Things are going pretty well for Harborough Town. They are unbeaten in the league this season and have earned two promotions in four seasons. Go up in 2025-26 and they will reach the Conference North, a level they have never played at before.
Still, it’s hardly a natural subject for an obsession from abroad. The only clue on matchday are the two green cameras extending up on long poles between the dugouts. On Tuesday evening, they witness one of the greatest goalkeeping performances I’ve seen live as AFC Sudbury somehow cling on for a 2-2 draw.
There were around 400 people at the game; two clubs in this division regularly get more than 1,000. Of more significance are the 12,000 people watching live online on Twitch and YouTube, all of them in Spain.
In the Football Manager community, dominating a game without winning is known as “being FM’d”. For thousands in Spain, the Football Manager experience is being lived out for real.
I chatted to Harborough chairman Peter Dougan before the game, who explained how this bizarre community was formed. In 2024, one of his colleagues overheard a conversation in the car park about a Spanish client of a solicitor involved in Brooke House football academy, one of the club’s partners. The client was interested in involvement with a non-league club.
The man was Ilie Oleart, the owner of La Media Inglesa, the largest platform in the world for English football coverage in non-English language. He and colleagues attended matches, including a glamour FA Cup tie at Reading. By February 2025, a relationship had been formed.
“We had the idea of buying an English club,” Oleart tells me. “But then we thought that if we did that, we would be imitating the model we had criticized so much: a foreign investor who buys a club as if it were a toy, like Vincent Tan or Roland Duchatelet. So we started looking for clubs to partner with or where we could contribute in a meaningful way.
“We broadcast the matches on our YouTube channel with our commentary in Spanish [there is a lead commentator and co-commentator on the watchalong]. The away games are available only to our paying members (as long as the home club agrees, of course). This is the best way to promote the club and start building a global fan base. Our ultimate goal is to turn Harborough into the first non-league club with a global fanbase of one million people.”
That ambition raises an eyebrow, but La Media Inglesa has a massive following. When Dougan arranged for a game to be streamed entirely free, 48,000 viewers in Spain watched a seventh-tier English fixture. Only two clubs in England got a higher home attendance that weekend.
It’s also an in-person experience. Three times already, a group of 150 or more supporters have travelled to this Leicestershire market town for a weekend and home game. The hope is to come back for a promotion celebration, but the point is to give the Spanish audience a real taste of non-league English football.
“When the Spanish come over, our supporters meet them in town, drink with them and sing with them,” Dougan says. “Last time, two members of the Spanish Embassy in London came too. It’s mind-blowing really, but it’s also great for the town. They use the hotels, the restaurants and the pubs. We all come together.”
Carlos Gonzalez – known as “Falcao” – was a city banker who did a masters in sports journalism when he wanted to change career. He applied for a job at La Media Inglesa in 2024 and didn’t get it, but when Ilie spoke to him about Harborough, he jumped at the chance. Falcao left his job and became a full-time employee working on Harborough Town from Spain.
Falcao runs the official club Spanish language account which, at 17,400, has more followers than the official English language account of most clubs in the league (including Harborough’s). He has a place on the board to allow for ideas for further attracting a Spanish-speaking audience to be forged. This partnership is only nine months old, but La Media Inglesa believe the audience can grow exponentially.
“Our relationship is growing day to day,” says Falcao. “That’s thanks to our community which are behind the La Media Inglesa project and also volunteers of Harborough Town, the board, the staff, the players.
“Everyone in the club has welcomed us as part of this Bees’ family. When Ilie was studying which club could fit perfectly with our ethos, I cannot imagine any better than Harborough Town.
“I speak with the board and staff – normally with Mitch [Austin, the first-team manager] who has become a good friend and I also create content for our channel – videos relating to the team and matches and livestreams of the games.”
This summer, La Media Inglesa paid for Harborough Town to embark upon a preseason tour of Spain – their flights, accommodation and food. They played two matches, including a victory against third-tier side AD Alcorcón. As Dougan says: “The fans love to remind people that we are unbeaten in Europe!”
There will be those that see this as a very modern model for modern football and, as such, scoff at the arrangement. But it’s also, on the face of it, a very joyful arrangement.
The locals here, as at hundreds of other non-league grounds, watch their team in person. Their club also benefits from having one of the largest non-native supporters groups in English football, despite their level. Everyone in non-league is looking for a way to generate revenue through brand awareness.
That Spanish audience lives the Harborough Town experience from afar as if it were reality television. And then, twice a year, they get to climb into that experience and live it for real. It’s like taking your Football Manager team and meeting the players, staff and supporters.
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More than anything, it is a celebration of the English football pyramid, a reinforcement that it is this country’s greatest cultural asset. It would be lovely to get thousands of locals turning out for every match, but that is the reality of very few without Football League experience. It’s a very clever way to market Harborough, if you will.
“Our viewers absolutely love it,” says Ilie. “It’s just a very authentic experience of a football culture they adore. And it’s something that you just can’t really experience in the Premier League anymore: going over en masse to watch a team that you’ve taken into your heart.”
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