The Magician with 200 Million Views the Magic Community Hasn't Noticed: Revealed.

We're all so focused on magicians within the community that we've totally missed the people shaping the future of magic.

The Magician with 200 Million Views the Magic Community Hasn't Noticed: Revealed.
Screenshot: YouTube

Imagine you’re asked to write a story about a YouTube magician whose subscriber count recently blew up to 1,000,000 subscribers. You sit down to research, and you hit play on one of their videos.

It’s a card magic tutorial that’s amassed 1,300,000 views.

The video’s stock footage intro would better fit a spy thriller.

Its voice-over and music feel like they belong in a conspiracy theory video.

It’s for sure a nice touch.

“This trick fooled David Blaine,” the magician says.

Okay, you’re interested.

“This trick was invented by an ancient magician, Chung Ling Soo”, he says next.

What?!? Now you’re invested.

The magician then performs the trick to the camera.

Hmmm, that’s strange, you think to yourself.

The secret to the trick is then taught to millions of viewers.

The YouTube magician credits Chung Ling Soo again, which is a strange way to pronounce John Bannon — you know Bannon was the magician who first published this triumph trick, Play it Straight, in his book Impossibilia in 1990.

There’s been plenty of published variations since the original - including variations from Joshua Jay, Asi Wind, Franco Pascali, and Harpan Ong.

But the original stands as one of the strongest pieces of card magic.

The same effect is frequently taught elsewhere, but typically Bannon or the name of the effect gets mentioned. This viral tutorial did neither and was shared on YouTube by a magician you have likely never heard about.

This magician has 1,100,000+ million subscribers and over 200 million views.

That’s right – 200 million views, and you’ve never heard about them.

Barely anyone in the magic community knows about him.

We asked around!

And yet, the future of magic is now getting shaped by people like Oscar Owen.

We recommend sharing One Ahead with your magician friends to read together.


Part 1. Oscar Who?

Oscar Owen is a 24-year-old magician from the UK that has had an astronomical rise in the YouTube community in the past three years. New York Weekly named Owen “the number one magic coach in the world”. He describes his online course as “the most popular card magic course in the world”, – which could actually be true with his huge following and his pricey learnmagic.com domain, which instantly landed high in Google searches for “Learn Magic”.

Oscar Owen also offers private coaching for £5k.

Yes, you read that correctly – private magic coaching for £5,000 ($6,000).

If you were to take a look back to Oscar’s earliest video in 2016 - you would see the foundations of the videos that helped him quickly become one of the most subscribed magicians on the platform.