EXCLUSIVE: “Money” was the one-word reply given by Tobi Brown of the Sidemen when asked by Netflix UK chief Anne Mensah why the successful YouTube collective had chosen to shift the second season of their reality series Inside from YouTube to Netflix.
The crowd at last year’s glitzy Next on Netflix UK event tittered politely. Turned out Brown’s tongue was only half in his cheek.
“I’m joking but I’m not joking,” he told a packed group of press, producers and influencers. “The main reason is that, obviously, when it comes to the mainstream, you don’t get much bigger or better than Netflix. You try to raise the bar and push to go bigger – so the money helps.”
Responding, Mensah was ever so slightly thrown, but she was also effusive, branding Inside “everything I think that we should be doing,” before borrowing from your typical Netflix executive phrasebook: “It speaks to something that’s so British but speaks globally, and I love it for that.”
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With a collective 150 million YouTube subscribers between them, the Sidemen boast a unique place in global influencer culture. The decision to move the Big Brother-esque reality series from YouTube to Netflix therefore came somewhat out of the blue late last year.
At the time, the Sidemen told the BBC they had “hit the limit” of what they can achieve on YouTube, a notable phrase about the platform that secured their fame. Led by the unstoppable, influential and sometimes controversial influencer-boxer KSI, the seven-person collective roared onto the YouTube scene more than a decade ago when they started posting gaming vids.
Corralling a group of influencers into a locked house for seven days and having them battle it out in ludicrous challenges while a £1M ($1.34M) prize fund dissipates, Inside was the collective’s answer to the question of what Big Brother looks like in the age of the influencer.
Season 1 premiered on YouTube last year, while Season 2 made its debut on Netflix in March. Now, with a third Inside season being readied for Netflix and an American version in the works, we’ve dug deep to analyze whether the gamble paid off, or, in a world of rapidly saturated viewing, whether the move should even be termed a gamble.
“I always felt like it was a good idea,” says Enders Analysis Head of Television Tom Harrington. “You want to diversify at your peak rather than later on. I can see why Netflix would want them for the kind of audience they can bring, and I can see why [The Sidemen] would want to be on Netflix.”
As MD of Sidemen Entertainment, Victor Bengtsson knows the group inside out. He concurs with Harrington that “futureproofing” was always the Netflix deal’s raison d’être. “I realized they will grow older and they may not have the same clout,” he explains. “We do our [Sidemen] charity soccer match but that is a marketing tool, not content. This was our ‘Big Brother for Gen-Z’ moment.” Netflix declined to comment for this article.
Bengtsson acknowledges he was sceptical when things got real with Netflix. For starters, Inside Season 1 had, for want of a better phrase, absolutely smashed it on YouTube, landing 55 million views globally across all episodes after 10 days during the summer of 2024. He reveals streamers were showing interest prior to Season 1.
“We said we’ll put it on YouTube and show them the performance,” he adds, noting that the team chose to deliberately release Inside at the same time as youth audience darling Love Island. “Our intention was that it would be so good that it had a zeitgeist impact. Three days after we released the final episode, Netflix came calling again.”
Netflix offered an opportunity to attack a somewhat different audience while pouring more budget into the show. “But any time you decide to put a show on a different platform, it is associated with risk,” adds Bengtsson.
Bengtsson lavishes Netflix with praise for its hands-off approach, with its main contribution being budgetary and “quality control.” “They knew the show had a charm that exists because it was made by the Sidemen, and once it didn’t feel like their show anymore, then there would be no point it being on Netflix.”
The streamer’s draw likely played a part in The Sidemen landing special guest housemate Patrice Evra, the ex-Manchester United soccer star, who was beloved by the other ‘Insiders’ and yielded some of the season’s best moments.
Ratings
As ever with modern-day viewing, ratings can paint a mixed picture. According to the streamer, Inside, which its execs say was made on a “modest” Netflix budget, hit multiple top 10 lists in its first few weeks, including briefly sitting at number 3 globally and hitting number 2 in the UK and 9 in the U.S.
Comparing YouTube viewing to Netflix is a bit apples and pears – for starters, you don’t have to part with any money for a subscription to watch a show on YouTube – but we’ve given it a go anyway, courtesy of analysis from Digital-i, which analyzed the audience only in the UK.
Digital-i gives the move a thumbs up, finding that the most-watched episode on Netflix, Season 2 Episode 1, reached more than 1.3 million Netflix households, compared with 967,000 for the equivalent Season 1 episode on YouTube. Digital-i stresses that viewing figures for both YouTube and Netflix in the UK are estimates based on data from representative, consenting panels, and data is only collected from account holders aged 18–64.
Bengtsson says he always worried about “perception” on Netflix, with fears that “45-year-old mothers would see the show [on Netflix] and think we’re all spoiled brats.” He will therefore be encouraged by Digital-i’s finding that Inside was watched by more households with kids on Netflix than YouTube. Around two-thirds (68%) of viewing of Season 2 was from households with kids, well above Netflix’s average, compared to 40% for Season 1, which is below YouTube’s average, Digital-i found.
There is a question, however, over whether Netflix’s Inside ever became true watercooler viewing, in a similar vein to young audience success stories like The Traitors or last decade’s Love Island, starring Molly Mae. Barb data for the UK, which we have seen, shows a big drop-off in viewing as the series wore on. While it certainly skewed young, second only to Adolescence for UK viewing from 13-24 year olds in its launch week, the data found that Season 2 has by now dropped out of the top 100 UK shows for 2025 in terms of Gen-Z viewing.
Whatever the ratings show, being able to operate within its own social creator ecosystem alongside being on an American juggernaut streaming service feels crucial to why the Sidemen and co seem gratified with their gamble. Netflix did not push back on the Sidemen’s desire to use contestants’ weighty social platforms to big up the season. For example, many of the housemates live-streamed their reactions to the show on Twitch once it had dropped. “We felt that the social angle would be super core to our audience,” adds Bengtsson.
Watching along with interest this whole time has been Luti Fagbenle, the producer of Blue Therapy, the next big YouTube format that can be watched on Netflix soon.
“The Sidemen have ridiculous followings, their numbers blow Blue Therapy out the water,” Fagbenle says. “The team at Netflix are brilliant but even if they don’t get it right this is a creator-led world that we live in. Those able to tap into that and make the talent work will get huge wins.”
Blue Therapy’s journey to Netflix has been slower than Inside and comes via public broadcaster Channel 4. The format, which sees a diverse cast of couples guided by a seasoned expert during hard-hitting therapy sessions, made a splash on YouTube before Channel 4’s youth channel E4 picked it up and aired a version to a strong set of ratings. Fagbenle holds the rights to the format and international versions are in the works, he tells us.
For Fagbenle, who says he “cultivated [Netflix] relationships for years,” the streamer’s draw was powerful. While The Sidemen pushed for Inside Season 2 to mostly remain the same, Fagbenle says Netflix’s impact has driven Blue Therapy forwards, giving it “more substance and drama alongside the original DNA.”
Fagbenle believes YouTube is “more democratic” than broadcasters and streamers when it comes to giving talent from under-represented backgrounds a platform, although he doesn’t feel it should be this way.
“Was pirate radio a way for marginalized communities to make it in the music industry?,” he says. “Well yes, but Radio 1 could have played them. We as a company are very much in the center of Black culture and are often scouting on YouTube and TikTok, because that is our hunting ground.”
How long things could stay this way is certainly up for debate.
Traditional TV executives, who desire young audiences above all else, are desperate to take a bite out of the YouTube pie in any way possible. Just check out Mr Beast’s eye-wateringly expensive Beast Games for Prime Video. Only this morning, UK regulator Ofcom said the government should change the law to make it easier to find broadcaster content on YouTube. On the flipside, successful YouTube creators like Amelia Dimoldenberg are seeking UK government support and formal recognition. The lines are blurring. For global giants like Netflix, it’s unlikely to end with Inside and Blue Therapy.
“We’ve created something slightly rough around the edges that challenges the status quo,” says Bengtsson. “It feels like we’ve completely broken the mainstream.”