The dreaded first international break of the season is here, and with that comes a pause on top-flight and Championship football in England for the upcoming weekend. While Tottenham Hotspur are running a free knitting workshop on Saturday and Manchester City will be hosting an annual wedding fayre on Sunday to make use of their state-of-the-art stadia in football’s absence, West Ham’s London Stadium is playing host to The Sidemen charity football match, and while it may not be on your radar as something to fill the void if your team is not playing, it will be the most watched match during the international break.
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Last year, The Sidemen, a YouTube collective with 19 million subscribers, held the event at The Valley Stadium, home of Charlton Athletic, selling out their 27,000-capacity stadium – something Charlton failed to do on any occasion last season as they finished 13th in League One. On this occasion, the Sidemen will face off against the YouTube All-Stars, a vast collection of worldwide YouTubers, in front of more than 62,000 spectators.
Last year, more than £1 million was raised for various charities, with 34 million views on YouTube at the time of writing – that’s more than double the number of people in the US who watched Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 2023.
For this iteration, the funds will be donated to three causes: Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), Teenage Cancer Trust and Rays of Sunshine.
Who are The Sidemen?
The Sidemen is a British YouTube collective formed in 2013 consisting of KSI (Olajide Olatunji), Miniminter (Simon Minter), Zerkaa (Joshua Bradley), TBJZL (Tobit John “Tobi” Brown), Ethan Payne (Behzinga), Vikkstar123 (Vikram Singh Barn) and W2S (Harry Lewis). Collectively, the YouTube stars have over 109 million subscribers on their individual channels. To put that into context, Barcelona have the most subscribers out of any football club at 15.7m
The group produce video content on their YouTube channel every Sunday, typically consisting of challenges and sketches, consistently amassing over five million views per video. Their most popular video to date, a two-hour challenge special detailing a trip across Europe, titled ‘SIDEMEN $20,000 VS $200 HOLIDAY (EUROPE EDITION)’, has 103 million views.
In 2014, the group launched Sidemen Clothing and opened its first physical store in Kent’s Bluewater Shopping Centre earlier this year. They have also released a book titled Sidemen: The Book, a No 1 bestseller in the UK, and was nominated for an award at the 2017 British Book Awards, as well as running several other business ventures, including the Sides restaurant and XIX Vodka.
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KSI is the most famous member of the collective and has been an international YouTube star for over a decade. He is now best known for popularising the YouTube boxing phenomenon, with his win over American YouTube personality Logan Paul amassing 2 million pay-per-view buys, placing it in the top five most bought fights in boxing history, according to British boxing promoter Eddie Hearn. They are now business partners, promoting PRIME, a range of sports drinks, drink mixes and energy drinks available in many countries worldwide, including the USA, UK, Australia and Canada.
KSI is set to fight Tommy Fury, the younger brother of British heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury, on October 14 at Manchester’s AO Arena.
What is The Sidemen Charity Match?
This iteration will be held at the London Stadium, home to Premier League outfit West Ham United, built ahead of the 2012 London Olympics and is set to be the biggest and most watched football match of the weekend.
The first of its kind was held in 2016 and continued until 2018 before taking a four-year break until 2022. Sidemen FC have had the better of the occasion, winning three times and losing once, a 2-0 defeat in 2017. Last year, arguably the most exciting occasion to date, they came back to win 8-7 against the YouTube All-Stars, owing to a hat-trick display from Miniminter.
The anticipation from last year has continued into this occasion, with the Sidemen selling out the 62,500-capacity stadium in under 90 minutes. Tickets were available for just £8 ($10).
Graham Gilmore, CEO of the London Stadium, said: “This event goes from strength to strength, with the move to London Stadium demonstrating the success the Sidemen have built over recent years, not only in bringing so many great names together but raising money for important charities too. In addition, we will be delighted to welcome the huge global audience on streaming and digital channels, who will be joining the 60k plus fans in the stadium!”
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Who is playing?
All of The Sidemen are set to feature for Sidemen FC, boosted in numbers by – and while these names may not mean much to you, there is a huge part of internet where these people are cultural icons – Callux, Lazarbeam, Tareq, Calfreezy, Randolph, Manny, Angry Ginge, JME, Deji and American star Mr. Beast, one of YouTube’s most prominent personalities with 181 million subscribers. They will be managed by Billy Wingrove, one half of the YouTube football freestyling duo, the F2 Freestylers.
This year is arguably the most impressive line-up for the YouTube All-Stars yet, featuring some of the biggest names on social media from both sides of the Atlantic. The team is headlined by Americans IShowSpeed and Kai Cenat, best known for their streaming content on YouTube and Twitch. The roster also features WillNE, Max Fosh, Karl Jacobs, Filly, ChrisMD, XQC, Jacksepticeye, Theo Baker, Chunkz, Danny Aarons, Aboflah, Jidion, Duke Dennis and Niko Omilana. Streamer Mark Goldbridge is back to manage the YouTube All-Stars again this year.
How can I watch?
If you did not manage to secure a ticket or if you are just curious as to what Beatlemania would look like in 2023, the game will be streamed free of charge on YouTube and KICK, a video live-streaming service launched in October 2022 as a competitor to Twitch.
And they’ll all be drinking Prime?
Most likely as Prime Hydration, a drinks brand founded by KSI and Logan Paul and owned by Louisville-based Congo Brands, is an official event sponsor.
In the United Kingdom, where the brand is most popular, the drink has created headlines due to its rarity. School-aged children – and adults – have been known to queue outside convenience stores, with fights even breaking out. Privately owned convenience stores profited from the demand by hiking prices on imported bottles, charging customers far beyond its £2/$1.99 RRP, sometimes as much as £20 for a single bottle, only increasing the feel of exclusivity and hype.
In July, Prime, the official sports drink partner of Arsenal, FC Barcelona, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the UFC, faced scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers, with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer calling on regulators to investigate Prime Energy, the canned variant launched in 2023, which he says has “eye-popping” levels of caffeine.
(Joseph Okpako/WireImage)Prime has two main products: Prime Hydration and Prime Energy. Both products consist of a combination of filtered water, coconut water, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium as artificial sweeteners, along with natural flavourings. In addition, Prime Energy includes various supplementary vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamins B6 and B12, magnesium, potassium, and calcium. Each serving of Prime Energy also contains approximately 200mg of caffeine, while Prime Hydration is entirely caffeine-free.
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A small warning on the back of the energy drink states it is “not recommended” for those under 18, people sensitive to caffeine, pregnant women, or nursing women.
“As a brand, our top priority is consumer safety, so we welcome discussions with the FDA or any other organization regarding suggested industry changes they feel are necessary in order to protect consumers,” Prime representatives said.
They added that Prime Energy “contains a comparable amount of caffeine to other top-selling energy drinks, all falling within the legal limit of the countries it’s sold in.”
Its 200mg caffeine content is the same as 5-hour Energy Original and Ghost Energy, but more than Rockstar (160mg), Monster Energy (160mg) and significantly more than Red Bull (80mg).
(Top photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
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