PewDiePie Becomes Biggest YouTube Channel Again, T-Series Trailing by 170,000 Subscribers

PewDiePie aka Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, the Swedish game commentator and YouTuber, on Monday regained the crown of being the biggest YouTube channel (in terms of the subscribers), hours after he had conceded defeat to T-Series, the Indian music label and production house. PewDiePie's subscriber count spiked suddenly after the YouTuber was promoted by two YouTube channels with massive followings. T-Series, unable to keep up with the subscriber flow of PewDiePie, is currently trailing by just over 170,000 subscribers. This isn't the first time that T-Series and PewDiePie have swapped places since the rivalry for world's most subscribed YouTube channel started seven months ago. 

After surpassing PewDiePie over 120 times, as per data from Social Blade, and then losing the top spot, T-Series's latest reign as the world's biggest YouTube channel was finally going smoothly until March 31. However, after PewDiePie had conceded the crown on Sunday, a fresh wave of support from two YouTube channels – kwebblekop and Philip DeFranco, Kjellberg took back the number one spot on April 1. kwebblekop has over 10 million subscribers, whereas Philip DeFranco commands over 6 million followers. PewDiePie also seems to have been helped by his "Congratulations" video, which has been among the top three trending videos on YouTube since its publication on Sunday. A wide coverage of Kjellberg losing to T-Series over the weekend has also gone in his favour.

kwebblekop and Philip DeFranco are hardly the first individual YouTubers to support PewDiePie in an effort to stop a corporation from becoming the biggest YouTube channel. The likes of other YouTubers, including MrBeast and Team 10 member Justin Roberts, have promoted Kjellberg in the past. Other efforts to increase PewDiePie's subscriber count have included someone hacking printers worldwide and urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie.

T-Series chairman Bhushan Kumar, who had intentionally stayed away from the PewDiePie vs T-Series YouTube battle, too jumped into the fray last month and asked Indian YouTube users to support the channels and “make India win.”

“We're on the brink of becoming the world's biggest @YouTube channel. We can make history,” Kumar wrote on Twitter.

T-Series may not be the biggest YouTube channel anymore, however, there doesn't seem to be any competition for the music label in terms of the number of video views. The YouTube channel has managed to get over 66 billion views on the video sharing platform, whereas Set India, which is currently second in terms of the video views, only has over 31 billion views.

As per the latest data from YouTube, PewDiePie currently has over 92,499,500 subscribers, whereas T-Series is accounting for 92,325,900 subscribers with a gap of just over 170,000 subscribers between the two. With PewDiePie currently also leading in the average new subscribers per minute, it remains unclear when T-Series will able get the title spot back.