Emerging victorious from reality show Beast Games gave winner Jeffrey Randall Allen a life-changing sum of money, but the reality behind it all is wildly different as he has now revealed on a popular podcast.
YouTube sensation Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson is known for giving away significant cash prizes to participants in his crazy challenge videos, but his partnership with Amazon Prime to create 'Beast Games' took things to another level.
As revealed by the Standard, MrBeast said he'd given around $20,000,000 in total to 85 players on the show, including $100,000 to runner-up contestant Twana show fell at the final hurdle.
Add this to a $14,000,000 custom-built 'city' for the show and you can imagine that the final cash prize would be quite significant.
Advert
It was Player 831, Jeffrey Randall Allen, who walked away with a staggering $10 million jackpot after picking the right briefcase in the final episode, but a recent interview has shown that it's not quite as glamorous as it might initially seem.
Speaking to The Iced Coffee Hour, Allen revealed that his total winnings for the show were $10,006,244, which included the final $10m prize alongside a $4,244 bonus for completing a mini game and a $2,000 advance for reaching the Las Vegas stage of the show's beginning process.
He revealed that the $10 million was transferred straight to a checking account he'd made specifically for the show, and he didn't even receive a phone call from his bank, despite the money increasing by 5,000 times in one transaction.
However, like any winnings, even including the lottery, he has to pay taxes on that sum, which in Allen's case amount to a staggering $5,000,000.
That's half of his total winnings wiped away, and he's not too happy about it all.
"Yeah it sucks," Allen revealed in response to the eye-watering tax figure. "It's not fun, well especially like in today's day and age where you kind of see where some of our tax dollars are being spent it's like ugh, man I could put it to better use."
One of the biggest reasons why so many got behind Jeffrey and his story was because he pledged to use the winnings to search for a cure for Creatine Transporter Deficiency, which is a rare medical disorder that his son unfortunately has.
"It's the nature of the beast," he accepts though, "and I think for me it's kind of going 'how can I minimize my tax burden whether it's through charitable deductions or setting up a donor advice fund to be able to continue to fund research in the years ahead, but I'm sure there's better ways for me to figure it out."
He also unveiled that his Beast Games contract stipulated that contestants were unable to share their winnings, as to avoid them banding together to minimize tension or 'cheat' a victory:
"It was in our contract that we weren't allowed to and then you know in certain challenges they'd reiterate that, it's like 'by the way you can't make any deals, you can't say hey if you help me get to this I will give you 10% if I win'."
This has led to some pretty major survivor's guilt though on Jeffrey's part, as he has struggled with not being able to adequately thank the people that helped him on his way to the $10 million prize.
"I also think about all the friends and people who helped me get there, and it's like ugh, how do I pay them back, how do I pay it forward, why was it me and not them?"
Such are the challenges of being suddenly landed with such a large sum of money, but even after the tax burden is taken away very few Beast Games fans will be able to argue that he didn't deserve it all.