Despite his immense popularity and online presence, Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) has never been the most subscribed channel on YouTube — though that may not be the case for long. T-Series, India’s largest music label and movie studio, currently holds the top spot with 263 million YouTube subscribers, but MrBeast is rapidly closing in on that figure with 252 million subs.
With its leading position now threatened, T-Series published a new video on Monday encouraging viewers to subscribe to the channel. It opens with the quote “I want to put India and my people at the top of the international platform,” attributed to T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar (who passed away in 1997), before calling for prospective subscribers to “make history together.”
The video itself doesn’t mention MrBeast directly, but the call to action stands out among the usual music videos and film trailers posted by T-Series. Subscriber stats for both accounts also show a contrast in growth — while MrBeast has gained seven million subscribers in the last month, T-Series only attracted two million. Annual figures reported by Tubefilter are similar, with the 23 million subs T-Series gained over the last year being vastly eclipsed by MrBeast’s 105 million.
There’s been some lighthearted rivalry between MrBeast and T-Series since then, with the former vowing to take the top spot in PewDiePie’s honor. And with MrBeast now venturing outside of YouTube to host a $5 million Beast Games gameshow with Prime Video, his audience will likely expand enough to achieve that goal.