Doing things differently: Hashtag United enter the English footballing pyramid

For the start of next season, English football will see a new name enter the pyramid: Hashtag United.

A YouTube football team created in 2016 by Spencer Owen, they have applied for – and been granted – a place in the 10th tier. From the start of next season, they’ll take their spot in the Eastern Senior League, playing at Coles Park Stadium in Tottenham.

From providing a platform for a group of friends to meet up and play football, Hashtag has now grown into an online community of fans who enjoy the video content on YouTube as much as (or let’s be honest, probably more than) the actual sport. The latest jump into organised football is in many ways a logical next step for a team who want to play more games.

“This is one guy and his mates essentially living the dream,” says Hashtag United’s Operations Director Neil Smythe. “Spencer’s always planning the next step and this is the next step of his adventure.”

The way football is consumed is changing and it seems to do so on almost a daily basis. New creators come on the scene, and new ways of watching or listening to football-related content seem to appear all the time. From the rise of so-called “Fan TV” channels, podcasts and now even Netflix documentaries, football’s ever-growing array of content now extends far beyond the live games themselves.

That means that football clubs are increasingly seeing themselves as media outlets – they have a story to tell and they are determined to do it, both in order to keep their fans entertained and in order to increase the sponsorship they can attract. It might be a slight oversimplification to say it, but Hashtag United are coming at this from the opposite angle: they are YouTube content creators who are getting into football.

“We’ve been telling similar stories for the last two years,” says Smythe, “and this is giving us an opportunity to tell a different story.”

“There are very few clubs who say that their content is their lifeblood. There are a lot of clubs now who produce really good social content. But I don’t believe they stand or fall on their content, because they have a business in place as it is. We’re completely different: we do not exist without our audience, and therefore without our content.”

The sort of content they produce has evolved, too. Matchdays are filmed and edited into pieces of content which are essentially mini-documentaries. The team go on tours, play against other YouTube channels or brands who fit the Hashtag United storyline.

TOP ELEVEN POTP - HASHTAG UNITED v PRIMETUBERS

And now that they are a team in the English footballing pyramid, perhaps those who crunch the numbers should be thinking of counting them in the next power rankings of top football clubs on social media: Hashtag’s 374k subscribers on YouTube puts them just outside the top ten most followed clubs worldwide on that particular platform.

Entry into the pyramid structure will pose new problems and change how that content works, though.

“How we tell the story is going to have to change completely,” says Smythe. “In the past they’ve had three or four weeks to turn around match edits and to a certain extent it’s been all about keeping the result a secret until our video goes live. Now we’ve got fans at the game, that’s going to be told in real time.”

And instead of having just a few matches against what are really just random teams every now and again, they will be regular events happening at least once a week. That will bring with it its own unique challenges, but it’s also an opportunity to experiment with new ways of telling the story across social media – including the tantalising possibility of Hashtag United live-streaming the 10th tier of English football to a potential audience of half a million on YouTube and Twitter. Thanks to England’s famous ‘3pm blackout’ this might be difficult, though it’s not totally out of the question.

But that number alone shows why this move can be exciting.

Physical football is only one side of the Hashtag United output. In another budding area at the intersection of sport and technology, their esports side is currently going from strength to strength with three participants in the FIFA eWorld Cup Grand Final next month. And even the footballing operations, for want of a better phrase, is perhaps only so popular because of the infrequency of matches: attracting 34,000 fans to Wembley for a one-off event is very different to bringing a hardcore of support to a non-league game a week.

No one should be worried that pure non-league football will be adulterated by the arrival of a new team without a history of playing in the pyramid structure, according to Smythe.

Hashtag United team talk

“I smile when people say it’s all about the money.” he says. “Anyone thinking this is a get-rich quick scheme clearly doesn’t know how much it costs to run a football club, an eSports roster and a content production team – and they also don’t know what motivates us!”

So it would appear that this genuinely isn’t about bringing the crowds seen at the Wembley Cup to a new team. Hashtag United have no guarantees of attracting big crowds in every week, though will hope to bring in sponsorship given their online reach.

The criticisms do seem to stem from a legitimate fear, though – that the goodness of football is being mined-out from the inside, that it’s becoming a hollow husk surrounded by a coating of inauthentic plastic. Do Hashtag, like the community-run clubs they’ll be facing, represent anything other than a desire to get video views?

“We already represent a large community,” says Smythe referring to the huge online numbers of followers who already watch the channel or follow on Twitter on a daily basis – “the difference is that our community is currently online only. Whilst we obviously intend to continue growing and engaging the online community we already have, we now want to build that traditional football community too – and that’s an exciting prospect.”

About author

Chris McMullan
Chris McMullan 831 posts

Chris is a sports journalist and editor of Digital Sport - follow him on Twitter @CJMcMullan_

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