the one who wins and comes out on top is the blueprint for every celebrity YouTube channel. Every celebrity who's thinking about starting a channel should see the winner and be like, that is how we do it.

Connor (0:43)

There's also a lot to learn from good and bad celebrity YouTube channels. They make a lot of mistakes. So we will illuminate what's actually good, whether you're a celebrity or not.

Samir (0:52)

So the one who wins is going to get five new subscribers.

Kish (0:56)

Definitely, lock in, stay tuned, whip out the notebook, and you'll be in for a wild ride.

Colin (1:02)

All right, let's get into it.

Samir (1:03)

Let's do it.

Colin (1:03)

We're starting off with the one seed, Cristiano Ronaldo, against 16 seed, Kevin Hart. So Cristiano Ronaldo's channel gets pretty messy. It is a mixture of-

Samir (1:15)

Wow, was that a-

Colin (1:17)

Oh, that was crazy.

Samir (1:18)

That was crazy.

Colin (1:19)

That was crazy.

Samir (1:20)

Yeah, that's crazy. Crazy jab.

Connor (1:22)

That must have been planned.

Colin (1:24)

It is a mixture of vlogs, training footage, and the weirdest part is trailers for things he is vaguely involved in. He invested in this MMA company, WOW, and he just posts trailers and event highlights that he's not in just on the channel.

Sid (1:45)

He falls into a category for me, and I think we're going to see a lot of creators like this, and I'm calling it the third-person YouTube channel, where it is not the celebrity presenting themselves as a creator. It is the celebrity aggregate dumping ground, as Connor said, where it doesn't feel like he is there to connect with the audience. It feels largely promotional.

Samir (2:08)

Well, it's them understanding themselves as a TV channel, right?

Sid (2:14)

But it doesn't feel like he has anything to do with this.

Samir (2:16)

But if you can accrue 83 million subscribers, the assumption is, all right, we can put something out. I mean, it's not that many views compared to the subscribers he has, but that wow promo video has 460,000 views. It's kind of interesting to just think, like, where would you have put that otherwise in a previous world?

Sid (2:37)

And doesn't need to go anywhere at all?

Samir (2:38)

You'd run it as like an ad or something. Okay, this is besides the point, because I agree, this is not good YouTube. There's one video, though, when I was looking at this channel that I think is interesting, which is Cristiano and Celine.

Kish (2:51)

Yeah, I saw that one too.

Samir (2:53)

The two minute one?

Connor (2:54)

Arguably the best video on this channel, because it's just raw, it's authentic, and it's something people actually would want to see.

Sid (3:01)

I felt the same way.

Connor (3:02)

A moment that a major, major creator on the platform, Celine, meets Cristiano Ronaldo. And they have a lot of backstory. You can go to her channel and watch the videos where she meets him.

And it clearly did really well. It has what, 34 million views?

Samir (3:15)

It feels like he could have had this moment with speed, too.

Kish (3:18)

I think the speed thing is definitely going to be, it can't just be this at this point. It's been built up to so much. It's got to be like a big stream, I think.

Connor (3:27)

But I think there's something to a format, potentially, of just like Cristiano meets, where it's just a fully raw moment that he meets people who are interesting.

Sid (3:35)

To that point, if that's all you can offer, though, to your audience is just meeting people.

Connor (3:40)

But obviously, that can go into conversation. It's just two interesting people meet.

Kish (3:45)

I think what we have to do with everything is, what is the vanilla of Ronaldo's channel? It's the life of a football player. So then when you get to that point, it's like, champions, what a night. I know the backstory of that. So he moved to Saudi Arabia to play in Sok, to play there. And for two years, he still couldn't win, even though he was like greatest player ever. And then they finally got it done. And your reward for that is a three-minute video.