Local star Jacksepticeye among YouTube's biggest earners - report
A new ranking which estimates the income top YouTube gamers make from their videos has placed Offaly's Sean McLoughlin, a.k.a. Jacksepticeye, among the top earners on the site.
The 32-year-old Cloghan man, who lived in Athlone for a number of years, has an astonishing 29 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, which is said to have attracted more than a billion video views last year.
Based on those viewing figures, it's been estimated that Sean earned some €7.4 million from his 2022 YouTube output, which largely focused on video games but also included other lively and amusing clips.
The income ranking, put together by casino reviewer casinoalpha, compared the views gained for each channel since December last year, and applied the going rate for sponsored content on YouTube, in order to rank the gamers who produced the most valuable content.
The calculations were based on the CPM (cost per thousand views) rates advertisers pay for sponsored videos on YouTube - which, for the most popular channels, is said to average €7.32, or €0.0073 per view.
Based on these calculations, Sean was ranked as the seventh highest-earning gamer on YouTube last year, three places ahead of Swedish video-maker PewDiePie, who is believed to have earned just over €5m from his videos in 2022.
Belarusian YouTuber A4 (Vladislav Bumaga) was listed as the highest-earning gaming streamer, with over seven billion video views last year bringing in an estimated €51.7 million.
Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the Jacksepticeye YouTube channel, and the local man was interviewed on the Late Late Show about this milestone.
Sean, who is by some distance Ireland's biggest YouTuber, moved in 2017 from Athlone to Brighton, England, where he currently lives.
He has used his popularity to help raise very significant sums of money for charity.
Last month, his annual Christmas-themed charity livestream generated over $10 million for World Central Kitchen, a charity which provides meals to those affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises.