One of the founders of the YouTube group Dude Perfect completed the final leg of last year’s race through every Disney park without his partner, who had missed the flight from Paris. The company, which an investor compared in 2024 to the early days of Disney, will now develop videos for its own channels inspired by the franchises of the real Disney. The partnership, announced by both companies on 15 October, features Super Bowl LXI, the 50th anniversary of Star Wars and a film from the Avengers series over the next twelve months.
Entering the partnership is Dude Perfect, a group that started in 2009 as a YouTube channel run by five Texas A&M University students, filming trick shots. The channel is now a company. In October this year it had 130 million followers across platforms, according to Disney. It shoots much of its content at its Texas headquarters, with production facilities covering roughly 7,400 square metres.
What the Disney and Dude Perfect deal includes
The Dude Perfect Overtime series will also get Avengers content. Older work travels in the opposite direction, as Disney will non-exclusively license a selection of short-form titles from the group’s library for Disney+, ESPN and its social platforms, C21Media reports.
Disney+ has been available in the Czech Republic since 14 June 2022. Disney’s announcement does not say in which markets the group’s videos will appear on Disney+. Outside the US, the service will stream Super Bowl LXI, one of the events planned under the partnership, in more than 55 international markets. No European market appears among the markets Disney names in its Super Bowl announcement, but the list is not exhaustive.
Presenting the partnership on Disney’s behalf in the press release was Asad Ayaz, chief marketing and brand officer for the whole company. In August this year he also announced the deal with TikTok. That deal starts with a pilot in the US, and videos by participating creators using Disney material will run both on TikTok and in the vertical feed of Disney+.
Disney’s parks division, Disney Experiences, was already looking for new fans through creators last year. It sponsored the race, and the video was released on the group’s YouTube channel. In its Shorty Awards entry, it wrote that Disney Parks sought to reach a “new generation of fans who discover travel, entertainment, and culture through creators”. The group, which had been planning its own theme park in Texas, claimed a record in Disney’s parks around the world.
Dude Perfect’s own park and Disney’s franchises
The group announced the park, with its Impossible Shot tower, in 2022, together with a new headquarters in Texas. When the investment from Highmount Capital came in 2024, the group wanted to turn on-screen entertainment into real products and experiences. Since then, however, the company has stepped back from the park plan and is focusing on smaller experiential concepts.
The deal gives the company an opportunity to gain access to Disney’s catalogue of franchises and productions without losing its independence, and to keep creating for its own audience, Forbes Argentina writes. The two companies have not yet disclosed the financial details of the deal or set out a production timeline for the new content. In a joint statement in September, Dude Perfect’s founders and its outgoing chief executive named Disney among the partnerships that, in their words, had driven significant revenue growth at the company since October 2024.
“We’ve been Disney kids forever, from wearing out the VHS tape of The Lion King to making core memories as a family at Disney World,” co-founder Garrett Hilbert said of the deal. It was Hilbert who, last year, reached the finish of the race at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Disneyland. Like the race, the new Star Wars and Avengers videos will be made for the group’s channels, and Disney+ will get only a selection of them.
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