The world’s most popular YouTuber has opened a pop-up theme park in Saudi Arabia, part of the kingdom’s Riyadh Season 2025, reports Newsweek.
MrBeast, whose YouTube channel crossed the 100-billion-view mark this month, is on a PR blitz to promote his latest project: Beast Land, a theme park combining traditional thrill rides with the elaborate endurance challenges that made his channel famous. “One of the top requests I get is: I want to be in a MrBeast video”, the 27-year-old content creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, told Reuters. “So now (we are) creating that in real life.”
Participants can compete across a variety of games including Tower Siege, Battle Bridge and Maze Run. Daily cash prizes go to the top three scorers, with a grand prize for the highest overall score by 27 December. More than US$533,000 will be awarded across the event’s run.
[See more: Human rights organisations decry Saudi World Cup announcement]
The pop-up theme park is part of the latest edition of Riyadh Season, an annual, months-long event billed as one of the world’s largest entertainment festivals. Other notable events for the sixth edition include the Six Kings Slam tennis tournament, a ‘Night of Champions’ boxing match, the Supercoppa Italiana, the WWE Royal Rumble and Fanatics Flag Football Classic, featuring current and former NFL players and coaches.
Riyadh Season, first held in 2019, is part of a larger push by the kingdom to transform its oil-dependent economy and shed its international reputation as an austere, conservative Islamic state. But many accuse the Saudi government of using sports and entertainment spectacles to distract from its continued human rights abuses.
The Riyadh Comedy Festival in September, for example, featured dozens of famous American comedians from Dave Chappelle to Pete Davidson over its multi-week run. Human Rights Watch accused the kingdom of using the event, which coincided with the anniversary of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal assassination by Saudi authorities, to “deflect attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations”.
