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IShowSpeed is setting new standards for crowds and cultural impact with over 150M followers and counting Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images “It’s like nothing I’ve seen. It feels like you’re watching one of The Beatles back in the day,” said Michael D. Ratner, co-founder of OBB Media, the innovative studio behind IShowSpeed’s new show: Speed Goes Pro. Comparing IShowSpeed to one of The Beatles may seem like a grand statement until you take a closer look at the beloved streamer’s impact on culture — and his over 150 million fans who follow his every move. The parallels are uncanny. After first touring overseas, The Beatles came to the United States to masses of fans who saw the rock band perform in Los Angeles in 1964 as “Beatlemania” swept across the country in anticipation of their next album. 61 years later, Darren Watkins Jr. better known as IShowSpeed did the same: after massively popular tours abroad, he did a 35-day livestream tour in the US capped by his own event in Los Angeles. Except it wasn’t to debut a new album like The Beatles did. But rather debut an entire TV show that may have just re-written the very nature of TV itself in terms of how studios develop and launch new concepts moving forward. I attended the premiere of Speed Goes Pro at the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to dive deeper on how Speed and his team — including OBB, Dick’s Sporting Goods, manager Mason Klein, showrunner Eric Pankowski, comms lead Rico Ripoly, and more — pulled off this impressive feat from the tour to the show, which is currently airing new episodes every other Wednesday. MORE FOR YOU Mason Klein, Scott Ratner, IShowSpeed, Michael D. Ratner, Camille Maratchi, Kfir Goldberg and Eric Pankowski at the Speed Goes Pro LA Premiere (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for OBB Media) Getty Images for OBB Media The Build Up: 25 States in 35 Days For years, most TV shows have followed a classic marketing playbook: have the talent do a traditional press junket, make guest appearances, and do an exclusive red-carpet event to debut the show. But not Speed. The build up to premiering his show was anything but traditional. In many ways, Speed turned a cross-country road trip into a month-long reality show, livestreaming to millions and earning him 1.5M new followers across YT and Twitch. Crossing 25 states in a custom $300,000 tour bus, he streamed 24/7 for 35 straight days — never going offline, streaming even while asleep. The stream followed him through Disneyland, YouTube Headquarters, and MrBeast’s studio. He met up with NBA stars Devin Booker and Damian Lillard, UFC legend Jon Jones, and comedian Theo Von. Speed jumped off the tallest building in Las Vegas, and even surprised students at his old high school. The rest of the tour was full of spontaneous adventures — from impromptu meetups with fans to last-minute shopping sprees, once spending $1,500 at Nike without realizing he was buying shoes for everyone around him. “The best part of the tour is meeting the random locals at these cities and states,” Speed told me. “I learn about the culture, I learn about them…it feels like a whole movie.” In total, the core team included over 15 people, working around the clock to make the non-stop broadcast possible. “Four security, four cameramen, two mods switching scenes on the stream: Speed’s desktop, four cameras in the bus, two IRL-ready cameras, dash cams, interior and exterior cams…there’s a lot of different angles," Speed’s videographer Luca Volpentesta told me. Each camera operator rotated through eight to twelve hour shifts, swapping out to eat or sleep. Luca called it a “crazy learning experience” — one that meant keeping pace with one of the fastest-moving streamers alive. With hundreds of people showing up at every stop trying to get a photo, the team had to think like live sports producers — only without the luxury of a fixed stadium, repeatable conditions, or commercial breaks. “You’re holding a Sony FX6 behind you, walking forward, surrounded by 20 security guys,” Luca said. “It gets intense out there.” Even Speed was surprised by the scope. When his team told him the tour had crossed a million-dollar budget, he looked stunned. “Seven figures? God damn!” he said. “I don’t even realize because I just be streaming.” Re-Inventing The "Red Carpet" Premiere After 35 days and 25 states, Speed’s tour ended in a way few creators ever do: with a red carpet premiere. But unlike most Hollywood red carpets that remain exclusive, Speed invited anyone to tune in via his livestream while more fans alongside celebrities Kim Kardashian, Randy Orton, Suni Lee, and more. Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum lit up for IShowSpeed’s Speed Goes Pro premiere Jon Youshaei The livestreamed finale served as the official launch of Speed Goes Pro, airing its first episodes live to tens of millions. The six-episode digital show, produced by OBB Media in partnership with Dick’s Sporting Goods, follows Speed as he trains with world-class athletes in a bid to “go pro” across football, gymnastics, basketball, wrestling, and competitive eating. The first two episodes set the tone for the series. In Episode 1, Speed trains for the NFL under the guidance of Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner and former receiver Danny Amendola, running combine drills and even catching passes from Tom Brady himself. Despite tripping up in early reps, Speed’s athleticism — including a 40-inch vertical and a 4.49-second 40-yard dash — surprised even the pros. Episode 2 shifts gears to gymnastics, where he trains under Olympic champions Suni Lee and Nastia Liukin. Between repeated attempts at a “front full” tumbling pass and a “giant” swing on the high bar, the episode captures both his persistence and charming personality. “A lot of work has been put into this show, like seriously,” Speed told the crowd. “I wanna thank the athletes who competed. It was fun. I don’t wanna yap a lot, but I just really hope that y’all enjoy the show and like the series.” The premiere featured full screenings of his football and gymnastics episodes. Nastia Liukin and Suni Lee — both Olympic gold medalists — were in attendance to support their trainee. And while Tom Brady couldn’t be there in person, he sent a surprise video message to kick things off. “I’ll be real, when I first saw you out there, I figured you’d completely fall flat on your face,” Brady said. “Yeah, you had a few plays where you actually did, but I’ll give you credit — you stuck with it. Still, I’ve seen better footwork in a 7th-grade gym class.” Hearing the NFL’s most decorated quarterback roast a YouTuber on a stadium screen in the Coliseum shows how far Speed has traveled, from being a streamer to sharing the stage with global icons. Speed Goes Pro marked the end of a tour and the beginning of a new era — a shift from spontaneous, on-the-fly streams to a fully produced series with the scale and polish of traditional entertainment. “I want to say I thank everybody who came out to see the show that’s coming out, Speed Goes Pro,” Speed told the crowd. “I do want to thank Michael, OBB, Dick’s Sporting Goods for making this series possible…and I wanna thank the athletes who competed — Tom, Suni, Kevin, Joey, Randy — everybody who helped me train for this show to happen.” Inside the Making of The idea for the show started with a simple Dick’s Sporting Goods campaign. But the partnership with OBB and Mixed Management quickly snowballed into something much bigger. “We became super obsessed with Speed and just his connection to that community he’s built,” Michael D. Ratner said. “Could we do something more premium that felt a little bit like TV, but for his audience, not take it off platform?” Scott Ratner, fellow co-founder of OBB, echoed the same origin story: “We were kind of admiring what he was doing and what was going on. Then we got to know his manager, Mason Klein, very well and we started working together on the original Dick’s commercial campaign. One thing led to another, and it kind of grew into Speed Goes Pro and a bigger relationship.” Now that partnership — with Dick’s Sporting Goods as lead sponsor, OBB as producer, and Speed’s team led by Mason Klein (Speed’s manager and founder of Mixed Management) and Rico Ripoly (comms lead and founder of The Lemon House) — has produced a full series in a format built for YouTube rather than traditional broadcast TV. “The most important piece,” Michael told me, “is that you shouldn’t pluck creators and then put them into traditional ideas or formats. You should make stuff that’s bespoke. He’s a YouTube creator. Making a YouTube show is the way to do it.” Instead of trying to package Speed into a traditional series, the team built a show around the kind of chaos that makes him so watchable. One episode pairs Speed with competitive-eating legend Joey Chestnut. Another puts him against Kevin Durant. And Tom Brady’s installment has already been cited as a favorite among the producers. Randy Orton and his wife, Kim Orton, at the Speed goes Pro premier in LA Jon Youshaei Randy Orton, who appears in the wrestling episode, recalled his first time working with Speed at WrestleMania: “He was wearing a Prime bottle costume, so he was padded, and I kicked the shit out of him. Then I gave him an RKO on the announcer’s table in front of 70,000 people on live TV. It was amazing,” he told me with a smile. Orton went on to describe what stood out to him about Speed’s rise: “Speed has got so much charisma and facial expressions — just the energy. People are drawn towards it, and that’s why we’re here today.” It’s that charisma and unpredictability that define Speed Goes Pro — not polishing Speed into a traditional format, but leaning into what makes him compelling on stream. Re-defining Culture & Looking Ahead In the span of just over a month, Speed turned a livestream into a cultural spectacle, a show premiere, and a case study for the next generation of studio executives and creatives. Few creators have ever attempted something on this scale — and even fewer could pull it off with a marquee show coming as part of the finale. As Ratner put it: “The fact that he’s been live for 35 days, then we’ve morphed that into him showing up here and actually premiering his new show — that’s really special.” But beyond the logistics and the budgets, Speed is shifting perceptions of what streaming can be. As rapper and streamer DDG told me: “He’s showing that streaming is more than just sitting at a desk and just looking up stuff. A lot of people look at streaming like it’s nerdy, and they don’t think there’s real fame behind it. But I feel like streamers are more famous than traditional celebrities at this point. I feel like Speed is showing that.” Speed Does America is a reminder that what used to be reserved for stadium tours and TV networks is now within reach of a 20-year-old YouTuber from Cincinnati, Ohio. If Speed’s latest chapter proves anything, it’s that the line between streamer and superstar has never been thinner. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
