Jesser

The backstory starts in Westlake Village, California, where Jesse Riedel was born March 27, 1999. His father, Guy Riedel, is a film producer whose credits include Wedding Crashers and Office Space — so show business was in the water. His older brother, James, creates YouTube content as Jiedel. Jesse was filming skits with his brother back in elementary school; by middle school, in 2012 and 2013, he was uploading Minecraft and Counter-Strike videos as JesserTheLazer, inspired by the English YouTuber Syndicate.

The pivot to basketball changed everything. First came NBA 2K gaming videos, then real-life basketball challenges — and the audience followed him onto the court in numbers that rewrote what a sports channel could be. He passed ten million subscribers, then twenty, then kept climbing into territory where the only company is MrBeast-scale. As of mid-2026, the main channel holds roughly 49.7 million subscribers and 13.1 billion views, with a second channel, Team Jesser, adding another 5.68 million. Over 1,400 videos and counting.

The formats are the engine. Jesser’s signature challenges — impossible buzzer-beaters, trick shots, 1v1 tournaments — are engineered for the exact moment a viewer can’t look away. But the videos that define him are the quests: he once spent more than a year getting 100 different NBA players to sign a single basketball, turning a simple idea into a cross-country saga. He’s hosted a dunk contest featuring former All-Star Dwight Howard. He’s filmed “guess the secret NBA player” segments with Gilbert Arenas and with Thunder star Chet Holmgren. He spent 50 hours embedded at NBA All-Star Weekend. When the NBA world needed a fan-voted dunk contest in 2025, Jesser was the natural host.

He doesn’t do it alone. Jesser is a core member of 2HYPE, the creator collective — CashNasty, Kristopher London, ZackTTG, Jiedel, Moochie — that turned Saturday challenge videos into a ritual for millions of sports fans. The group’s chemistry is a huge part of the appeal: these are friends competing, roasting, and occasionally humiliating each other, and the audience is in on every joke.

Around the channel he’s built a real business. The Bucket Squad — bucketsquad.com — is his merch and brand arm, and the name has become shorthand for his whole operation. Sponsorships, NBA partnerships, All-Star Weekend access: Jesser operates at a level where the league itself treats him as media, not just a fan with a camera.

That access is the story. Current and former NBA players don’t just tolerate Jesser’s videos — they seek them out. For players, an appearance is a direct line to the youngest, most online segment of the basketball audience; for Jesser, every appearance is proof of concept. He’s become the bridge between the league and YouTube, and the traffic runs both ways.

The numbers only tell half of it. What Jesser figured out — earlier and better than almost anyone in sports media — is that the modern basketball fan doesn’t want a highlight package. They want stakes, personalities, and a reason to care about the next shot. A buzzer-beater challenge with real consequences is appointment viewing; a talking head breaking down film is homework. He chose appointment viewing, fifty million times over.

For a generation that learned the game through a phone screen, Jesser is as much a part of basketball culture as the halftime show. The challenges keep coming, the NBA stars keep showing up, and the Bucket Squad keeps growing. The kid from Westlake Village who started filming Minecraft in middle school is now one of the most-watched sports creators in YouTube history — and he’s still just getting warmed up.

The early JesserTheLazer era is a time capsule worth revisiting: Minecraft let’s-plays and CS:GO clips from a middle-schooler who’d been inspired by Syndicate, Britain’s biggest gaming YouTuber at the time. The through-line was already there — competitive, loud, allergic to boring. When NBA 2K became the obsession, the audience didn’t have to learn a new personality; they just followed him to a new court.

The 2025 fan-voted dunk contest crystallized his status. The NBA didn’t need a YouTuber to host a dunk contest; it wanted this one, because Jesser’s audience is the demographic every league is desperate to reach — young, global, and watching on phones. His All-Star Weekend appearances have become a tradition: 50 hours embedded, access other creators would kill for, content that treats the weekend like the Super Bowl of content.

And the business keeps compounding. Bucket Squad merch drops sell out; the second channel keeps the upload machine fed without diluting the main event; sponsorships come from brands that want into basketball culture, not just basketball. Jesser didn’t just build a channel — he built a lane, and then he owned it.