Viva La Dirt League

Viva La Dirt League is the name of a New Zealand YouTube channel with a huge international following. Rowan Bettjeman, Adam King and Alan Morrison are the local boys done good, who have amassed more than four million Youtube subscribers for their distinct brand of "nerd culture" comedy.

The trio didn’t meet until adulthood. Growing up in Wellington (Morrison), Auckland (King) and Blenheim (Bettjeman), the three shared a passion for movies and gaming, which led to careers in the screen industry. Morrison and King, both heavily inspired by the Lord of the Rings movies, studied filmmaking at the NZ Film and Television School and Auckland University respectively. Meanwhile Bettjeman pursued acting, studying for a year at Christchurch’s Hagley Theatre Company, before joining national drama school Toi Whakaari. Upon completing study they all settled in Auckland, and would eventually cross paths working in the industry.

Bettjeman and Morrison first met in 2008 on a film set, and soon began collaborating on projects — like self-funded short Beached, which screened at the 2010 NZ International Film Festival. In 2011, they created the first ever Viva La Dirt League video. Mixing comedy and gamer culture, the parody music video mimicked boy band Blue, replacing the lyrics of their hit song ‘All Rise’ with references to StarCraft 2, a popular video game.

With the help of the Reddit website, the video gained tens of thousands of views — a rare achievement for a debut upload — motivating the pair to keep going. Those early videos were largely focused on parody music and StarCraft 2, with the name Viva La Dirt League being a StarCraft reference. After two years on this route, viewership began to dwindle, and the duo pivoted. "Trying new things is our mantra", they told NZ On Screen. "We will give anything that excites us a go, and if it doesn't work then we move onto something new that excites us." This approach is evident on their YouTube channel, which boasts hundreds of videos in a variety of styles — ranging from niche gaming humour, to widely relatable comedy sketches.

This content pivot came in the form of an ongoing narrative series: Bored, which launched in December 2013. Showcasing their ability to combine scripted content with adlibbed material, it centred on two retail workers (played by Bettjeman and Morrison) at a tech and gaming store. Bored was filmed at Auckland shop Playtech, which would become a mainstay location for Viva La Dirt League. Whilst juggling their day jobs, the pair managed to consistently release new Bored videos for two years, before coming to a crossroads. The channel wasn’t growing as much as hoped after four years of regular uploading, and despite some impressive peaks (the second Bored video swiftly reached 500,000 views on Reddit), they couldn’t get those numbers to stick. 

King joined the group at this "pivotal moment… just as we were trying to decide whether we continue on with the channel or close it down". King — a writer and director — first met the Viva La Dirt League pair in 2015 whilst making commercials, and had been a fan of their channel before that. He saw potential in the Bored series, and also encouraged the creation of more sketch comedy, which was a big step in the channel finding its voice; "it was like the power of three was the missing key". Three also proved to be a helpful number for resolving creative disagreements, with the team now taking a majority vote in decision-making.

The newfound trio embarked on a fresh era of video sketches. In May 2016 they hit another stride with a new series, Epic NPC Man. NPC is an acronym for ‘Non-Player Character’, a blanket term for a video game character that is controlled not by the player, but by the game. Epic NPC Man centres on a self-aware NPC who observes the strange way he exists in the game world. "It was the first time we landed on what we now call 'video game logic' as a concept", Viva La Dirt League told NZ On Screen. "No one else was really doing it out on the internet, and it was such a fresh take on video games, and a fresh way to do skit comedy. There was a massive appetite for it on the internet."

Epic NPC Man ticked all the right boxes – high production values, high viewership, and a voice that felt distinctly their own. As Bettjeman noted in their 2019 Viva Rewind video, it was the first time the trio realised that "this could be what we do for the rest of our lives". They were also breathing new life into the Bored series. In addition to King becoming a fixture, they were joined by a revolving door of talented friends in guest roles, including David Correos, Hamish Parkinson, Ben Van Lier and Ellie Harwood. Harwood in particular played a key role in Bored reaching new heights. In late 2016, she starred as the eponymous character in 'Girl Gamer'. The beloved sketch became the first to reach one million views on their Facebook channel.

The breakthrough video gave their Facebook numbers a growth spurt, which fed into YouTube subscriptions. In November 2016, Viva La Dirt League hit 100,000 followers on Facebook, and although they couldn’t make money off that platform, it signalled they could probably make it elsewhere. Within a few weeks, they'd launched their own page on payment platform Patreon, allowing viewers to send funds directly.

In the early days on Patreon, they made just enough income to pay Bettjeman’s rent, enabling him to shoulder the heavy editorial workload. King and Morrison were still holding down full time jobs — King as a commercials director at TVNZ, and Morrison as a video producer at NZME. Bettjeman was a freelancer, making him the lowest-risk person to go full-time. A self-described "struggling actor", Bettjeman had worked on shows like Shortland Street and Spartacus, but found greater success creating his own parts via Viva La Dirt League — a familiar narrative for other Kiwi actors, like Taika Waititi and Sophie Henderson.

With Bettjeman now editing full-time, production accelerated. Until then, YouTube had provided only a modest income, and Viva La Dirt League has utilised traditional funding just once, for narrative web series Rekt (watch it here). Funded by a joint venture involving NZ On Air and YouTube’s Skip Ahead Scheme, the comedy followed a team of lovable misfits seeking E-Sports glory. Although the trio found it as a positive experience, they have no plans to use traditional funding methods again, simply because they don’t need to. By the time the web series was released in 2017, the channel’s profitability had already begun to snowball.

Although it had been a slow climb to 100,000 YouTube subscribers — finally cracked in April 2017 — they reached one million subscribers just two years later. Over the same period, Patreon income had jumped from a few hundred dollars a month to $12,000 a month. By this point, the trio had all committed to Viva La Dirt League by leaving their screen industry jobs for the channel (and also by getting matching tattoos).

During this era of incredible growth, they honed in on the concept of 'Game-Based Logic' which had made Epic NPC Man such a hit. Unravelling the rules and logic of a game for comedic affect, they refocussed their attention on game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (aka PUBG). One benefit of satirising a new game is that it often experiences technical glitches, providing great comedy fodder. The PUBG series brought many new fans to the YouTube channel, who then discovered other content — particularly Bored and Epic NPC Man. Wary of becoming exclusively a PUBG channel, they branched out into skits about other games.

This productivity was made possible by a growing crew. Not only had Viva La Dirt League moved from hobby to day job for the core team, it had done so for many of their friends. The trio have been joined by producer Alexander Borgers, camera operator Tom West, designers James Goldenthal and Cycy Henry, and editors Ashley Stewart and Ben Fowler. Over the years, performers like Ben Van Lier, Hamish Parkinson, Bryon Coll and Britt Scott Clark have also become more solidified in the Viva La Dirt League brand, feeling more like ensemble cast members than guests.

"In the early days, the three of us did literally everything: writing, directing, camera operating, acting, editing, all the social media, accounting — the lot." With their time freed up, the trio could now focus on the creative aspects of writing, directing and acting, as well as running the business from a big picture perspective.

Thanks to a bigger team and the financial support of their fans, Viva La Dirt League have taken on bigger and bolder projects. In March 2020, after the success of a series based on roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons, they launched a second Youtube channel completely devoted to the game. They also crowdfunded the tidy sum of $660,000 for their first short film, Baelin's Route: An Epic NPC Man Adventure (2021), which was released to massive viewership. As of July 2022, it has over 4.5 million views on YouTube. The film showcases the high production values the team have come to be known for.

But nothing proved their popularity like the $4 million Viva La Dirt League successfully crowdfunded for a studio and office space. The Kickstarter campaign was launched in March 2022, and brought in funds from around the world. Speaking to Newshub about the campaign in 2022, King summarised that less than 1% of their fanbase were Kiwis, with most support coming from America, Australia, Europe and South East Asia.

Alongside their regular content, the team hope to explore longer formats, like narrative series and features. But they'll continue to make their home online, since they prefer to be supported by their audience than a funding body. The quantity of Viva La Dirt League fans is one mark of success, but the quality of the fandom is also a source of pride. As the trio often mention in interviews, online gamer communities can easily become toxic, but the environment they have fostered has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I think it's the energy that we put out into the world…  we're never punching down to get a joke. Never making fun of other people. Even the video games, or the situations we're making fun of – I think a lot of our fans can see that we're making the joke with love in our hearts…. It's like poking fun at a family member."

Profile written by Rosie Howells; published on 29 July 2022

Sources include
Viva La Dirt League
Sam Brooks, 'Inside Viva La Dirt League's YouTube empire' (Interview) The Spinoff website. Loaded 6 September 2021. Accessed 29 July 2022
Matt Brown, 'From Shortland Street screen to YouTube star' (Interview with Rowan Bettjeman) - The Marlborough Express, 31 August 2018
'Question Time With Viva La Dirt League l Viva La Dirt League (VLDL)' (Video) YouTube website. Loaded 19 January 2017. Accessed 29 July 2022
'Viva Rewind - Looking back over the decade' (Video) YouTube website. Loaded 31 December 2019. Accessed 29 July 2022
'Viva La Dirt League fans donate millions towards NZ YouTubers' new studio l AM' (Video interview)  YouTube website. Loaded 10 March 2022. Accessed 29 July 2022