The scene is the Leonardo Hotel in the south of Frankfurt on a sweltering Thursday in the city.
England are in town and so too is the whole circus that trails them. In the lobby as fans mill around nursing ice cold pre-match beers there is a man with a camera filming Gareth Southgate lookalike Neil Rowe, a middle-aged pilot wearing a waistcoat and blue suit, as he interacts awkwardly with OnlyFans models Astrid Wett and Leah Ray.
There’s some vaguely suggestive stuff about Bukayo Saka and then the girls present him with some flowers. A little while later she tweets excitedly about the encounter in block capitals: “WE FOUND THE PLAYERS HOTEL”. It gets 315,000 views.
Wett, a Chelsea fan, has nearly a quarter of a million followers on X (formerly known as Twitter), and a staggering 1.6m on TikTok. More importantly here, she has prized tickets for the Denmark match – and every other Group C game – which has been getting some England fans unable to get a seat in the stadium hot under the collar.
They are not alone. Last week Mo Salah’s agent Ramy Abbas Issa asked on X: “Why do ‘influencers’ who became famous by making silly faces and being irritating get better access at sporting events than real fans do? Says alot about the celebrities who entertain them”. He followed it with the hashtage “StopMakingIdiotsFamous”.
The collision of these two worlds has become particularly pronounced in recent months. YouTuber IShowSpeed – a 19-year-old American Cristiano Ronaldo superfan called Darren Watkins Junior who boasts 25.4m subscribers and has become famous partly for his exuberant reaction videos – made it into Manchester United’s FA Cup celebrations last month after an invite from winger Alejandro Garnacho.
Not everyone was happy but the videos went viral globally, attracting millions of eyeballs. So what is happening here? And is “real fan” anger justified?
Harry Hugo, the founder of the influencer marketing agency GOAT, says the rage is misplaced.
“Fans who are complaining about that probably don’t understand that all these are is corporate tickets that previously would have gone to men in suits,” he tells i.
“They’re not new tickets set aside for influencers. These are corporate tickets that are part of big sponsorship deals, which previously would have gone to the classic prawn sandwich brigade.
“Influencers might not be the most popular with the everyday match-going fan maybe but they are a fan. It’s a step up from having a man in a suit there. The allocation of corporate tickets has gone up but that’s just a product of the world we live in and the importance of sponsorship in sport now.”
Anyone who regards these YouTubers as a bunch of amateurs filming themselves being silly in their bedrooms probably needs to rethink the industry.
Influencers represent a growing slice of the football marketing space, and it’s a multimillion-pound business now. They’re seen as a key way of “connecting” to Gen-Z fans, although Hugo says the idea they appeal solely to teenagers is a misunderstanding.
One thing is clear: it certainly is big business. Paddy Power chartered a plane to fly influencers and media movers and shakers out to Germany for England’s first game in Gelsenkirchen, although i understands their original idea of turning the livery green proved too difficult.
Meanwhile, Pepsi’s operation to get influencers to the Champions League final was so complex they even created an app to make sure their travel and hospitality plans went smoothly.
“Brands spend millions and millions of dollars on the association with these different things – be it the Champions League, Premier League, the Euros – so they’re prepared to spend additional advertising dollars to make people aware they are part of it,” Hugo says.
“Getting the word out there is critical and influencers are a huge part of that.”
He puts the surge of influencers in stadiums down to a couple of things: firstly sponsors looking for “authentic” voices that can connect with potential customers.
And also – he says – many are churning out high quality content. Hugo cites ChrisMD – one of the YouTubers he has worked with on campaigns – who has a team of 10 and creates regular football videos for his 5m followers.
“These are ‘legacy creators’ who have been on the platform for 5-10 years and have done well for themselves so they aren’t chasing the money,” he says.
“They are doing genuine net positive things for their audience, they’re bright young entrepreneurs, they’re not chancing tickets for the Champions League final.”
He’s right. i speaks to influencer George Mortimer, who posts as StokeyyG2, from Germany, where he’s enjoying the Euros.
A bright, friendly teenager from Stoke, he has amassed a following of over 400,000 followers on X after starting out posting “mostly because I was bored during lockdown”.
He has got a brand deal with online banking app VibePay and tickets for every England game this summer, though he stresses he paid for them out of his own pocket and was going to cheer on his country before the agreement was signed.
His videos of the match-going experience in Germany – the train hassles, super-strength beers, stadiums and big moments fans are experiencing – are doing well but he knows the importance of going viral. So he will watch every game, along with employing someone to help him, ready to press send on anything that could chime with fellow X users.
“You have to be on the ball. You have to be there watching the games,” he explains.
“The goal is to be there, be the first person to do it or notice it or say it. If people realise you’re the first then they’ll keep looking at you basically.
“My following really took off during the Qatar World Cup. That was when I realised basically you’re on a platform that the whole world is watching.”
It is, he says, a “viable” career and while he does experience some negativity on the platform he says it’s drowned out by people who like what he is doing. While followers only see his videos, downtime is often spent responding to businesses keen to work with him or answering queries from fans. It’s a proper full-time job that earns enough for it to be a living.
“You make a bit through Twitter but not enough to sustain it as a full-time job really,” he says.
“The rest usually comes through promotions, brands reaching out to you. I’m lucky enough to have VibePay. I will promote their promote their brand, they give me money for that. They want to get people aware of the brand, ultimately getting people to sign up.
“For me it’s really important that it’s a brand that will appeal to my audience. I’ve had other offers but they wouldn’t really connect with my audience.”
Hugo says good influencers can make “tens of thousands of pounds” per post. His agency has a decade of data and monitor metrics to make sure the message – and influencer – land.
Their most high-profile campaign was a three-year commission from the Qatari tourist board tag lined “surprise and delight”, which was aimed at challenging preconceptions about the World Cup hosts. But they’ve also done noteworthy work with Uefa to rebrand the Europa League to a younger audience.
While not everyone approves or follows some of the riskier content out there during the Euros, ultimately influencers only thrive if they can connect to an audience.
“With all advertising, all media, we all have opinions on what works and what doesn’t. Not everything lands,” Hugo says.
“The problem influencers have is they get tarnished with the same brush. In TV we think about the great adverts, we don’t think about the crap.
“With influencers you sometimes think about the s**t ones, not the ones who have built up audiences for years, have millions of followers and inspire them week after week.
“Of course there are other people that have lucked into this job and don’t deserve as much of the attention but attention is the currency.
“If that’s an OnlyFans model with a million followers then they have attention and brands have the opportunity to tap into it.
“Whether they do that is up the brands’ discretion.”
The message is clear: influencers and football is only going to get bigger at future tournaments.
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