In the 15 years since they started doing trick-shot videos, Dude Perfect has blown up.
Originally a video series of a friend group trying to sink increasingly more elaborate and unlikely basketball trick shots, the group evolved to become one of the most successful and popular YouTube channels, even moving on to golf trick shots recently. They’ve even gotten big enough to have their own Thursday Night Football alternative broadcast and be involved in the NFL Draft.
That’s likely to continue for quite some time. On Tuesday, CNBC reported that Dude Perfect received an investment somewhere between $100 and $300 million from private investment firm Highmount Capital.
CNBC noted that the purpose of the investment was to lead to “Dude Perfect 2.0″ which will mark the next phase in the group’s life cycle as they look to open a retail store, launch a streaming platform, and maybe even develop toys and a theme park.
Coby Cotton, one of Dude Perfect’s founders can’t wait to see what the future holds for the group, saying, “We’re really excited to try to unlock some of the vision and stuff that we were afraid would only be dreams up to this point. We’re really just looking to scale a lot of the things that up until now, we’ve just never even had anywhere close to the capability to do.”
Highmount Capital’s Jason Illian said Dude Perfect will make a good partner going forward because the group understood the future of streaming before many others.
“The next generation is not coming in and flipping on cable TV. They’re pulling in their phones, and they’re subscribing, they’re following. And these are the people they’re listening to,” Illian said.
[CNBC]
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