On September 3, 2026, five days before this was written, Dude Perfect and its first chief executive mutually parted ways after twenty-three months. An interim CEO stepped in, a search firm was retained, and the company said the theme park it had once planned to build itself would become something smaller. Seventeen years earlier the same five men were betting sandwiches on basketball shots in a backyard in College Station, Texas. Between those two moments sits one of the strangest business stories YouTube has produced — a trick-shot channel that became a company with a board, a
00-million-plus investor, an 80,000-square-foot headquarters, and a management problem.
Fast facts
Who: Tyler Toney, twins Coby and Cory Cotton, Garrett Hilbert, and Cody Jones — roommates at Texas A&M. A sixth founder, Sean Townsend, appears in the university's 2009 story but not in the current line-up; it is widely reported, though unverified, that he left for medical school.
Formed: March 16, 2009; incorporated in Texas September 9, 2009 (Wikipedia)
Channel:@DudePerfect — 62.7M subscribers and 21,507,993,559 views on September 8, 2026, measured by our tracker (watch the live count)
Headquarters: DPHQ3, an 80,000-square-foot facility in Frisco, Texas, opened February 2025 (Community Impact)
Investor: Highmount Capital, a "nine-figure" growth investment announced April 9, 2024 (SportsPro)
Leadership: first CEO Andrew Yaffe (October 2024 – September 2026); interim CEO Patrick Hurley (D Magazine)
Six roommates and a sandwich bet
The first video, Backyard Stuntmen, went up on April 9, 2009, filmed at Toney's house and a local park; it drew around 200,000 views in a week. The second, shot at a Christian summer camp, passed 18 million. By September 30, 2009 the group had 3.3 million total views and had already appeared on ABC, CBS, and four ESPN shows — and had pledged to sponsor one child through Compassion International for every 100,000 views of the camp video (Texas A&M). That year Toney, using a quarterback's throwing technique, hit a basketball shot from the third deck of Kyle Field, the "world's longest"; in October 2010 they topped it from a 216-foot tower (Wikipedia).
Trick shots were the seed; the franchises are the business. Stereotypes, Bucket List, and above all Overtime — a sketch-and-segment show that had reached its 250th episode by the time of writing — turned five athletes into a cast. In September 2015, at 6.6 million subscribers, CMT ordered The Dude Perfect Show; its second season aired on Nickelodeon.
The records are real, with one asterisk. In May 2016 Guinness confirmed eleven world records set over three days in Texas and Oklahoma, including Toney's 533-foot "greatest height from which a basketball is shot" and Cory Cotton's 91-foot-2-inch bounce shot. In May 2023 Toney sank a shot from the 856-foot SkyPod of the Strat in Las Vegas, in the last hour of a three-day shoot, beating the 660-foot mark then held by Derek Herron (Sports Illustrated). Guinness's own page for that category, however, still lists Herron — so the Strat shot may never have been ratified. How many Guinness titles the group holds depends on who is counting: “more than 20” per Wikipedia and TIME, thirty per a 2025 partner press release.
The milestones came steadily: 50 million subscribers and ten billion views in April 2020, the same month a "Quarantine Classic" livestream peaked at 114,000 concurrent viewers and raised $85,000 for the Red Cross and Feeding America; 58 million in 2022; 62.7M subscribers today. In February 2025 they staged the first Trick Shot World Championship, with the final at Globe Life Field (Wikipedia).
The business
The investment. On April 9, 2024 Highmount Capital — founded in 2023 by Jason Illian and David Hawkins, with offices in New York and Wichita — made what the company called a nine-figure investment, publicly stated as
The revenue. The company has never published a figure. The numbers in circulation are secondhand: roughly
0 million in 2022 and
5 million in 2023, attributed to the Wall Street Journal, and an internal estimate of about $50 million for 2024, both as relayed by the analyst RockWater. Treat them as the best available, not as audited.
The CEO. Andrew Yaffe, eight years at the NBA and most recently its head of social, digital, and original content, became the first CEO in October 2024. His tenure brought a CFO from Fanatics, a general counsel from Live Nation, partnerships with State Farm, Disney, BODYARMOR, and McDonald's, an Almost Athletes podcast, and a Dude Perfect Outdoors line. On September 3, 2026 he and the board parted ways over what the company called "different perspectives on the company's next phase"; the longtime investor Patrick Hurley of BP Capital Fund Advisors is interim CEO.
The theme park that became something else. In September 2022 the group unveiled "Trick Shot Town," a headquarters-and-attraction concept costed at up to
9.99 for a two-hour session. The CEO's departure was framed around exactly this pivot from a self-built park to smaller experiences.
Tours. A first tour in 2019 (documented in the YouTube Original Backstage Pass), the Pandemonium Tour in 2023, the Hero World Tour of 2025 — 26 cities across North America, the UK, and Ireland, drawing over 200,000 fans — and the Squad Games Tour of 2026 across 22 US cities on a 360-degree arena floor. TIME counts it as their fifth tour in eight years.
Everything else. A free, ad-supported streaming service launched in June 2023 and an app in January 2024 that passed two million downloads within the year (Tubefilter); an undisclosed minority stake in Burnley F.C. in August 2023; Walmart toy lines, a Nerf line, Columbia Sportswear, alternate Thursday Night Football casts for Amazon, and a 7 Brew coffee partnership with an in-office bar at HQ.
Controversy timeline
2009 — Good Morning America hosts debated whether the shots were faked; no evidence was ever produced (Wikipedia).
2015 — A musician's copyright claim over a song used in a Pringles campaign, reportedly dismissed voluntarily that August: widely reported, unverified — the court-record source could not be fetched.
July 2022 — A sponsored video shot in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, later retitled from "Qatar World Cup" to "Desert," drew criticism on human-rights grounds and accusations of inconsistency from a group that had previously declined an alcohol sponsor. No public response was reported.
September 2026 — The CEO's exit. Not a scandal, but the first public sign of strain in the corporate era (D Magazine).
No litigation involving the company, its investor, or the leadership change appears in any source we could verify.
So what do they actually earn?
YouTube ads are the smallest bar on the chart — which is the whole story of this company.
What we can measure. On September 8, 2026 our tracker read 62.7M subscribers and 21,507,993,559 views, with the channel adding about 6,551,183 views a day across the preceding 9 days of daily snapshots. The main channel posted 1 long-form video in the last 30 days, and the last ten long-form uploads averaged 5,410,000 views. That is a mature channel with a slow, deliberate cadence — the uploads are productions, not posts.
Ads, by our method. At a general-entertainment CPM of
.5 to $5 and YouTube's 55% creator share, that run-rate is worth roughly $8,926 a month from ads, in a range of $4,463 to
4,877 — about $0.1 to $0.2 million a year (our Money Calculator shows the inputs). Against reported revenue in the tens of millions, ads are a rounding error. The money is in tours, brand partnerships, licensed products, and now a physical attraction — none of which YouTube's numbers can see.
The net-worth sites, and why they disagree.One says
00 million; another models $90–150 million while labelling its own confidence "low" and admitting it has "no current financial sources"; a third says
0 million in its body and
3 million in its header, using subscriber counts from years ago. None of them distinguishes five individuals from a company with an outside investor, which is the first question any real valuation would ask. Our honest framing: if a
00-million-plus investment bought a minority stake, the implied company valuation is in the hundreds of millions, and the five founders' personal wealth is a large but unknowable share of that — nobody outside their accounting knows the number.
Recognition
A Streamy for Best Sports Series in 2015; an ESPN 30 for 30, A Very Long Shot, which premiered at the Dallas International Film Festival on April 25, 2024; and, on July 14, 2026, a place on the TIME100 Creators list, which counted 62 million YouTube subscribers and another 52 million across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. The Sports Emmy sometimes credited to them was awarded to Prime Video's Thursday Night Football, whose winning package included the Dude Perfect alternate cast.
Trust is the product. Highmount's founder said the group had built “something even more valuable and that is trust” — and every brand deal since has bought exactly that. Fifteen years without a scandal that stuck is a business asset.
Compiled from public sources linked above and from TubeScope's own tracker data on September 8, 2026. All revenue, valuation, and net-worth figures are estimates or secondhand reports and are labelled as such; nobody outside the company's accounting knows the real numbers. Corrections: support@tube-scope.com.
Frequently asked questions
What is Dude Perfect's net worth?
No verified figure exists, and the sites that publish one disagree by a factor of five (
0 million to
50 million) while ignoring the distinction between five people and a company. What is documented: Highmount Capital invested
00 million or more in April 2024 for an undisclosed minority stake, which implies a company valuation in the hundreds of millions. The founders' personal share is unknowable from outside.
How much money does Dude Perfect make a year?
The company has never published revenue. Secondhand reports put it at roughly
0 million in 2022,
5 million in 2023, and an internal estimate near $50 million for 2024. YouTube ads are a small slice — by our public-data method about $0.1–$0.2 million a year — with tours, brand partnerships, licensed products, and the new attraction making up the rest.
Who invested in Dude Perfect?
Highmount Capital, a growth-equity firm founded in 2023 by Jason Illian and David Hawkins, announced a nine-figure investment on April 9, 2024, publicly stated as
00 million or more. The stake size and terms were never disclosed; a widely quoted 40% and
50 million valuation are an analyst's assumptions.
Why did Dude Perfect's CEO leave?
On September 3, 2026 the company said it and CEO Andrew Yaffe had mutually parted ways after about 23 months, citing different perspectives on the company's next phase — including a shift from building its own theme park toward smaller experiential concepts. Investor Patrick Hurley is interim CEO while a search firm looks for a successor.
How did Dude Perfect start?
As Texas A&M roommates betting sandwiches on backyard basketball shots. Their first video went up on April 9, 2009 and drew about 200,000 views in a week; within six months they had 3.3 million views, national TV appearances, and a world-record shot from the third deck of Kyle Field.
