Banijay Entertainment, the production giant behind Survivor, MasterChef, and Big Brother, just paid Squeezie for the global format rights to a YouTube video. The video — Stop The Train, a 90-minute, ~€800K creator production with 15M+ views — is now being shopped to broadcasters worldwide. For 30 years, TV studios licensed formats down to creators. On April 21, that direction reversed.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- Banijay — the studio behind Survivor, MasterChef, and Big Brother — bought global format rights to Squeezie's YouTube video Stop The Train on April 21, 2026.
- The original 90-minute video cost €700K-€800K (a French YouTube record) and has racked up 15M+ views since September 2025.
- Squeezie called the upfront a "nice check" — roughly a third of one production cost, with real royalties landing only if foreign broadcasters adapt it.
- Same week, Banijay also bought Japan's The Laughing Throne format. The deal flow has officially reversed: TV studios are now licensing IP from creators, not the other way around.
- For creators in 2026, an ambitious one-off video isn't a one-off anymore — it's a pilot with downstream rights value.
What actually happened?
On April 21, 2026, Banijay announced it had acquired global format rights to Stop The Train, the YouTube game show created by French YouTuber Squeezie (Lucas Hauchard) and director Théodore Bonnet. The original 90-minute video dropped on September 13, 2025, with ten French creators competing through themed train carriages — casino, prison, and more — on a real moving train. According to La Libre, the production cost €700K-€800K, a record for French YouTube.
The numbers since release are absurd. DH Les Sports+ clocked 6.2M views in under 48 hours and 10M within a week. Tubefilter now puts the lifetime count above 15M. Banijay's Helen Greatorex brokered the deal; Chief Content Officer James Townley confirmed the format is heading to broadcasters globally.
Why does this matter for creators?
Because the deal flow just inverted. For decades, the big TV studios owned the formats — Survivor, Wheel of Fortune, MasterChef — and creators borrowed them, badly, for YouTube. Squeezie didn't borrow anything. He invented a format, shot it as a YouTube video, and now Survivor's producer is paying him for it.
That's not a content licensing deal. That's a studio admitting a 30-year-old French YouTuber out-engineered them on original IP. The implication for any ambitious creator: your one-off video isn't just a one-off video. It's a pilot.
"Stop The Train truly pushes creative boundaries, through its originality, competitive intensity and distinctive location-led design. Born on YouTube and already popular with fans, the format has strong potential to be deployed globally across multi-platform audiences."
— James Townley, Chief Content Officer Development, Banijay Entertainment
Squeezie himself was characteristically blunt about the economics. Speaking to Ozap, he called the upfront a "nice check" worth roughly a third of one Stop The Train production. The real money — possibly hundreds of thousands of euros per territory — only lands if foreign broadcasters greenlight local versions. The YouTube run was the proof-of-concept. The TV adaptation is the business model.
What's the bigger picture?
This isn't a one-off. The same week, Variety reported Banijay also picked up The Laughing Throne, a Japanese comedy format from the LOL: Last One Laughing creators. Bloomberg reported in March that Banijay is merging with All3Media — the resulting European TV powerhouse is openly hungry for IP wherever it lives.
Meanwhile BBC Studios is producing originals for YouTube, and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan keeps calling creators "the new stars and studios." Squeezie himself isn't waiting around — his GP Explorer 3 racing event peaked at 1.4M concurrent Twitch viewers in October, a French record per Deadline. He has 19.7M YouTube subscribers and an estimated €36M net worth. Studios aren't competing with creators of that scale anymore. They're competing to license them.
What does Fanvault think?
Fanvault's read: this is the moment creator IP became a balance-sheet asset, not a content slate. The €800K Stop The Train budget looks insane until you realize it's a pilot Banijay just validated. Every ambitious creator production now has a downstream rights conversation attached — and that line item belongs in the unit economics from day one. The creators who win the next decade aren't the ones chasing TV deals. They're the ones building formats TV studios will chase them for.
Squeezie didn't sell out to Survivor's producer. Survivor's producer bought in.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Stop The Train?
Stop The Train is a 90-minute YouTube game show created by French YouTuber Squeezie and director Théodore Bonnet, released on September 13, 2025. Ten French YouTubers compete through themed carriages — casino, prison, and others — on a real moving train. The production cost
How much did Banijay pay Squeezie for the rights?
The exact figure wasn't disclosed publicly. Squeezie told Ozap the upfront was "a nice check" worth roughly a third of one Stop The Train production budget — implying somewhere around €230K-€270K. The real money depends on foreign adaptations: each territory that greenlights a local version could pay royalties in the hundreds of thousands of euros.
Why is this deal a big deal for the creator economy?
It reverses 30 years of format flow. Historically, TV studios like Banijay licensed proven formats (Survivor, MasterChef, Big Brother) to creators who'd remix them for digital. Here, the studio that owns Survivor is paying a YouTuber for a format that was born on YouTube.
Combined with Banijay's same-week pickup of The Laughing Throne and BBC Studios producing originals for YouTube, it signals that creator-built IP is now a real asset class for traditional media buyers.
Who is Squeezie?
Lucas Hauchard, known as Squeezie, is France's second most-subscribed YouTuber with
What should creators take away from this?
That an ambitious one-off video isn't a one-off anymore. The €800K Stop The Train budget made sense as a YouTube spectacle and makes more sense as a pilot for a global TV format. Creators planning premium productions in 2026 should bake downstream rights value — "who else might pay to adapt this?" — into the unit economics from the start, not after the video goes viral.