North Carolina backs MrBeast’s Beast Games with film grant

North Carolina is putting up as much as $15 million to keep MrBeast’s Beast Games filming in the state, a public subsidy that officials say should translate into jobs, hotel nights and vendor spending from Pitt County to Wake County. The grant comes from a $31 million annual film fund with no sunset date, making the real test for taxpayers whether the production’s economic footprint is wide enough to justify the payout.

The North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant is funded at $31 million each fiscal year, from July 1 through June 30, and is a recurring budget item. The North Carolina Department of Commerce says the program is designed to attract productions that stimulate economic activity and create jobs. In 2025, the state said film and television productions spent $185.5 million in North Carolina and supported more than 7,000 jobs across the state.

Gov. Josh Stein announced in September 2025 that season 2 of Beast Games had been approved for a grant of up to $15 million and would film in and around Pitt and New Hanover counties. Stein said the state’s film grants support “vital economic activity” that benefits small businesses and suppliers across North Carolina. That broader pitch matters in Wake County, where lawmakers and local leaders often measure incentives by whether they drive spending that reaches restaurants, hotels, transportation companies and other employers, not just the headline project itself.

The show’s scale was on display in late May 2026, when thousands of people lined up at East Carolina University’s Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville for Beast Games filming. The crowd included people traveling from across North Carolina and beyond, underscoring the kind of visitor draw state officials hope can ripple into local spending. For the commerce department, that is the point of the film program and related major-events incentives: use public money to lure productions and attractions that keep dollars circulating in North Carolina.

For Wake County, the question is not whether Beast Games can attract attention. It is whether that attention turns into measurable work for local businesses and workers, and whether the state can show that the grant’s benefits spread beyond the counties where cameras are rolling.