Dude Perfect are in the process of becoming Dude Moguls. After securing a nine-figure investment from Highmount Capital last year, the Texas-based sports comedy group, which boasts 62 million YouTube subscribers, tells Page Six Hollywood that, while executing trick shots may have gotten them this far, a diversified media company is the ultimate goal.
“Whether that’s an animated show, a production company or in person experiences that families can come to, we’re having all those conversations,” says founding member Tyler Toney, speaking to P6H while granting wishes at Disneyland for a gaggle of starry-eyed Make-a-Wish kids last week. “It’s all about, ‘What does Dude Perfect look like 15 years from now, when we’re not the ones on camera? How do we make this brand last longer than the five of us? And while we’re not experts in any of (the aforementioned) stuff, we do feel like we have a pretty good pulse on how to make content. And so luckily, that comes in a lot of different forms, and I think there’s absolutely a future where you’ll see more of that from DP.”
Dude Perfect are in the process of becoming Dude Moguls. Disney When you think of influencers who have branched into moguldom, someone like Jake Paul may come to mind. The influencer-turned-pro boxer now oversees a multi-million empire that include men’s body care brand W, boxing promotion company Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) and a venture capital firm. But Dude Perfect, in many ways, is the antithesis ofPaul’s attention-at-whatever-cost milieu.
Coby Cotton of Dude Perfect playing with a young boy at a Make-A-Wish event. Disney “When we stumbled into making YouTube videos for a living, we definitely stood out from a lot of the other people that were making content. Honestly, that’s just how we lived our lives and how we were raised. We all come from Christian families, and our faith has always been a huge piece of our family’s lives and our lives in particular,” Toney says.
As the group started to find their audience 17 years ago when the Dudes were students at Texas A&M, they feared their wholesome, PG-rated image might scare away brands who thought they were too vanilla. Turns out, it was the opposite, and in this next phase Toney and fellow members Cody Jones, Garrett Hilbert, Coby Cotton and Cory Cotton are adamant about one thing: the content will stay family-friendly.
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“Once we started to gain some traction and started to realize what a brand was and how we would have to shape this and manage this, we had to make decisions on what that brand was going to look like and what it stood for. And so for us, that really all hinges on our faith in Jesus and how we were raised, and that’s the backbone of the company,” Toney says.
“Athletes and brands wanted to work with us because they saw it as trusted content and trusted value entertainment. That’s been probably the most important decision that we made, to run the company that way,” he adds. “I mean, we’re almost 40… and I don’t think anybody sitting at this table would have thought that we would still be doing it five years later, when we first got into this. Every year, we have a ‘pinch ourselves’ moment. This is still going on!”
