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A YouTube Channel Builds a Bike Park

Berm Park opened this past weekend in Canton, North Carolina. The project was brought to life through Seth Alvo’s YouTube channel, Berm Peak, with 2.4 million subscribers.

The mountain biking YouTube channel raised $250,000 to design and build the free public park. Of that total, $100,000 came from the channel’s 2,000 nationwide Patreon supporters while the remaining portion came from sponsors like Diamond Back and Park Tool Company as well as private donors. 

“I expected Berm Park to be much smaller and I wanted to build it on private land and then donate the park to a municipality,” Alvo told us. “This was a crazy plan as I was starting with no knowledge of public projects.” 

Soon after fundraising kicked off in 2018, Alvo got connected with volunteer off-road biking organization Pisgah Area Sorba, which made him consider partnering with a municipality from the start. That came with benefits such as parking, gates, and surrounding infrastructure. 

While Alvo’s supporters paid for Berm Park’s development, the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy paid for the land—a total project cost of $3.52 million. The park is a part of Chestnut Mountain, a 450-acre multiuse public site that will have campgrounds, hiking trails, and treehouse-style overlooks upon full completion in the next year.

Features of the bike park include repair stations donated by Park Tool Company and a sculpture at the top of the mountain with a place to set bikes and pose for a photo op. 

Alvo shared more details about how he got the park built in our exclusive Q&A at the end of this newsletter 👇

Our Take

This project could provide a blueprint for new ways the public and private sectors work together—cities providing land and space while online communities provide development and funding. Maybe the next public library, road, or bridge will be funded by a creator’s community.

Auronplay Becomes the Top Streamer on Twitch

The Spanish-speaking gamer with 12.5 million followers has outperformed the platform’s most-followed streamers Ninja (17 Million) and xQc (10 million) so far in 2022. 

By The Numbers 

• In the past 30 days, Auronplay gained almost 400,000 new followers, 5x more than Ninja, who pulled in just 70,000. 

• Auronplay has averaged over 100,000 views per stream, which is almost 50% more than xQc, who is currently the streamer with the highest watch time.

Auronplay is known for his Minecraft and Fall Guys streams punctuated with humor, along with comedic YouTube videos reacting to memes and TikToks. He has been a long-time YouTuber, uploading for 12 years and amassing nearly 30 million subscribers. He stopped uploading to his main channel last year to focus on Twitch, and now uses YouTube primarily to upload clips of his streams.

Our Take

Auronplay’s success reflects a larger growth in the popularity of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking streamers. Around 2018, there was only one in the top 20, and now there are six. While North America is still Twitch’s largest market, it’s likely that in the future, non-English channels and viewers will dominate the streaming charts.

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YouTube’s Ad Revenue Slows in Q1

The platform brought in $6.8 billion in ad revenue so far this year—about $600 million less than was expected on Wall Street.

YouTube previously saw major growth during the pandemic when it brought in $28.8 billion in advertising revenue and saw a 50% year-over-year increase in revenue during the first quarter of 2021.

Our Take

While creator ads have earned an increased shelf price due to the pandemic, it’s expected to slow down with the comeback of in-person events and global macro trends like supply chain issues and the Ukraine war. Creators should be prepared to adapt, looking into other income streams and providing their value to brands in other ways.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Charli D’Amelio will star in a supernatural thriller movie.

• Reddit launches a community fund.

• Streamer Sydney Parker partners with American Eagle for a docuseries.

• 100 Thieves releases golf apparel. 

• YouTube is testing ads on Shorts.

• Sell high quality merch in minutes with Spreadshop.*

• The Bramfam starts a reality show.

*This is sponsored advertising content.

Q&A: Berm Peak

What was the greatest challenge throughout the 2-year project? Anything you weren’t expecting?

The biggest challenge was timing. On public projects, it’s difficult to predict when you’ll be allowed to start, and even finish. So you need to be prepared to drop everything and start working on something different on a moment’s notice.

You’ve had the YouTube channel for 7 years. How long have you wanted to build a bike park? How did the idea come about? 

The bike park has been a serious idea for 4 years. I had been traveling a lot and saw similar concepts around the USA and Canada. I knew it would work here in Western North Carolina, and suddenly realized I had all the resources to make it happen. At that point I started mentioning it to friends and then talking to others in the community about how we might do it.

Brands like Diamondback and Park Tool Company have contributed to the park—were brand integrations a part of the plan from the start? How did they come into play? 

I had a pretty decent frame of reference for how much this would cost and so I had been planning to build something really small—almost like a mini skills park with some jumps. Once I saw the terrain I knew we could go bigger. At that point I had Elevated Trail Design survey the area and provide some options. As it turned out, I liked the biggest option. That’s when I began searching for more funding.

How many people came together to get the park built? How did building this through the YouTube community impact the process?

The short answer is that thousands of people came together in varying capacities. The crew that graded and constructed Berm Park maxed out around seven, but there was also the conservancy, the town, the companies, and the individual donors. Building the park on YouTube definitely made it difficult to time things and manage expectations but in the end I think it worked out.

How has building the park impacted the channel? Do you expect that it will change the kind of videos you make going forward? Why or why not?

At the start, I took a big reduction in income by diverting Patreon funds to the park. Then I allocated a lot of time to the project in planning and negotiating with sponsors. We also got off the normal video schedule quite a few times to focus on the park. Now that Berm Park is open, that trend is reversing as a flow of press, word of mouth, and positivity are fueling interest in the channel. Berm Park won’t affect future videos all that much but it will be another huge piece of Berm Peak lore for subscribers to be proud of. That’s important.

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