Hundreds of kids have chucked a sickie to see a highly paid internet star share some of his estimated $500 million net worth at Australia’s most iconic landmark.
James Donaldson – or MrBeast as he’s known – is the world’s most popular YouTuber who many Australian adults have never heard of.
The internet celebrity who boasts 288 million mainly young subscribers across the globe dug into his pool of wealth to hand out numerous cars at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday.
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A Lamborghini and Scooby Doo mystery machine replica were two of 10 cars given to finalists who were live-streamed to the star’s YouTube channel as they tried to win.
Jackie Rios, the mother of Tyrise and Trey, gave her boys the day off school to attend the event.
“We were like, ‘Why not?’,” Mrs Rios told AAP.
“They wanted to be here – it’s one day in the scheme of things.”
The family spent more than $200 on the internet personality’s product for their chance to win.
They used the wrappers to make custom outfits for the occasion when their ticket was not called, but the boys were more than happy to see the creator they had watched online for seven years.
MrBeast pitted 10 product competition winners against one another for the event as they tried to win cars valued at up to $250,000.
Contestants were tasked with passing a rugby ball into holes of varying sizes across a large board.
Different holes had different vehicles assigned to them, with the most valuable being the smallest.
One contestant turned down $50,000 in favour of a $5000 Volvo covered with another YouTuber’s face.
The 26-year-old MrBeast rose to internet fame with frequent giveaway videos that eventually earned him the accolade of YouTube’s most popular creator.
Early videos included challenges such as counting to 100,000 in a single video, which took 40 hours to complete.
As his popularity increased, he started making money from the platform – becoming a multi-millionaire in the process – which he reinvested into large giveaways to leverage further success.
Starting with smaller giveaways to strangers for amounts in the hundreds, his giveaways later stretched out to a $US1 million prize for the last person to take their hand off a pile of money.
In recent times, he gave away an island in the Bahamas to one subscriber and now 10 cars given away in Sydney feature on his list of past freebies.