How Dude Perfect Is Creating The Next Disney

It may seem like a stretch to compare them to a Hollywood giant like Disney, but with the launch of Dude Perfect’s streaming platform, a line of toys and games in Walmart and plans to build a $100 million theme park — Dude Perfect are much more than just YouTubers.

“We were all just messing around in the backyard. We had no intention of creating a brand, no intention of making a business or getting sponsored”, Tyler Toney said of the group’s early days.

15 years after their first video swishing trick shots in their backyard, the group of Toney, Garrett Hilbert, Cody Jones and twins Coby and Cory Cotton have come a long way. Now with 25 employees, Dude Perfect operates out of a 35,000-square-foot headquarters in Frisco, TX — complete with a putting green, basketball court, hockey rink, kitchen, office space and conference rooms.

Dude Perfect has gained over 60 million subscribers and 17 billion views in their 15 years on YouTube. The group launched a line of Nerf toys, purchased a share of Premier League team Burnley FC and sold out arenas on their live tour — all while remaining family friendly, even turning down sponsorships from major brands like Budweiser early in their career.

“It was never this genius thing like — ‘You know the market that really needs to be hit right now is the five to fifteen year olds,’” Hilbert said. “It was just us kind of being who we are.”

But before the product lines and sold out shows, Dude Perfect almost called it quits.

“We thought, okay, there was Dude Perfect, and now we’re – now we’re hanging it up,” Toney said.

I had a chance to sit down with Dude Perfect and discuss their early days on YouTube, why they almost quit and what their next chapter looks like.

Early Days on YouTube

“We put [that first video] out there and to see it have success early on, was nothing more than like genuine excitement,” Toney said. “Oh my gosh, this is crazy. We did it. We made a viral video.”

That first upload in 2009 now has 44 million views. It earned them air time on Good Morning America while they were still students at Texas A&M. But as the channel grew, graduation approached with a looming question: should they go all-in on Dude Perfect? Or pursue traditional jobs?

“Me, Cody and Ty graduated college very much with clear intentions to go out into the real world and pursue the degrees that we got,” Hilbert said.

While part of the group took day jobs, they spent their Saturdays filming for their channel. Even telling brands, Saturday was the only day they could film due to other obligations like speaking gigs.

“They’re like, ‘Really? Uh, okay I guess we could be out there on a Saturday,’” Toney said jokingly.

It wasn’t until they were filming a brand video, shooting a basketball from the Goodyear blimp, that Toney received a call from his boss that would prove to be pivotal.

“My boss was like, ‘I can’t have you miss — I need you out there on Saturdays working,’” Toney said. “That really kind of made the decision for us.”

“We weren’t making nearly as much on Dude Perfect as we were at our full time jobs, which I was making 40,000 a year at a landscaping company,” Toney said. “But I was like, even if we make half of that, it’s way more fun and we’re enjoying it. So let’s give it a shot and see what happens.”

Toney left his job in April of 2012. Within a few months, all of the members of Dude Perfect made the decision to pursue the YouTube channel as their full-time career.

Staying Family Friendly

“We never made the intentional decision of like — Hey, we’re not going to film with alcoholic brands,” Hilbert said. “That’s just who we were — It’s not something we partook in college. We liked to bet each other for sandwiches, so that’s what we did and we filmed it.”

Still, beer brands were reaching out as Dude Perfect’s channel started taking off. Budweiser offered the group free beer, “as much as we want,” Toney said. All they had to do was feature the cans in their videos.

“It just didn’t totally align with what we wanted to be known for,” Toney said. “We turned it down and I would say it, it did keep us from a lot of opportunities.”

As Hilbert mentioned, turning down alcoholic brands was far from a deliberate strategy in those early days. Rather, it’s what felt authentic to their family values. Ultimately, that’s the reason why brands like Nerf took a bet on them in 2013, building out their own Nerf product line by 2016.

It’s the same reason Walmart is featuring seven new Dude Perfect toys and games on their shelves. Flagshipped by Dude Perfect The Board Game, the product series includes Sticky Tic Tac Toe, frisbees, footballs, basketballs, collectible figurines, Stick Darts and a Dude Perfect Zip String.

“It’s a crazy story looking back on it,” said Dude Perfect CMO Chad Coleman who was pivotal in the partnership with Walmart. “Tyler grabbed a Home Depot box, a sharpie and some Post-it notes and came up with an incredible concept for a Dude Perfect Board game.”

The products help extend Dude Perfect’s ethos of bringing more families together.

“15 years later, that is the number one thing that especially families come up and tell us,” Toney said. “‘Thank you for creating content that we can sit down as a family and watch’ — or ‘I can walk out of the room and if my four year olds watching it, it’s fine.’”

The group credits their Christian values as the guiding force in their decision to stay family-friendly, rather than gear their content towards older markets. Since the founding of Dude Perfect, Sundays have always been reserved for Church and family time.

They’ve taken their dedication to younger audiences one step further by working with the Make-A-Wish foundation, even doing a video with the organization in 2016.

It’s this exact family friendly ethos that sparked Dude Perfect to launch their own streaming service last October.

The Next Chapter Of Dude Perfect

“People come up to us on the street all the time and say, ‘Hey, you’re the only channel we let our kids watch,’ And we take that seriously,” Cory Cotton said. “We understand that it’s hard sometimes for a parent to pre-watch everything that goes in front of their kids.”

The concept for the Dude Perfect streaming platform is simple — not everything on YouTube is family friendly. But everything on their steaming platform will be Dude Perfect approved.

The group plans to bring in other family friendly creators to the platform, announcing their first edition last month with Zach King.

“We’re putting ourselves forward and saying, ‘Hey, we’re willing to do the hard work of searching YouTube and searching these other places and finding the next great content creators,” Coby Cotton said. “We will put our Dude Perfect stamp of approval on that.”

But the next chapter of Dude Perfect doesn’t stop at streaming. Their goal is to bring their videos to life. “What we are trying to do is give people an opportunity to feel what they feel when they watch the videos — but actually participate,” Coby Cotton said.

While that journey starts in the living room with the Dude Perfect App, the group unveiled plans for a $100M theme park and headquarters: Dude Perfect World.

The idea is to let attendees experience a Dude Perfect video in real life: throwing a baseball through a moving car, 100 pin bowling, rage rooms, mini-golf and a 300 foot basketball shot from the top of the Dude Perfect tower.

However, building a theme park is no easy feat. As they go through the process of planning, the group looks to continue to bring their videos to life with their tours and product lines.

“Whether that eventually is the destination that we’re trying to create there, or other small things along the way like product lines or traveling experiences that may come,” Coby Cotton said. “We want people to have the type of moments that they’ve watched us have in these videos for these last 15 years.”

“Creating a place where families can go attempt some of the crazy things they’ve seen in our videos feels like the next evolution for Dude Perfect,” Coleman said. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to try making a basketball shot off a 300-foot tower, or go to Trick Shot Town to play 100-pin bowling and attempt to throw a baseball through the windows of a moving car?

What started as backyard trick shots shot on a camcorder, has grown into a multi-media powerhouse. Over the last 15 years, Dude Perfect has come a long way with billions of views online — and tours, a streaming network and a soon-to-come theme park offline.

The expansive growth of the Dude Perfect brand parallels the comparison to Disney. In many ways, the company became more than just Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse similar to how Dude Perfect is becoming more than just the dudes and trick shots.

In 1957, Walt Disney mapped out his blueprint for the company. Although Disney began with films, Walt transformed the brand into a multi-billion dollar empire complete with toys, clothes, TV shows and theme parks. In a way, Dude Perfect is following a similar path, only with YouTube as their initial media platform. With Disney celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023, it will be fascinating to watch where Dude Perfect will be in the coming years — and how they’ll help reimagine what’s possible for YouTube creators along the way.