We Counted 240 Billion YouTube Views of the World's Biggest Names. Here's Who Owns Them

First I counted every YouTube video from 48 marketers. 5.85 billion views.

Then I wondered what the same count looks like at the very top.

So I picked ten of the biggest names online: MrBeast, Taylor Swift, Cristiano Ronaldo, Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and Andrew Tate.

Every video with at least 10,000 views. On their own channels, and on everyone else's.

240 billion views.

And the most interesting number was not the size. It was who owns them.

One man is three quarters of the list

MrBeast has 177.5 billion views. That is 74% of everything I counted, and almost three times the other nine put together.

It is also about 30 times all 48 marketers combined.

And 97% of it is on channels he runs. Nobody else comes close to that.

Only three of ten own their audience

Three people get more than half their views on their own channels: MrBeast (97%), Taylor Swift (70%) and Joe Rogan (70%).

Five get less than 10%. Elon Musk and Andrew Tate get none, because I could not find a channel of their own. Kim Kardashian is at 5%, Barack Obama at 7%, Cristiano Ronaldo at 9%.

Some of the most famous people on the internet are watched almost entirely on channels they do not run.

My favourite example: four MrBeast videos with Ronaldo in the title have 1.9 billion views. Ronaldo's own channel has 1.45 billion.

Who carries them instead

Videos with Donald Trump in the title get the most views on CNN (577 million), MS NOW (517 million) and MeidasTouch (392 million). Fox News has 226 million. His own channel has 0.9 billion.

Barack Obama has more views on CNN (473 million) than on his own channel (0.35 billion).

Kim Kardashian's biggest channel is Vogue, with 217 million. Her own has 0.09 billion.

Andrew Tate's biggest is a streamer, Adin Live, with 211 million. Elon Musk's is Fox News, with 226 million.

And the formats are all over the place

MrBeast gets 56% of his views from shorts, and his shorts average 79 million views each.

Taylor Swift gets 74% from videos between three and ten minutes. Shorts are 11%.

Kim Kardashian gets 4% from shorts. Elon Musk's shorts and other videos average the same, about 0.48 million.

There is no single winning format at the top. There are ten different ones.

All ten, side by side

How I counted. Own channels are counted in full. On other channels a video counts when the name (or a short form like Trump, Obama or CR7) is in the title or the channel name, and it has at least 10,000 views. That makes other channels a floor: clips that never name the person are missed. I removed songs and parodies that only carry the name, such as Epic Rap Battles of History.

MrBeast's language channels now show the main channel's videos, so they add nothing extra. Taylor Swift's lyric and cover channels are kept, since they are her songs. The Obama White House archive and Oprah's network OWN count as other people's channels. The four MrBeast videos with Ronaldo count in both their rows, so the 240 billion includes 1.9 billion twice; without it MrBeast's share is still 74%. Collected in October 2026.

So what does this have to do with you?

If you only watched these ten people's own channels, you would miss most of Ronaldo, Obama and Trump, and all of Elon Musk.

Competitors work the same way. Their own feed is the part they control. The reviews, creators, podcasts and press that carry them are often bigger, and they are just as public.

Pick one competitor and see what is already working for them. The first benchmark is free: one domain, measured against you, no card and no call.