How Much Andrew Rea From Binging With Babish Is Actually Worth
Andrew Rea, the creator and star of the YouTube show Binging With Babish, has a surprisingly high net worth.
Rea began his YouTube channel in February 2016 with the premiere of the show, an episode inspired by the popular sitcom Parks and Recreation. In the episode, he demonstrates step-by-step instructions to create television and film-based meals. The show creates iconic dishes from films such as Goodfellas and television shows like The Office.
This generates income through several avenues. Rea receives advertising revenue through YouTube advertising, income from the fees paid by YouTube Premium subscribers (who are paying to avoid advertising), regular monthly donations by fans, and a cookbook, Binging With Babish (via Cheat Sheet).
The production budget for Rea's shows is low, and he does the majority of the production work himself. Rea has received offers from corporate sponsors interested in partnering with him or being featured on the channel, which also keeps costs down. He speaks highly of working with YouTube and the freedom given to content creators (via MSN). "YouTube does a great job of putting the power to monetize your content into the hands of creators," he said. "I've worked directly with YouTube and a lot of different ways to make the content profitable."
Expanding Binging With Babish
The success of the channel was a surprise to Rea. "Like most YouTubers, my channel is kind of a happy accident," Rea said (via Yahoo! Finance). "I meant for it to be sort of an after-work hobby." He named the show after his Reddit username, Oliver Babish, a reference to an obscure character from The West Wing. However, that accident has resulted in 6.14 million subscribers.
Rea isn't letting the medium of television or the Internet limit him. "I'm just trying to find as many other avenues as I can that people want to see or hear," he said. "We're trying to open up a brew pub in Brooklyn... which should be very exciting. You can come by, watch me make the show, and have a beer."
The channel has racked up more than 1.6 billion views. This leads to an estimated revenue of $9,000 a day based on income from ads (via Nailbuzz). All told, Rea's net worth is estimated to be approximately $4 million.