The Sidemen: We’ve hit YouTube limit so are moving to Netflix

The Sidemen are used to making content for YouTube, but say they’ve now “hit the limit” on what they can achieve on the video sharing platform so are moving “to something even bigger”.

The British YouTube superstars have announced that the second season of their reality show, Inside, will debut on Netflix next year. The streaming giant will also make a US version.

The Sidemen – the seven-strong group that includes content creator, rapper and boxer KSI – have more than 146 million YouTube subscribers between them.

Vik Barn – aka Vikkstar123 – told the BBC the move was “ambitious” but it was “exciting to conquer a new challenge”.

He said: “Netflix is the gold standard and part of us working with them is to say that over the past decade we’ve managed to go from filming content in our bedrooms to working with the biggest streaming platform in the world.”

The Sidemen started creating YouTube content in the early 2010s.

They started by playing and reacting to video games, but in the past decade the group of friends have branched out to comedy sketches, travel challenges, podcasts and a dating show.

They now employ a production team of more than 100 people who help create the videos and generate ideas, Vik said.

One idea that has “massively taken off” is Inside, which launched in June on YouTube and racked up 14 millions of views for its opening episode.

The contest’s first season saw 10 influencers locked in a house for a week as they battled for a prize with up to £1m.

Its success caught the attention of Netflix bosses, who have now commissioned a second UK season and a US version of the show. Both will be on Netflix instead of YouTube.

“YouTube opened so many doors for us so we can’t diminish its power and it’s still unrivalled in some ways,” Vik explained. “But working with Netflix is a cool opportunity for us to reach a new audience.

“We’re at a ceiling with YouTube – we bring in 20 million UK viewers each month and now we’re thinking about how to connect with different people.”

Aside from Vik and KSI, the other Sidemen are Miniminter, Zerkaa, TBJZL, Behzinga and W2S.

Vik said the group, who are aged between 27 and 32, had some reservations about bringing their work to a new platform because “we’ve never done it before and we’re all very particular about the way we work”.

“We also move at a really fast pace – sometimes we shoot on Wednesday and by Sunday we will have uploaded a two-hour video. So we wanted to make sure Netflix were happy with the fast turnarounds and us being very dynamic.”

But the seven members vote on everything and were unanimous in the decision to move their reality show to Netflix, he said.

The group will serve as executive producers and have “full control to make the new season bigger and better than the last”.

They aren’t the only online stars to take their own big-money game show to a conventional streaming platform instead of putting it on YouTube.

MrBeast, the world’s most popular YouTuber, will launch Beast Games on Amazon Prime Video on 19 December, although that show has been at the centre of controversy.

As one of the UK’s biggest YouTube content creators, 29-year-old Vik is very aware of how many young men look up to him. But he said it’s not his job to be a role model.

“In our videos we’re just ourselves, we’re not aiming to be certain characters, and first and foremost we’re content creators who make fun videos.”

He added that the Sidemen had a “unified stance on not speaking about political and social issues”.

“Sometimes we feel pressure to, but we would rather leave this to the experts.”

Part of the reason for this decision is the intense media scrutiny they face.

KSI recently faced backlash after he shared a video of Donald Trump drinking a bottle of Prime, an energy drink he co-founded.

Some saw that as promoting and supporting Trump ahead of the US election. However, Vik responded by saying the group “try not to over analyse things”.

“Everything we do will always upset a small group of people but you just have to move forward,” he said.

The Sheffield-based creator also said the group had got better at “ignoring the trolling and hate”.

“The internet has become a very turbulent place recently and occasionally things do get to us.

“We try and just think about how proud we are of everything we’ve built and that helps us cancel out the negativity.”

Vik said “people thought I was weird” when he first started making content a decade ago.

“At school people would think I was strange for videoing myself playing games and that there was something wrong with me when I was recording myself on my phone in public.

“And my parents were not happy at all with how much time I was spending on YouTube, but they said as long as I got good grades at school then I could carry on.”

The Sidemen have been working together for more than a decade, and in recent months there have been rumours that the group may disband soon.

However, Vik quashed those rumours, saying: “Right now everything is fantastic.

“We never really know where we’re going in the future but there is absolutely no end in sight right now.”