The Sidemen Go Big

How the British supergroup sold 62,000 tickets to their Charity football match

Good morning. 65,244. According to art collective MSCHF, that’s the number of frames in the highly-memeable film, The Bee Movie.

MSCHF’s latest viral drop asked fans to hand-draw each frame so that they could stitch together a parody version of the film. Within several hours, fans did just that—showcasing just how far online communities will go for the bit.

Sidemen Sell Out 62,000 Tickets for 2023 Charity Match

Sidemen / Twitter

Last week, British YouTube supergroup the Sidemen released tickets for their fifth Charity Match, a soccer game that’ll be played at London Stadium (which hosted the 2012 Olympics) featuring creators like KSI, IShowSpeed, and MrBeast in early September.

The results? The group sold 62,000 tickets in one day, “faster than a Premier League club,” Sidemen head of content Victor Bengtsson said on LinkedIn.

How they did it: According to Bengtsson, there were three key tactics the Sidemen used to market and sell out the event


  1. Integrations across platforms. Over several weeks, the Sidemen directly communicated information like ticket prices and release date across their individual and shared channels.

  2. Strategic creator announcements that built hype. They announced MrBeast early so that people would assume more big creators were on the way.

  3. Authenticity. Even as the event has grown, the Sidemen have stuck to the vibe that made the Charity Match take off in the first place: “Some mates having a laugh and raising money for good causes,” Bengtsson wrote.

The Sidemen held their first charity football match in 2016, with the seven members of the group inviting 15 other creators to play.

Since then


  • Live supporters: 15,000 (2016) → 27,000 (2022)

  • Money raised: ÂŁ100,000+ (2016) → ÂŁ1,000,000+ (2022)

  • Concurrent viewers: 600,000+ (2016) → 2,600,000+ (2022)

Looking ahead: Those who couldn’t score a ticket will still be able to watch this year’s match for free on the Sidemen YouTube channel and donate to partner charities (including Teenage Cancer Trust and Rays of Sunshine) on September 9, the group tweeted.

What to Know About the FTC’s New Brand Rules

The Federal Trade Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C. photo by faungg’s photos / CC BY-ND 2.0

For the first time since 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its Endorsement Guides, a set of rules for brands to make sure consumers understand when creators are compensated to promote or review products.

Context: The FTC believes creators have a responsibility to disclose brand relationships. The updated guidelines specifically address more modern practices in an effort to make disclosures “clear and conspicuous.”

  • Captions with #ad won’t cut it → The FTC said tagging a brand in a post or using hashtags like #sponsored or #ad don’t qualify as proper disclosures if they aren’t clearly visible to all users. That means creators on TikTok must feature those disclosures within videos themselves, not just in text or captions.

  • Free products should be disclosed → Creators who receive free products and share them on social must disclose so, even if there was no cash payment.

  • VTubers and AI creators count, too → The FTC explicitly mentioned that virtual influencers such as those powered by generative AI will be held to the same standards as their human counterparts.

  • Creators are liable → The FTC noted that both advertisers and endorsers as well as relevant third parties (like talent agencies and PR firms) can be liable for deceptive advertising. Past fines have been up to $50,000.

Zoom out: Creators have recently been criticized for failure to disclose brand deals. See: beauty creator Mikayla Nogueira’s Mascara Gate—though no legal action was taken in that situation. According to the WSJ, though, cases like that might be handled differently in the future.

“The FTC has been relatively quiet on influencer marketing in recent years, but the new guidelines likely foreshadow more high-profile cases like those filed against retailer Lord & Taylor,” the WSJ reported.

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PRIME Under Scrutiny

PRIME Energy / PRIME HYDRATION, LLC

Earlier this week, New York Senator Chuck Schumer asked the Food and Drug Administration to investigate Logan Paul and KSI’s sports drink, PRIME Hydration, for the amount of caffeine included in its PRIME Energy line.

Context: PRIME was launched in 2022 to much fanfare, often selling out in stores and securing high-level endorsement deals with brands like Arsenal FC. Its PRIME Energy product launched in January.

PRIME Energy has 200 mg of caffeine per 12 ounces, equivalent to about six Coke cans or nearly two Red Bulls.

The high caffeine content prompted bans from some schools in the UK and Australia, where pediatricians warned of possible health impacts on young children.

The problem, according to Schumer, comes down to marketing: At a Sunday press conference, Schumer said there was little difference in the online marketing between PRIME Hydration and PRIME Energy—leading many parents to believe they were purchasing an electrolyte drink for their kids, only to wind up with a “cauldron of caffeine.”

đŸ”„ Press Worthy

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