Netflix signs up another YouTube star with Mark Rober deal

Former Nasa engineer Mark Rober has become the latest YouTube star to get his own Netflix deal.

The 45-year-old has more than 70 million subscribers on YouTube and is known for his videos about science and technology.

Rober has created a new competition series for the streamer, which he is making with US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s production company.

Rober is following in the footsteps of some other popular YouTubers – Netflix signed up children’s entertainer Ms Rachel earlier this year and struck a deal with British YouTubers The Sidemen in 2024.

Kimmel, who has featured Rober several times as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, said: “We can’t wait to introduce one of the best and brightest creators to Netflix.”

He added: “Mark’s videos are so clever and inventive, it’s easy to forget that they’re educational”.

Rober’s videos routinely rack up at least 10 million views, with many breaking the 100 million barrier.

Media consultant Jo Redfern said streaming giants like Netflix are signing up successful YouTubers because they have a proven track record and big fanbases.

“They’re not overnight successes, they’ve spent time building their audiences, iterating their content and looking at what works,” she told the BBC.

A lot of these content creators are “self-shooting producers, directors and editors [who] have a particular skill set that is unusual and lacking from a lot of streamers and broadcasters”, she said.

While Ms Rachel’s YouTube show was brought over to Netflix in its original format with four exclusive episodes, Rober will develop a completely original show for young audiences.

Animated show CoComelon, which started on YouTube in 2006, was acquired by Netflix in 2020 – but the company has recently chosen to not renew its deal.

The show, which has just under 200 million subscribers on YouTube, is now moving to Disney+.

The Sidemen, which is made up of seven British content creators, took their reality show Inside to Netflix and are also aiming to make a US version.

Speaking to the BBC last year, Vik Barn said he and the other Sidemen members had “hit the limit” of what they could achieve on YouTube.

Redfern said for creators like The Sidemen, who have been approached by streamers and broadcasters, “there is still an element of kudos and legitimacy to working with those platforms”.

“They [the creators] are smart operators and media businesses in their own right and they know that to be reliant on YouTube as their primary platform is risky,” she added.

They are keen to branch out because it might only take “an algorithm change to kick in” for their YouTube business models to be disrupted, Redfern said.

Making the switch from YouTube isn’t always plain sailing, though, as shown by Mr Beast’s 2024 Amazon Prime show Beast Games.

The series offered 1,000 participants the chance to win a $5m (£3.5m) prize and was advertised as the biggest live game show in the world.

However, a US lawsuit is still ongoing with a number of participants, who claim they were mistreated on set of the show.

Amazon reportedly invested $100m (£74m) in the first series but Mr Beast still says he went over budget during production.

Despite this, Beast Games has been renewed for two more seasons, according to Variety, which also said the series attracted 50 million viewers in the 25 days after its premiere.

Streaming giants and broadcasters regularly think about “where future fans are coming from”, said Redfern, but she added that there is a concern that young audiences may get “subscription fatigue”.

The benefit of YouTube is that it is free to access, which Redfern says “is very compelling”, while it also offers many creators under one roof.