Rhett & Link Sell Pioneering YouTube Brand Smosh Back To Original Co-Founders - Forbes

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Topline

One of YouTube’s oldest and most successful comedy collectives, Smosh, has been bought back by its once-estranged co-creators, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla—marking a new chapter in the brand that has changed hands twice since 2018.

Key Facts

Hecox and Padilla acquired a majority ownership stake in Smosh for an undisclosed price—taking back the company from YouTube comedy and talk show duo Rhett & Link, who acquired Smosh four years ago through their production company, Mythical Entertainment, according to Variety.

Rhett & Link will remain involved in an advisory capacity through a minority stake in Smosh, which garnered a large following through years of original sketch comedy and improv content that has outlasted many of YouTube’s earliest creators.

In addition to being business partners, Hecox and Padilla will also star in Smosh’s creative content, which spans three separate YouTube channels featuring comedy skits, gaming content and internet challenges.

The main cast of creators and comedians who have produced and starred in Smosh’s content—Courtney Miller, Shayne Topp and Damien Haas—will keep their posts at the company, continuing to produce content out of their 17,000-square-foot studio space in Burbank.

Big Number

More than 10 billion. That’s the number of all-time views Smosh has garnered with its 16-year-old main channel.

Key Background

Founded in 2006, Smosh is one of YouTube’s oldest comedy collectives. The channel, created by childhood friends Hecox and Padilla, was the most-subscribed to YouTube channel in 2013 and now holds 25.1 million subscribers, with subscriptions starting at $2.99 a month. Padilla left Smosh in 2017 to pursue his own independent content, about a year before the brand’s former parent company—Defy Media—shut down. Hecox told Variety that his friendship with Padilla was “not really that good” by the time his childhood friend left the company. Padilla said the communication style between him and Hecox was “kind of stuck in that age of 17,” but that the two had done a lot of growing when they reconnected. Hecox carried Smosh through the loss of its co-founder and parent company, eventually securing a buyout at the hands of Rhett & Link’s Mythical Entertainment in 2019 for less than $10 million. The acquisition helped Smosh continue to operate its channels, which still garner hundreds of thousands of views per video. Smosh Gaming and Smosh Pit produce different content from the main channel, with both currently boasting more than 7 million subscribers respectively.