It is only a matter of time before millions of people will see me get hit in the balls on TV and across the web
It was a moment straight out of a movie.
I had left my dodgeball team that I had been playing with for years to form a new team with some coworkers at my office. The Two Twenty #SWAG was born and tensions were high when we finally played my old team the Pussy Willows Street Gang.
Donned in #SWAG jerseys and GoPro cameras mounted on our heads, we played one of the most heated games of our lives. I dodged ball after ball that the Pussy Willows threw at me. Well, most of them anyway.
Feeling cocky, I taunted a former teammate. He wound up and as the ball flew towards me my body failed to react. Seconds later I was dropped to the ground clutching my nuts in agony.
“I got that on GoPro. I got that on GoProoooo!”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZH_Eb_NcYU]The next day I uploaded the footage to YouTube, titled it “How Not to Play Dodgeball” and then endured the inevitable mocking.
Laughter filled our office as the video was played on repeat and comments came flooding in on social media like “How many times has everyone watched it so far? I’m sitting at five views after three minutes of knowing about it.”
Weeks later, long after the pain in my pants subsided, something strange happened. I received a message on YouTube from someone wanting to buy my video.
I was about to become an Internet superstar. Sort of.
Hours later my inbox was filled with requests from companies wanting to license it. The video had seen less than a thousand views on YouTube but somehow the right people were seeing me clutching my nuts. Offers were rolling in from notable names like Break.com and MTV.
Apparently these media organizations have scouts searching YouTube for fresh content, and had found my video through its “hit in the balls” tag.
Offers came in ranging from $10 to $150 to license the video, largely dependent on whether exclusive rights were given. So me and my famous testes hired ourselves a manager. Sort of.
Hoping to maximize profits I decided to not to sell my video directly but to hire one of the viral video agencies that had contacted me wanting to manage the licensing of my video and pitch it to TV and other websites.
I hired a company called ChiWay Entertainment (now Jukin Media) who I discovered manages the licensing of several of the year’s most viral videos and signed a deal for a percentage split of any revenue generated from the sale of the video and on advertisements displayed on it. I then forwarded all interested parties on to Jukin to talk licensing.
Cha-ching! Sort of.
Within a matter of weeks I received my first cheque from Jukin for $50 for the inclusion of the video in Fail Army’s Best Fails of the Week compilation video.
Explaining the “Dodge Ball Nut Shot” memo on the cheque to my banker was equally entertaining.
So did my YouTube fail video make me rich and famous?
While I’ve only received $50 from Jukin to date, additional royalties will be paid quarterly as more companies license the video. Jukin provides an online database that TV and web producers search daily to find and license content for their programs. I assume it’s only a matter of time before millions of people will see me get hit in the balls on TV and across the web.
Recently I entered the video into our rec league’s best team photo/video contest and scored us $70 off of our team fees, so getting hit in the nuts continues to provide beer money for our team to enjoy after our games.
With the Fail Army compilation receiving over 2.5 million views I’ve had several people tell me that they’ve seen the video prior to ever meeting me. However being called out on the street as “that nutshot guy” sadly doesn’t improve on other names I’ve had shouted at me like “that ketchup guy” after the last viral video I helped to create.