London
An intense soccer match is being played at a packed out Wembley Stadium.
Barely a minute into the second half, the 90,000-strong crowd has already seen eight goals in a 4-4 match when a player receives the ball just inside his own half and starts striding off.
About 15 yards into the opponents’ half, he’s flattened by a two-armed tackle that would have earned rapturous applause on a rugby or NFL field. Predictably though, the challenge earns a yellow card from former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg.
As Clattenburg brandishes the card, the booked player snatches it from his hands, holds it aloft, and sets fire to it in a surreal scene for a soccer game.
The player who pulled off this stunt wasn’t a professional soccer player, though, but rather English Youtuber and comedian Max Fosh.
And the player he tackled? Swedish streamer and internet personality Marlon Lundgren García – better known as Marlon.
Welcome to The 2026 Sidemen Charity Match.
The Met Gala of content creation
Founded in 2016 by British YouTube content group the Sidemen, the annual event pits teams of creators and influencers against each other in a friendly match for charity.
This year, a team of YouTube Allstars beat Sidemen FC on penalties following an action-packed 10-10 draw that raised a record $8.3 million (£6.2 million) for charities Brightside and M7 Education.
Tickets sold out in under three hours, 2.2 million live viewers tuned into the livestream, and English rapper Tinie Tempah delivered a surprise halftime performance. Hate it or love it, the scale of the Sidemen Charity Match is impossible to ignore.
“I’ve said a couple of times that I refer to it almost as the Met Gala, where a bunch of people from different forms of content creation come together,” Victor Bengtsson, CEO of Sidemen Entertainment, told CNN Sports.
“Gen Z have grown up in quite a harsh world, and there’s something incredibly wholesome about a bunch of friends coming together on a pitch to play football.
“In a world that is so digital, we have the most physical form of an event at a stadium for the fans to come together once a year to celebrate all the content you get watch online.”
Two of those creators were Ethan Leigh Payne – who goes by Behzinga – and Vikram Singh Barn – known as Vikkstar123 – who treated the crowd to a DJ set shortly before kick-off.
Both form part of the Sidemen, and their combined YouTube channels command a staggering 19 million subscribers and 4.8 billion views.
When you pull back the curtain and see the sheer reach of the Sidemen’s platforms and content, you quickly understand why the Charity Match has scaled to such magnitude.
“I’ve grown up watching football my whole entire life, so to get to pretend to be a professional every year is just insane,” Behzinga told CNN Sports at Wembley.
“Every year it just gets more and more exciting, (and) you get such a spectrum of characters – whether they’re from America, Europe, Australia – wherever the case is. To watch them get a great experience from it, and to have the benefit for the world at the end of it, is just great.”
Vikkstar123 shared similar sentiments.
“We never grew up expecting to be able to have this much impact. And because of the amazing fans who buy tickets, watch online, and donate, we’re so grateful to be able to do this.
“It’s combinations of people you would never see together otherwise, (and) it’s people who don’t always take time out of their schedules.
“But when we can work together to raise money for a great cause, you get this unique dynamic on the pitch and this crazy energy in the stadium – that’s what makes it special.”
The Sidemen Charity Match is not trying to compete with the mainstream professional game – this despite the fact that the event drew a larger crowd than this year’s FA Cup final (83,337).
It’s a different format for a different generation, and for many young fans, these creators are their superstars.
“We treat our event as a major release – it’s more like a movie premiere versus a sporting event,” Bengtsson explained.
“There are very few games in the world where the entire audience cares for both teams, but that’s very much the case with the Charity Match.”
The creator takeover
The Sidemen Charity Match is just one example of how sports are now being reshaped by creator culture.
The Baller League is one of a number of creations – along with the emergence of YouTubers heading into boxing, spearheaded by creator-turned-boxer Jake Paul, and Kings League, a seven-a-side soccer tournament set up by former Barcelona star Gerard Piqué and popular Twitch streamer Ibai – that have arisen to try to modernize viewership and consumption of traditional sports models.
However, this six-a-side soccer league founded by CEO Felix Starck, alongside former German stars Mats Hummels and Lukas Podolski, launched in Germany in 2024 before arriving in the UK in March 2025.
The format is simple: Across 11 weeks, 12 teams battle it out to gain a top-four playoff spot in the league standings. The 12th and final week then sees the final four teams contest semifinals and a final to eventually crown the champion.
But there are twists. In this smaller format, there are no corners. So if the ball goes out behind the goal off the opposition three times, the attacking team earns a rolling one-on-one penalty – 1990s MLS style.
Each half lasts 15 minutes, and in the final three minutes of each, rule changes are added to the game to inject jeopardy, called “gamechangers.”
These can include teams shrinking to 3-a-side – called 3Play – long-range goals counting as double, or goalkeepers being unable to use their hands, among others.
And despite being launched in the UK just 14 months ago and only being in its third season, the booming soccer league has attracted some of the biggest stars in the country across sports and entertainment.
KSI, Idris Elba, John Terry, and Ian Wright are just a few names who have been, or are still involved.
While the US edition – launched in Miami in March 2026 – features names like IShowSpeed, Kai Cenat, Druski, Usain Bolt, J Balvin and Brazilian soccer legend Ronaldinho.
How has Baller League pulled it off? According to CEO Starck, the answer is simple.
“Small sided football is the most played sport in the world,” he told CNN Sports.
“300 to 400 million people play small sided football in the world on a monthly basis, so all I’m doing is defining the most played sport in the world.
“It’s a fairly easy job to do.”
Why authenticity matters
Soccer has always been built on tradition and culture, but in the ever evolving digital era, tradition alone often isn’t enough to capture the fickle attention of Gen Z audiences.
“Any consumer brand needs to be exciting and authentic for the future generations,” Starck explained.
“No matter if you’re deodorant, food or a sport – if you’re not exciting and authentic for them, they’re not going to consume you.
“If they find Nutella unexciting and unauthentic because of multiple reasons, they’re not going to consume Nutella anymore.
“No brand is too big to fail for these future generations.”
Premier League level talent?
Baller League is far from a casual game with friends.
Players are selected through a draft process and can earn up to $535 (£400) per game. The soccer league has even featured former Premier League players like Jordon Ibe, Jerome Sinclair, Henri Lansbury and Ciaran Clark.
One of the league’s standout players though is someone who never featured in the top level of the English game: Alfie Matthews.
The former Arsenal academy prospect spent 12 years at the club before being released in 2020 at the age of 18.
When he was 14, Matthews was one of only four academy boys at Arsenal – including current star Bukayo Saka – to be given their pre-scholar contract two years early.
Now starring for Clutch FC, he believes many underestimate the challenges the six-a-side format presents to players.
“A lot of people think that it’s just a bit of a kick about,” Matthews told CNN Sports at east London’s Copper Box.
“But if you come down and actually watch it, you see it’s not just people taking the mick. There’s a lot of fights and a lot of big tackles going in … Some people even get bonuses if they win. It’s serious.
“Honestly, you even see ex pros struggle in it, and some have had to drop out because it’s so fast paced.
He added: “With 11-a-side, you have so much time on the ball. But in this, as soon as you have a touch you’ve got people down the back of your neck hunting you.
“If players do fall out of academies and don’t want to drop into the non-league system, I think it’s a perfect platform.”
Former Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann – part of the Invincibles squad that won the Premier League in 2004 without losing a single game – manages N5 FC and shared similar sentiments.
“It’s a different sport,” Lehmann told CNN. “I think people underestimate the intensity. There are a lot of players with good skills, but showing it in a certain time frame and under certain pressure, that’s new to so many players – even if they played Premier League.
“We had some ex-Premier League players, and even they needed to get used to the intensity of the game: the pace and everything.
“(But) I also know many fantastic players in six-a-side who cannot perform on a big pitch, so it’s a different thing.”
Reinvention, not replacement
There’s usually skepticism whenever established sporting structures that have been in situ for over a century face disruption.
But when a league still in its infancy consistently attracts more than two million viewers every Monday night across YouTube, Twitch, and its UK broadcast partner Sky Sports, it’s worth paying attention to.
“What we have to understand is we don’t want to take anything away from 11-a-side,” Baller League CEO Starck explained to CNN.
“I’m a (German second division Bundesliga 2) fan – that’s how real it gets. It smells like beer and sausage in those things. So I’m not going to take that away.
“(But) it’s the core of the 11-a-side game, without having all the boringness with ball possession – it’s impossible on a small pitch to hold the ball.”
In this fight for eyeballs, Starck says the long-term battle is about capturing the next generation early: “The future generations are growing up with us right now.
“When you go to Goals, they’re screaming Alfie Matthews’ name before they hit the goal, and they say, ‘1-on-1 gamechanger.’ I witnessed this multiple times with my own eyes and ears – they’re now playing our rules.
“For a 15 year old, Baller League has as much tradition and culture as Liverpool, which is crazy to believe. But they never saw a Liverpool game live, they went to the Copper Box Arena for 15 quid. So we’re socializing them first now.
“The goal is clear: We want to be the UFC of football, where you’re democratizing access to the sport.
“And we’re in a really healthy position, having more young viewers than any sport league in the UK. So as long as that’s the case, it’s only up from here.”
