Sports reimagined: YouTuber's food challenge taking the Internet by storm
Ninth-grader Mim could feel the pressure. Her nervousness was evident on her face, but so was the excitement.
The stage was ready, the crowd was euphoric, and the match conductors turned to hype men, their interjections in the form of commentary further stoking the excitement.
Mim was among a line of women queuing up to take part in this sporting tournament in Arkandi village in Pabna's Faridpur upazila.
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The objective of the game was to roll plastic balls from a wooden ramp towards a circled wooden structure at the edge, ensuring the balls end up in one of the glasses of water placed there.
For each ball successfully reaching the water glasses, the player would win a bottle of one litre of soybean oil – a lucrative commodity given its skyrocketing price.
A single camera person was capturing the whole proceeding.
The first participant managed to land one of the balls into the glass of water.
When Mim's turn came, she breathed in deeply. It was time.
It was opportunity meets preparation as Mim managed to get four balls in the glasses out of 12 tries, meaning she won four litres of soybean oil.
"It was thrilling!" Mim said. "Do you understand what it means to get four litres of soybean oil without paying anything?" she said, her face a mask of delight.
Mim is one of the many women and men in Pabna's Faridpur upazila who regularly participates in various innovative outdoor games organised by a YouTube and Facebook channel named SS Food Challenge.
The group has been organising "Food Challenges' in 20 to 25 villages in Faridpur.
The idea is simple – the villagers participate in their games, which are improvised regularly to keep the crowds interested.
The organisers record and upload the videos on their channels on YouTube and Facebook, and the players who participate win various food items including soybean oil, rice, wheat, biscuits etc.
These contents uploaded on YouTube and Facebook channels are very popular.
They have over a billion views on Facebook, and more than 500 million on YouTube. The fanbase of these contents is not concentrated just in Bangladesh, but it has a global audience.
Among dozens of peculiar types of games that SS Food Challenge team improvise are breaking pot with football while gliding down a ramp, pool shots, run, jump and score, hitting pots with footballs, spinning on water, throwing football in basket for sari or three-piece dress, trick shot game, rolling tires to break oil-bottle-tower, driving some strange cars, among many others.
The games are improvised to make them appeal to the locals. They are kept simple enough so people aren't bogged down with understanding the specifics of each game.
Omar Sunny Somrat, the founder and team leader of SS Food Challenge, said they have a dedicated team for designing and planning the games. Around 20 people work for this channel under Omar's supervision.
A venture born in Covid days
Omar was into content making for some time now. During his graduation, he used to make funny contents.
By 2021 when Covid-19 broke out, Omar already had a fulltime job, and was also running some YouTube channels like SS Protiva, a musical talent hunt.
The SS Food Challenge was also there, but it was more of an eating competition.
However, Omar realised the risks associated with speed feeding.
"What if someone becomes ill from eating our food? Instead we started arranging games and distributed food items among the people.
"During the second lockdown, we saw the kids had taken to mobile games. We told them that if they came for outdoor games with us, we would give them food. That is how our activities were launched. Our first video in this format was released on 19 July, 2021 on our We Explore channel."
His younger brother Sagar organised the games at the time.
Sagar currently leads both the camera and editing work of the entire venture.
With positive responses on YouTube and Facebook, they continued their projects with kids, before they were approached by adults who also wanted to join in.
"Things turned electrifying with the adults. People lined up and loved participating in the outdoor games. Around 30-40 people participate in the games, but 200-300 people gather to see them play."
Earlier, biscuits were given as a prize, but it wasn't the reward that drew people, but rather the social activity.
In 2022, when the price of soybean oil skyrocketed, alongside other daily necessities, those were introduced as prizes, generating even more interest for the competitions.
"The changes in prizes made revolutionary growth of our channel. Both viewers' number and village people's enthusiasm took a massive lead of progress,"Omar said.
Omar also successfully onboarded popular presenter Russel.
Innovation the key
Omar said his game design and planning team is led by Munir.
"We emphasise highly on innovating the games to keep things interesting."
Around a dozen games are thought up per day to ensure people don't get bored and to keep the content fresh for viewers.
"There are risk factors with games. People may get hurt. So we test the games out ourselves to ensure the safety of our participants.
"When you watch a game, it may look very simple to you, but the backend work to bring those to life is quite complicated."
Omar said they have already improvised 400-500 games.
As Omar's team continues to expand their games' setting in 20-25 villages in Faridpur upazila, each becomes a celebration for the entire village.
The games of women, where only the women participate, also become an opportunity for them to leave behind the monotony of daily life, which offers little in the form of recreation and fun.
In Arkandi for example, where Mim won four litres of soybean oil, she said the women had terrific fun.
"Everyone was so happy, and we enjoyed this so much that everyone requested them to organise more games with us again," Mim said.
Omar knows the value of the work he is doing.
"When I came up with this, it was a novel idea. And everyone loves a novel idea. Every month we spend around Tk5 lakh for prizes and rewards.
"I hope such projects swarm every village in Bangladesh. But that has to come from passion. If you only try this for making money, it won't work," he added.
