MrBeast's $5.2B creator empire is staring down its first Hollywood-style labor war. Beast Industries inked a union deal Monday covering more than 500 Beast Games crew with IATSE, but by Thursday the Teamsters were threatening a Friday-morning strike that would freeze production in Greenville, North Carolina. Two unions in two weeks. The YouTube kid is officially a TV studio, and the guilds have noticed.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- IATSE landed a contract covering 500+ Beast Games Season 3 crew on May 11, with back pay and benefits for pre-production work already completed.
- Days later, Teamsters Locals 391 and 399 set a 6 AM Friday strike deadline over drivers, scouts, location managers, and dispatchers not covered by the IATSE deal.
- Beast Industries offered a 50% + 1 crew poll to recognize the Teamsters. The unions called it a stalling tactic and walked away.
- Beast Industries now carries a $5.2B valuation and projects $1.6B in 2026 revenue. At that scale, every Hollywood guild treats you as a TV studio.
- The first creator-economy operation built on YouTube has been pulled into a full Hollywood-style labor confrontation. It will not be the last.
What actually happened?
On May 11, IATSE announced a contract covering 500+ crew on Season 3 of Beast Games, the $10 million Prime Video competition now shooting in Greenville. Beast Industries had opened the season non-union after Season 2 ran under an IATSE agreement, triggering a coordinated organizing push from members and Locals across the country. The new deal includes back pay and benefits for completed pre-production work and extends to subsequent seasons. It is the first time a creator-native operation has signed an IATSE contract of this scale.
Then the Teamsters showed up. North Carolina's Local 391 and Hollywood's Local 399, run by principal officer Lindsay Dougherty, want a separate agreement covering drivers, location managers, scouts, dispatchers, and mechanics, classifications the IATSE deal does not include. They argue Seasons 1 and 2 already paid Teamster-level rates for those roles, so Season 3 should codify it.
A 6 AM Friday strike deadline was set. Beast Industries offered a crew poll requiring 50% plus one to trigger Teamster recognition, which the unions rejected as outside card-check norms and a stalling tactic.
Why does this matter for creators?
Beast Industries is not a YouTube shop anymore. PitchBook lists a $5.2B valuation following a late-2025 round, and Jimmy Donaldson has projected $1.6 billion in 2026 revenue. That is mid-tier studio territory in everything but origin story.
MrBeast still runs the most-subscribed YouTube channel on the planet, with roughly 485M subscribers. But the labor fight is not happening on YouTube. It is happening on a Greenville set where the show is a TV production by every legal and structural definition that matters to a guild.
When your show employs hundreds of crew and lives on a major streamer, every guild that has spent fifty years organizing entertainment labor will treat it as television. The carve-outs creators built their careers avoiding do not survive at this scale. IATSE got there first. The Teamsters, who cover the workforce IATSE does not, are not in the mood to give ground to a creator-economy exception.
"Organizing season three of Beast Games boiled down to IATSE solidarity in this difficult production environment. Members are showing that they have the strength to stand together to maintain standards in the face of repeated attacks on their livelihoods by greedy employers."
Michael F. Miller, Jr., Director, IATSE Motion Picture & Television Production Department
Where does this go from here?
The backdrop is brutal. Beast Games Season 1 drew 50M viewers in its first 25 days on Prime Video, making it the platform's most-watched unscripted debut ever, with half the audience coming from outside the United States. It also drew a class-action lawsuit in September 2024 alleging denied food, water, and medication, sexual harassment, unpaid wages, and a crew injury where a worker reportedly received $1,000 in gift cards after a tower section fell on him.
The production carries a labor reputation. The unions have been waiting.
Lindsay Dougherty's Local 399 represents more than 6,500 below-the-line workers across film and television. She did not become the first female head of the Hollywood Teamsters by accepting card-check workarounds. If the Friday deadline expires without a deal, Greenville production halts and a precedent gets set: creator-economy productions at TV scale are union territory, full stop. The next YouTuber building a streamer competition show will be negotiating with Locals before the first contestant arrives.
What does Fanvault think?
The Hollywood labor stack is the price of crossing into Hollywood, and unions, insurance, and location agreements are the real bill a $5 billion creator company now carries every season. Fanvault was built on the opposite bet, that the platforms winning in 2026 are the ones that let creators keep 92% of their economics directly, through a storefront, an auction, a subscription, a paid DM, without ever having to negotiate with Local 391 at six in the morning. MrBeast can afford this fight. Most creators cannot, and they should not be building toward a future where they have to.
The first creator economy union war is here. The next one will not be Jimmy Donaldson's.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Teamsters' actual demand on Beast Games?
The Teamsters want a separate agreement covering drivers, location managers, scouts, dispatchers, and mechanics on Beast Games Season 3, the classifications IATSE's contract does not include. They argue Seasons 1 and 2 already paid Teamster-level rates for those roles, so Season 3 should codify it. Beast Industries proposed a crew poll requiring 50% + 1 to trigger Teamster recognition, which Locals 391 and 399 rejected as outside card-check norms.
Why didn't the IATSE deal cover everyone on the production?
IATSE covers below-the-line crew like camera, grips, electric, art, sound, and editorial. The Teamsters cover transportation and location work: drivers, scouts, dispatchers, location managers, and animal wranglers. They are different unions with different jurisdictions, so an IATSE-only deal does not automatically apply to Teamster classifications.
How big is Beast Industries now?
Beast Industries is valued at roughly
What does this mean for other creator-led productions?
It means the union baseline has been set. The minute a creator-led operation scales to hundreds of crew and a major streamer, IATSE and the Teamsters will treat it as television and organize accordingly. The next YouTube-native creator running a $10M streamer competition will be negotiating with Locals before the first contestant arrives. The era of treating creator-economy productions as Hollywood-adjacent carve-outs is over.