Some fans did not know KSI when he came on board at Dagenham in March, but the YouTuber has huge ambitions. In an age of celebrity investors, he tells FFT why he wants to take the club to the Premier League

“I’m an entertainer,” says KSI, with absolutely no sign of David Brent-style parody, as he speaks to FourFourTwo between bites of Nando’s chicken inside the plain boardroom at Dagenham & Redbridge. In the politest possible way, we have just asked him to describe himself, and in effect tell us who he is – a fair question, because some sections of the Daggers’ fanbase could have been forgiven for asking the same thing after it emerged in March that the 32-year-old, who made his money on YouTube, had joined their club as a part-owner. So, what does a vlogger know about owning a non-league football club? How much money is he really planning to put in? What is the plan? What is a KSI? We are in the lower reaches of the club’s Victoria Road stadium in east London to meet the game’s latest celebrity investor and get some answers.

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 before our meeting, no YouTuber in the UK had gained more subscribers than KSI, who added 200,000 more to a total that now stands at around 45 million across his channels. All those eyes on screens create huge viewership – in total, his videos have been watched more than 16 billion times.

“You could say my YouTube career took off because of FIFA,” he points out, referring to the popular video game franchise. “Race to Division One was a series I did, where I started in Division 10 [of the competitive online mode], and my aim was to get to Division One, a bit like Dagenham now. The goal is to reach the Premier League, and we are in National League South at the moment. That series on YouTube brought more and more people to watch me, subscribe to me, so it feels like a full-circle moment, the way I am now doing it in real life. I never thought I would be able to do this.”

Brought up in Watford by Nigerian parents, the Arsenal supporter was privately educated at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, alongside his younger brother Deji, who is also a YouTuber. The Olatunji family were not wealthy, but education was the top priority for their children. After failing his A-levels, KSI went full-time with YouTube. The turning point came when he asked a teacher whether he should quit education and make the move. He explained that he was earning around £1,500 a month from his videos, and the teacher told him that was more than they were earning in education. KSI had made up his mind.

By 2012, at the age of 19, he had reached one million subscribers. The next year, he teamed up with six other British creators to form the Sidemen, who transformed the UK YouTube scene through high-production challenge videos, travel vlogs and reality-TV-style series. By 2015, KSI was testing the waters with music releases. His 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 has sold five million UK singles, accumulated three billion global streams, delivered nine top 10 singles and earned four Brit Award nominations. His second album All Over the Place went straight to number one in 2021.

In the middle of all that, KSI changed internet culture forever by bringing the YouTube boxing craze to life, stepping into the ring himself after once being an unfit, out-of-shape bedroom vlogger with no fighting experience at all. 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 ruled a draw.

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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 fight – the cruiserweight had five more bouts before hanging up the gloves in 2023 to focus on other projects.

He launched a drinks company, Prime Hydration, with Logan Paul – the pair’s influence was so strong that it triggered extraordinary demand around the world, with widespread shortages, supermarket rushes and chaotic resale markets that KSI himself criticised. Prime has since become the official sports drink for Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, UFC and WWE.

Doors kept opening, and KSI walked through them without hesitation. He went fully mainstream last year by joining the Britain’s Got Talent judging panel – first as a guest, then as a permanent addition alongside Simon Cowell, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden, taking his fame to another level. Everything he touches appears to turn to gold.

Now he is here in Dagenham. Has KSI put in hard cash to be involved, or is his investment the 75.3 million followers he has across all his social platforms, ready to be used at the tap of a screen?

“I haven’t really spoken to anyone about the finances,” he says, having become a minority shareholder in the club. “For me, it is mainly about putting my name to this club and saying, ‘I’m going to 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 is the trick. I have been offered stakes in all kinds of things, and I say no to a lot because if I do not care about them, then I am not going to be interested.”

KSI may 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 their lowest finish since the club was formed 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 and also runs fan site Dagnificent, describes the mood a year ago as “the absolute lowest ebb”. Dagenham had just been relegated from the National League. “I have never had my love for the club diluted as much as it was then,” he admits.

“Obviously, that love will never go away. Football is meant to be an escape, something that gives joy, but it was just one thing after another. KSI has given the club a new lease of life.”

Aged 23 and close to the heart of KSI’s audience demographic, Page might be expected to be thrilled by a wealthy, globally famous YouTuber investing in his football club. “I am not really taken in by that sort of thing,” he admits, though. “I knew of him. I did not really have much of an opinion on him either way. But I knew he was massive. I had seen him everywhere. We all knew he was one of the most well-known people, probably among my generation.”

What about the rest of the Dagenham fanbase? “Our demographic is fairly old, so I think the majority would not have known who he was,” Page says. “I saw a lot of comments on forums about people getting to know him through their grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren. But a lot of people in that age group were still open to it, because it did not take them long to see what he could bring to the club.”

Soon after the announcement, a false news story spread claiming the Daggers had sold £3,760,428 worth of shirts in just four hours. That would have meant around 77,000 shirts for a club that rarely sells more than 1,000 in a season.

The reality was that the club had actually sold out of shirts after it was confirmed on the eve of the 2025-26 season that they had signed Andy Carroll. The former England striker, now 36, was returning to the area where he had once played for West Ham, after a spell in the French lower leagues with cash-strapped Bordeaux.

Carroll also became an investor in the Daggers, and scored six goals in 12 league games before injury ended his season in the winter. Even with Carroll’s long spell out injured, the club ordered more Umbro shirts for Christmas, and they kept selling well into the new year – by March, when KSI arrived, there were none left, so Dagenham’s sales figure off the back of their new celebrity investor was, in fact, zero. A bigger order has been placed for the 2026-27 campaign, expected to be at least double, but the club will not say exactly how many.

The KSI effect was fairly immediate, though, in terms of spectators, streams and attention on Dagenham. Three days before the announcement, only 1,247 people were at the ground for a home defeat to AFC Totton, at a stadium that can hold 6,000. Four days after the announcement, 2,281 fans were there for a 1-0 win over Dorking.

KSI live-streamed himself watching that match – the broadcast featured a cameraman following him 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 poured into the stream’s live chat. “That video got more than 300,000 views, which for a non-league side is crazy numbers,” he tells us proudly. “Usually, the most you would 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 sat next to co-investor Carroll as he celebrated Dagenham’s goal with the kind of excitement you would expect from someone who had just seen his club secure promotion to the Premier League. Carroll was more restrained. “It is crazy,” KSI admits. “I remember playing as him on FIFA, and now he is part of the club with me, just chilling there. I am like, ‘Wait, what is my life?’ I pinch myself so many times.” Only one point came from the next two games, however – with the club sitting a disappointing 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 side to back-to-back home wins over Torquay and Hampton & Richmond.

On the latter occasion, the match itself was live-streamed rather than just KSI’s reactions 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 do not apply.

At the time of writing, the streams of those two matches had almost the same number of views, at roughly 350,000, even though one showed the game and the other did not, which shows that the pull was very much KSI rather than the match.

In Dagenham’s final five games of the season, they collected just two points and suffered a 7-2 drubbing at Worthing. Right now, the Premier League feels a very long way away.

“I cannot control the players with my keypad or controller,” says KSI. “But that does not change the passion I have. You can see it in the amount of content I put out on my YouTube channels – I am active. Just today alone I have had quite a few interviews, and I am doing a lot of content pieces with creators. I love it.”

KSI has already started making his mark. While he does not have a formal job description, the club are keen to use his expertise in media, marketing and content.

One of the first things he asked for was a change to the line-up graphics the club posted on social media – instead of just a list of names and numbers, he wanted them shown in formation order so fans could learn about the players. “He honestly does not miss a post – none of this is passive,” explains a club insider.

On the morning of FourFourTwo’s allotted three hours with KSI, he is the main guest on Chris Evans’ Virgin Radio show, during which Evans describes him as “the most popular man in the UK today”. After that, he is driven from the station’s London Bridge studio to meet us in Dagenham, arriving a full hour early for the photoshoot and interview.

Greetings, handshakes and booming laughter quickly fill the room. The KSI laugh has become one of the most recognisable sounds on the internet – loud, chaotic and high-pitched, broken up by short, sharp giggles. Completely infectious, he uses it to begin and end sentences, stress points and even cover any awkwardness – such as when FFT asks whether he ever went to Arsenal matches as a child. “No, I was never able to afford it,” he laughs. Today, he owns a box at the Emirates.

Moving from photoshoot to interview to selfie and back to another interview with ease, he takes everything in his stride, including FourFourTwo’s idea for our cover pictures, inspired by Bryan Robson’s unveiling as Middlesbrough’s player-manager in 1994.

This summer, KSI has been heavily involved in the appointment of Lee Allinson as the club’s new manager. The son of winger Ian Allinson, who played more than 100 games for Arsenal in the 1980s, the new boss is viewed as a rising coach with strong 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 above Dagenham.

He is now managing a full-time professional club for the first time, and although he is not a headline name – Carroll’s former Newcastle and West Ham team-mate Kevin Nolan was wrongly linked with the job – fans appear pleased.

“Lee Allinson feels like a Dagenham appointment,” says Page. “Someone with the ability to achieve things, who is coming from a lower level in terms of club stature, and who really wants to make a success of it. We have always been a club that has thrived on digging down the pyramid, whether that is in signings or managers, and being able to uncover a little gem. Hemel were one of the teams that impressed me most last season. I like the appointment.”

In a rather unusual arrangement, Carroll will be Allinson’s assistant manager, as well as a registered player and part-owner of the club. That could create a potentially awkward situation if Allinson’s spell as manager runs into trouble and the ownership group, including Carroll and KSI, have to discuss sacking the boss that Carroll is assisting.

Neighbouring Billericay Town previously followed a similar path when local businessman Glenn Tamplin bought the club in 2016, after failing to take over Dagenham, and later named himself manager.

Chaos followed – at one point the owner sacked and then rehired himself as manager within two days – and some Dagenham fans may have been uneasy when they heard the club were signing Tamplin’s son Archie this summer. However, the 23-year-old has established himself as a combative, hard-working midfielder at National League South level and is regarded as a solid signing from Chelmsford.

At the time of writing, all of the club’s summer signings have arrived on free transfers, with only one dropping down from the Football League. “I do not want people to think, ‘OK, KSI is here, there is a load of money,’” insists the content creator, who recently announced that he was leaving the Sidemen.

“No, it is 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 committed. We do not want it to be like, ‘Oh, there is money here, I am going to get a bag, play for a few games, then peace out.’ I do not want to throw money around and just buy my way to the top. There are smarter ways to do it.”

Operationally, things at Dagenham appear stable. FFT speak to the club’s American CEO, John Grabowski, who arrived at Dagenham in January 2025 and is relaxed about the idea of Carroll combining his roles as player, assistant and part-owner.

“With Andy, at this point in his career and his life, he has been successful enough that he is able to invest in the club,” the CEO says. “He is still fit enough to play and, after the time he spent out injured last season, he developed that interest and desire to feel he could help the boys in the dressing room – not just by playing with them, but by leading them as the interim manager. What we collectively feel is that having someone with the knowledge, experience and ability to operate at each of those levels – I agree, it is very unique – is an opportunity you have to take.”

Grabowski had previously overseen a failed attempt to buy Dunfermline in the Scottish Championship before leading the investment group takeover of Dagenham this February.

Talks began in November about KSI joining the ownership group, even though the influencer had turned down investment opportunities at a few 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 are really serious about getting into this, he has got to come down and see the place, this is not 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 emerged of KSI in an executive box, and rumours started doing the rounds. “That was like the only moment where it kind of slipped 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 made official – KSI was the latest celebrity to hold a stake in a football club. By his standards as a trendsetter, he is a little late to the party.

Why are so many celebrities investing in clubs? Taking another bite of his Nando’s, KSI shares his view. “Because it is a growing industry and everyone wants to be 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 is just some pride in that, something cool about it.

“For some people, it could also be financial, it could be about reaching a different audience. But I think what separates me from a lot of what I guess we can call my competitors is that I am 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 am able to reach an international audience. I can have Dagenham fans from Texas, Spain, Portugal, Indonesia…”

Much of the success and popularity around Wrexham at present can be traced to the telling of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s story through their Disney Plus documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which has already run for five seasons charting their rise to the second tier.

The first episode of KSI’s Dagenham documentary is now out, but instead of selling the production to Disney or a similar platform, he will be releasing it on his YouTube channel. “That series is going to be groundbreaking, it is going to be revolutionary, because I am dubbing it in different languages,” he explains. “There are not 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 are doing that here because we know how important it is.”

Build it and they will come seems to be the basic strategy, and the process is already under way, 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 is 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 am not saying KSI would do that on purpose, but it is 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 is not a club necessarily based around Wrexham any more. With us being such a small, intimate family club, you do not necessarily want that. But at the same time, beggars cannot be choosers, and we are not going anywhere fast as a club.”

What do fans want then? “If I am being honest, it is players,” says KSI. “But that is every fan. Even with Arsenal, it is like, ‘We need a better attack.’ So the Dagenham fans, they are 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 have invested in a club… it does not mean I am going to sign him or anything like that!” KSI laughs. “But he does think it is 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 appears to be simply being himself. So far, that has worked out very well. “Everyone wants to know, ‘Cool, what is the plan?’” says Grabowski. “It would be naive to think we have some enormous 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 is not my job to tell him that is not possible. He followed it up quite quickly by 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 are in the Football League again, we will regroup. We have got other plans, but I think talking about those other plans before achieving phase one risks us getting a little ahead of ourselves.”

Celebrity ownership: has the game gone? Or is the game simply 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