Whether you subscribe to MrBeast or not, by now we’ve all heard of Beast Games – the most expensive game show in history.
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, has the most subscribers on YouTube – 362 million followers that he gained primarily through hosting his own competitions which involved him giving eye-watering sums of money away and incredible prizes, like an island in The Bahamas.
He’s given away tens of millions of dollars on his own, but for Beast Games he teamed up with Amazon Prime to award the winner of the show with $10 million… although there’s a catch.
Beast Games
First, let’s get into what the game show is and what it consists of.
Inspired by the Netflix series, Squid Game, the games stage elaborate challenges and tasks for participants.
In total there were 1,000 contestants competing in gruelling physical and mental challenges to be in with a chance of bagging the top prize fund, $10,000,000 – and with it airing on Amazon Prime in December, it has become the biggest ever cash prize in reality TV.
Spoiler alert! The finale saw the last standing six players which was then whittled down to just Jeffrey Randall Allen and Twana Barnett.
(X/@MrBeast)
Allen, who identified as player 831 in the game, had to guess which of the 10 briefcases in front of him had a $10 million cheque inside that had been concealed by Barnett.
He guessed correctly and eventually won the huge cash prize.
How much the winning contestant took home
After finding out he won the $10 million, he soon after discovered that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which administers and enforces US federal tax laws, actually staked claim to a large portion of it.
In fact, the taxman has taken home just under half of it.
Taking to Twitter, an account tweeted: “The winner of MrBeast’s $10,000,000 ‘Beast Games’ prize will only receive $5.03 million after taxes.”
It garnered a sharp response from MrBeast, he wrote in quotations ‘Only’ accompanied with a crying face emoji, suggesting that Allen wasn’t as hard-done by as the Tweet made out.
The ‘Solitary Experiment’ on the show (Amazon Prime Video)
Fans’ reaction to the cash prize
Thousands of fans flooded to the comments, with one posting: “Yeah, only. You have 10 million and they only got half. So it’s only relative to the stated amount. This is about how bad taxes are, not you.”
A second typed: “That’s still a HEFTY slice off the top even if there’s 5 mill left.”
With a third penning: “Same time.. 50% tax is pretty bonkers.. I can see 1/3rd at most. And the fact that were programmed to think 1/3 tax is a good deal, shows how far taxes have gone…”
Meanwhile, fans suggested the real winner was the IRS.
One joked: “Amazing. So technically IRS is also competing silently.”
“Congrats to the IRS for winning Beast Games,” another added.
