‘Like, subscribe, buy a football club’ FourFourTwo meets YouTuber KSI ahead of his first full season as Dagenham & Redbridge co-owner
“I’m an entertainer” says KSI, with zero hint of David Brent parody, as he speaks to FourFourTwo in between bites of Nando’s chicken, inside the unassuming boardroom at Dagenham & Redbridge.
In the politest way possible, we’ve just asked him to describe himself, and essentially tell us who he is – it’s a valid question, given that certain sections of the Daggers’ fanbase might have been forgiven for asking after it was revealed in March that the 32-year-old, who made his fortune on YouTube, had joined their club as a part-owner.
So, what does a vlogger know about non-league football club ownership? How much money is he actually planning to invest? What’s his plan? What’s a KSI? We’re in the bowels of the club’s Victoria Road stadium in east London to meet the game’s latest celebrity investor and get some answers.
Knowledge, Strength, Integrity
KSI is an acronym for Knowledge Strength Integrity, taken from a video game group he was part of, and gaming is where his journey to the Dagenham boardroom began.
In the 28 days that preceded our meeting, no YouTuber in the UK had amassed more subscribers than KSI, who added 200,000 more to a number that currently sits at around 45 million across his channels. All those eyes on screens make for stratospheric viewership – in total, his videos have been watched over 16 billion times.
“You can argue my YouTube career launched because of FIFA,” he points out, referencing the popular video game franchise. “Race to Division One was this series I did, where I started in Division 10 [of the competitive online mode], and my goal was to reach Division One, kind of similar to Dagenham now.
“The goal is to reach the Premier League, and we’re in National League South right now. That series on YouTube got more and more people watching me, subscribing to me, so it’s like a full circle moment, the way I’m now doing it in real life. I never thought I’d be able to do this.”
Raised in Watford by Nigerian parents, the Arsenal fan was privately educated at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, along with younger brother Deji, who’s also a YouTuber. The Olatunji family weren’t well-off, but education was the ultimate priority for their children.
After failing his A-levels, KSI went full-time with YouTube. The turning point came when he asked a teacher if he should quit education and make the jump. Explaining that he was making around £1,500 a month from his videos, the teacher revealed that figure was more than they were earning in education. KSI’s mind was made up.
By 2012, aged 19, he’d reached one million subscribers. The following year, he joined forces with six other British creators to form the Sidemen, who revolutionised the UK YouTube scene via high-production challenge videos, travel vlogs and reality-TV style series. By 2015, KSI was testing the water with music releases.
Debut single Lamborghini reached number 30 in the UK singles chart, and he realised his audience would follow him beyond the platform that made him. To date, he’s amassed five million UK single sales, three billion global streams, nine top 10 singles and four Brit Award nominations. His second album All Over the Place immediately hit number one in 2021.
In the middle of all that, KSI forever influenced internet culture by bringing the YouTube boxing phenomenon to life, stepping into the ring himself, having previously been an unfit, out-of-shape bedroom vlogger with zero fighting experience.
He fought fellow YouTuber Joe Weller inside a sold-out Copper Box Arena and won. A second amateur bout, against American YouTuber Logan Paul at Manchester Arena, generated one million pay-per-view sales. The fight was declared a draw.
In November 2019, the pair turned professional for a rematch at the Staples Center in LA, promoted by Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing. KSI won that contest – the cruiserweight fought in five more bouts before hanging up the gloves in 2023 to focus on other endeavours.
He launched a drinks company, Prime Hydration, alongside Logan Paul – the pair’s influence was so strong that it sparked unprecedented demand across the globe, with widespread shortages, supermarket frenzies and barmy resale markets that KSI himself criticised. Prime has since become the official sports drink for Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, UFC and WWE.
Doors continued to open, and KSI strode through them unflinchingly. He went mainstream last year by joining the Britain’s Got Talent judging panel – initially as a guest, then as a permanent addition alongside Simon Cowell, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden, propelling him to new levels of fame. Everything he touches seems to turn gold.
Next stop, the moon
Now, here he is in Dagenham. Has KSI parted with hard cash to be here, or is his investment the 75.3 million followers sitting in his pocket across all his social platforms, available to leverage at the tap of a screen?
“I haven’t really talked to anyone about the financials,” he says, having become a minority shareholder in the club. “For me, it’s mainly about putting my name to this club and going, ‘I’m gonna take it to the Moon.’ I think with most things I touch, it kind of spirals upwards.
“I focus on things I care about. That’s the trick. I’ve been offered stakes in all types of things, and I say no to a lot because if I don’t care for them, then I’m not going to be interested.”
KSI might have timed his arrival at Dagenham perfectly. In 2010, the club were in League One under John Still, the most successful manager in their history. But in their most recent campaign, they finished 13th in National League South, England’s sixth tier. It was the lowest placing since their formation 34 years ago, when Dagenham FC merged with Redbridge Forest. The only way is up.
Joel Page, a supporter who follows the club home and away, also running fan site Dagnificent, describes the mood a year ago as “the absolute lowest ebb”. Dagenham had just suffered relegation from the National League. “I’ve never had my love for the club diluted as much as it was then,” he admits.
“Obviously, that love will never go away. Football’s meant to be an escape, something that provides joy, but it was just one thing after another. KSI has injected a new lease of life into the club.”
Aged 23, close to the heart of KSI’s audience demographic, you might well expect Page to be excited by a wealthy, world-famous YouTuber investing in his football club. “I’m not much taken in by that kind of thing,” he admits, however. “I knew of him. I didn’t really have much of an opinion on him either way. But I knew that he was massive. I’d seen him everywhere. We all knew he was one of the most well-known people, probably among my generation.”
How about the rest of the Dagenham fanbase? “Our demographic is fairly old, so I think the majority wouldn’t have known who he was,” Page says. “I saw a lot of comments on forums about people becoming acquainted with him through their grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren. But a lot of people that age were still open to it, because it didn’t take them long to see what he could bring to the club.”
Shortly after the announcement, a fake news story went around suggesting the Daggers sold £3,760,428 worth of shirts in just four hours. That would translate to something in the neighbourhood of 77,000 shirts for a club that rarely sell more than 1,000 in a season.
The reality of the situation was that the club had actually sold out of shirts after it was confirmed on the eve of the 2025-26 season that they’d signed Andy Carroll. The former England striker, by then 36, was returning to the area where he’d once played for West Ham, following a spell in the French lower leagues with cash-strapped Bordeaux.
Carroll simultaneously became an investor in the Daggers, and scored six goals in 12 league games before injury ended his season during the winter. Despite Carroll’s lengthy injury lay-off, a reorder of the club’s Umbro shirts was made for Christmas, and they continued to sell well into the new year – by March when KSI arrived, there were none left, so Dagenham’s sales figure on the back of their new celebrity investor was, in fact, zero.
A larger order has been made for the 2026-27 campaign, expected to be at least double, but the club won’t be drawn on exactly how many.
The KSI effect was pretty immediate, though, in terms of bums on seats, clicks on streams and eyes on Dagenham. Three days before the announcement, only 1,247 people had been present for a home loss to AFC Totton, at a ground that can hold 6,000. Four days after the announcement, 2,281 fans were there for a 1-0 victory over Dorking.
KSI live-streamed himself watching that match – the broadcast involved a cameraman following him around for three hours, from his arrival at the stadium to his departure after full-time, with the footage going out on his own YouTube channel.
KSI was able to read viewer comments as they flooded in on the stream’s live chat. “That video hit more than 300,000 views, which for a non-league side is crazy numbers,” he tells us proudly. “Normally, the most you’d get for a game in non-league is probably 10,000 people, if that, watching online or just on TV. So to get 300,000… yeah, it was wild.”
KSI was sat next to co-investor Carroll as he celebrated Dagenham’s goal with an enthusiasm akin to someone who’d just watched his club secure promotion to the Premier League. Carroll was more restrained. “It’s crazy,” KSI admits. “I remember playing as him on FIFA, and now he’s part of the club with me, there just chilling. I’m like, ‘Wait, what is my life?’ I pinch myself so many times.”
Only one point followed from the next two games, however – with the club sitting a lacklustre 12th in the league, former Portsmouth and Manchester City striker Lee Bradbury was sacked as manager, just 15 days into the KSI era. Carroll stepped in for the rest of the season and guided the team to successive home wins over Torquay and Hampton & Richmond.
The only way is up
On the latter occasion, the match itself was live-streamed, rather than just the reactions of KSI in the stand, after permission was granted by DAZN, the National League’s broadcaster – that game took place during a weekend of international fixtures, when British football’s Saturday 3pm blackout rules don’t apply.
At the time of writing, the streams of those two games had an almost identical number of views, at roughly 350,000, even though one of them showed the match and the other did not, illustrating that the draw was very much KSI rather than the match.
In Dagenham’s final five games of the season, they picked up just two points and received a 7-2 thrashing at Worthing. Right now, the Premier League feels a long, long way away.
“I can’t control the players using my keypad or controller,” says KSI. “But that doesn’t change the passion I have. You can see it with the amount of content I put out on my YouTube channels – I’m active. Just today alone I’ve got quite a few interviews, and I’m doing a lot of content pieces with creators. I love it.”
KSI has already been putting his stamp on things. While he doesn’t have a job description, the club are keen to lean into his expertise when it comes to media, marketing and content.
One of the first requests he made was a tweak to the line-up graphics that the club posted on social media – rather than it just appear as a list of names and numbers, he wanted them in formation order, so fans could learn about the players. “He honestly doesn’t miss a post – none of this is passive,” explains a club insider.
On the morning of FourFourTwo‘s allotted three hours with KSI, he’s the main guest on Chris Evans’ Virgin Radio show, during which Evans describes him as “the most popular man in the UK today”. Afterwards, he’s driven from the station’s London Bridge studio to meet us in Dagenham, arriving a whole hour early for the photoshoot and interview.
Hellos, handshakes and booming laughter quickly fill the room. The KSI laugh has become one most recognisable sounds on the internet – it’s loud, chaotic and high-pitched, punctuated by short, sharp giggles. Completely contagious, he uses it to start and finish sentences, emphasise points and even mask any awkwardness – such as when FFT asks if he ever went to any Arsenal games during his childhood. “No, I was never able to afford it,” he laughs. Today, he owns a box at the Emirates.
Bouncing from photoshoot to interview to selfie and back to another interview with ease, he takes everything in his stride, not least FourFourTwo‘s concept for our cover photos, inspired by Bryan Robson’s unveiling as Middlesbrough’s player-manager in 1994.
This summer, KSI has been actively involved in the appointment of Lee Allinson as the club’s new gaffer. The son of winger Ian Allinson, who played more than 100 games for Arsenal in the 1980s, the new manager is seen as an up-and-coming boss with good knowledge of the non-league scene in the South East. During 2025-26, he guided Hemel Hempstead to fifth in National League South, a full eight places higher than Dagenham.
He’s now managing a full-time professional club for the first time, and although he’s not a headline name – Carroll’s former Newcastle and West Ham team-mate Kevin Nolan was falsely linked with the job – fans seem happy.
“Lee Allinson feels like a Dagenham appointment,” says Page. “Somebody who has the capacity to achieve, who’s coming from a lower level in terms of stature of club, and who really wants to make a go of it. We’ve always been a club that’s thrived on delving down the pyramid, whether that’s signings or managers, being able to pluck a little gem. Hemel were one of the teams who impressed me most last season. I like the appointment.”
In a somewhat unconventional setup, Carroll will be Allinson’s assistant manager, as well as a registered player and part-owner of the club. It’s a scenario that could present a potentially awkward situation if Allinson’s reign as manager hits choppy waters and the ownership group, including Carroll and KSI, have to discuss sacking the boss that Carroll is assisting.
Neighbours Billericay Town previously followed a similar route when local businessman Glenn Tamplin bought the club in 2016, having failed to take over Dagenham, and later named himself as manager.
Chaos ensued – at one point the owner sacked and then rehired himself as manager within two days – and some Dagenham fans might have twitched when they heard their club were signing Tamplin’s son Archie this summer. However, the 23-year-old has established himself as a gritty, hard-working midfielder at National League South level and is viewed as a solid signing from Chelmsford.
At the time of writing, all of the club’s summer signings have arrived on free transfers, with just one dropping down from the Football League. “I don’t want people to think, ‘OK, KSI is here, there’s a load of money,’” insists the content creator, who recently announced that he was leaving the Sidemen.
“No, it’s not all about that. We want players to join the club because they want to be part of an amazing journey. We want you to be devoted. We don’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, there’s money here, I’m gonna get a bag, play for a few games, then peace out.’ I don’t want to throw money and just buy my way to the top. There are smarter ways you can do it.”
Operationally, things at Dagenham seem stable. FFT speak to the club’s American CEO, John Grabowski, who arrived at Dagenham in January 2025, and is relaxed about the prospect of Carroll combining his roles as player, assistant and part-owner.
“With Andy, at this moment in his career and his life, he’s been successful enough that he’s able to invest in the club,” the CEO says. “He’s still fit enough that he can play and, having spent the time out injured that he did last season, he gained that interest and desire to feel like he could help the boys in the dressing room – not just by playing with them, but leading them as the interim manager. What we collectively feel is that to have somebody with the knowledge, experience and ability to participate in each of those levels – I agree, it’s very unique – is an opportunity you must take.”
Portugal to Indonesia
Grabowski had previously overseen a failed attempt to buy Dunfermline in the Scottish Championship, prior to leading the investment group takeover of Dagenham this February.
Discussions began in November about KSI joining the ownership group, even though the influencer had turned down investment opportunities at a handful of other clubs before. “I spoke to his manager about what would be involved in getting KSI to come on board,” the CEO explains.
“He said, ‘If we’re really serious about getting into this, he’s got to come down and see the place, this isn’t the Emirates.’ To his absolute credit, I got a text from him saying, ‘Hey man, I heard you had a good call, can I come down this weekend?’”
Grabowski invited KSI to Victoria Road for a tour, forgetting that the venue was hosting a West Ham women’s game that day. A photograph appeared of KSI in an executive box, and rumours began circling. “That was like the only moment where it kind of crept out,” Grabowski says. “But I got a call the following day from his manager saying, ‘Hey, let’s make it happen.’”
Four months later, the announcement was finally official – KSI was the latest celebrity with a stake in a football club. By his standards as a trendsetter, he’s a little late to the party.
Why is it that so many celebrities are investing in clubs? Taking another bite of his Nando’s, KSI shares his theory. “Because it’s a growing industry and everyone wants to be a part of it,” he says.
“People also just want to call something their own. For me, having my own club and being like, ‘This is mine…’, there’s just some pride about that, something cool about it.
“For some people, it could be financial as well, it could be about being able to reach a different audience. But I think what separates me from a lot of what I guess we can call my competitors is that I’m very involved, and I know my unique selling point is my marketing.
“I keep saying that I want Dagenham & Redbridge to be a worldwide club, and obviously that takes time, but I’m able to reach an international audience. I can have Dagenham fans from Texas, Spain, Portugal, Indonesia…”
Much of the success and popularity currently surrounding Wrexham can be attributed to the telling of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s story via their Disney Plus documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which has already had five seasons charting their rise to the second tier.
The first episode of KSI’s Dagenham documentary is now out, but rather than selling the production to Disney or an equivalent, he’ll be publishing it on his YouTube channel. “That series is going to be groundbreaking, it’s going to be revolutionary, because I’m dubbing it in different languages,” he explains. “There aren’t many clubs in non-league, let alone in the Championship or even the Premier League, who would go that far to try to reach an international audience. But we’re doing that here because we know how important it is.”
Build it and they will come seems to be the basic strategy, and the ball is already rolling, with attendances rising and more than 300,000 watching KSI watch his new football team. It must be very strange for the existing fanbase.
“There’s an element of caution,” Page admits. “An element of, ‘This could become something really big.’ The club could completely lose its soul, in a way. I’m not saying KSI would do that on purpose, but it’s a natural consequence of expanding beyond just Dagenham and becoming, dare I say it, a global entity in the way that Wrexham have. They might play in Wrexham, but it’s not a club necessarily based around Wrexham any more. With us being such a small, intimate family club, you don’t necessarily want that. But at the same time, beggars can’t be choosers, and we aren’t going anywhere fast as a club.”
What do fans want then? “If I’m being honest, it’s players,” says KSI. “But that’s every fan. Even with Arsenal, it’s like, ‘We need a better attack.’ So the Dagenham fans, they’re all like, ‘We need a better team, get rid of everyone!’”
KSI knows footballers – he recently posted a picture of himself with Erling Haaland on his Instagram. “He knows I’ve invested in a club… it doesn’t mean I’m going to sign him or anything like that!” KSI laughs. “But he does think it’s cool, really cool.”
Does KSI intend to use his fame and popularity to attract big names to the club? “Maybe,” he chuckles. “Look, I think me being at the club has helped a lot. I know, directly and indirectly, what I bring to the table, and I think in the next few seasons, fans will see how much of an impact it makes.”
Along the way, KSI’s plan seems just to be himself. It’s served him pretty well so far. “Everyone wants to know, ‘Cool, what’s the plan?’” says Grabowski. “It’s naive to think we have too grand a long-term plan, but it would also be foolish not to think long-term given the opportunity.
“We all know that in KSI’s announcement, he said, ‘We’re going to get to the Premier League.’ The first time I heard that, I sort of went ‘Uhh!’ and did a little gut check, but it’s not my job to tell him that’s not possible. He followed it up quite quickly, saying, ‘It might take time, it might take 20 years,’ and I think in that context, it is absolutely possible – why not us?
“Phase one is to get out of the National League and back into the Football League, then once we’re in the Football League again, we’ll regroup. We’ve got other plans, but I think talking about those other plans before achieving phase one risks us getting out a little over our skis.”
Celebrity ownership: has the game gone? Or is the game just going places we could never have imagined? All we can do is sit back and stream.
KSI is an owner of Dagenham & Redbridge – you can watch Race To The Top on the KSI Originals YouTube Channel
