Football for the KSI generation

KSI (left) and YouTube All Stars' Chunkz (right) in action. Photo by Kieran Cleeves/Alamy
The LCD screens at Stratford's Copper Box Arena ignite: images of football legends – Luis Figo, John Terry and Gary Lineker – followed by the hyper-famous YouTuber iShowSpeed, and his Mancunian rival, Morgan 'Angryginge13' Burtwistle. 'Is this a new era of football?' beseeches the on-pitch announcer, at a crowd which mostly consists of pre-teen boys and dads in beige tracksuits. 'There's more goals, more twists…' he continues to a smattering of polite whistles. 'How do you get on the Wi-Fi here?' whispers an older woman behind me.
This is Baller League, a new sports entertainment venture which plans to bring football in line with the short-form content-sphere, eschewing both traditional media models and the very rules of the game. The brainchild of German Bundesliga veterans Mats Hummels and Lukas Podolski, in conjunction with an obscure 'film producer' named Felix Starck, Baller League is attempting to rewrite football for the attention-deficit era.
The brand's implication is that the once-beautiful game has become boring; too streamlined, too data-fied, too many cautiously recycled attacks and not enough lollipop stepovers. So, Baller League rips up the constitution: there are six players in a team, the matches are 30 minutes long, with 15-minute halves and rolling substitutions. There are no corners, but if the ball goes behind the goal line three times, the attacking team is given a penalty. VAR survives the DOGE-esque rule-shred, but it is reimagined tennis-style, on the basis of appeal, rather than dictated by sports boffins and retired refs in Stockley Park.
In an echo of the bizarre 1990s Major League Soccer innovations, special 'gamechanger' rules are introduced in the last three minutes of a half to up the ante. These include reducing the teams to 3 vs 3, doubling the points for long-distance goals, and even forbidding goalkeepers from using their hands. It's all very odd, very loud, and very Gen Z. Imagine Sunday League, revamped by WWE's Vince McMahon and your twelve-year-old nephew.
Right now, Baller League appears to be in the ascendancy. Tonight's event is sold out (impressive seeing as it's a Monday evening during term time), and Sky have purchased the broadcast rights for a very pretty penny (£25m according to one off-record source). On his LinkedIn page, Felix Starck boasts of further eight-figure investment. Household name ex-pros like Figo and Terry, as well as Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, have signed up as 'managers', while Premier League jailbirds Troy Deeney and Nile Ranger have re-laced their boots to appear as 'wildcards'. An American version is also in the works – featuring Ballon D'Or Winner and former resident of the Paraguayan penal system, Ronaldinho.
But looking at the queue for merch, and listening to chatter in the stands, it is not the wizened ex-pros people are here to see, but the influencers. Among them: Sharky from The Beta Squad, Simon 'Miniminter' Minter, multi-hyphenate content clown KSI (who doesn't coach a team, but is tangentially involved), and the bafflingly famous Angryginge – who has become the real star of the project with his Mourinho-esque touchline antics and camera-mugging. Tonight though, there is a spanner in the works. Angryginge is not here, and neither is the TV presenter Maya Jama, co-manager of MVPs United. Nor are Lineker, Wright, or Luis Figo (who hadn't shown up once at the time of my visit) There are whispers of a feud with Starck, and grumblings amongst the fans, but also, a much larger sense that nobody is particularly arsed about it.
Still, there are contractual obligations to uphold, and ex-Manchester City full back and Match of The Day pundit Micah Richards leads his team out against Clint 419, founder of the cult streetwear brand Corteiz. Both Richards and Clint are big names among the gathered demographic, but the squads they preside over are a peculiar mix of the never-quite-made-its and the didn't-even-have-a-chancers; ragtag bands of non-league journeymen, ex-Arsenal academy talents, Futsal stars, viral 'cage ballers'. (There are some with pedigree, such Marvin Sordell, the former Watford and Team GB striker turned mental health advocate.)
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The opening match kicks off, and the first thing that strikes me is that the players are good. Very, very good in fact; pinging diagonals, drilling balls into the top corner, executing flicks and dummies and tricks with abandon. The format is designed to highlight 'ballers': those with real footballing technique, but perhaps not the physicality, professionalism or luck that the boys in the big time possess. So far, so nice to watch, but across a 30-minute game, it becomes a bit of a melee. The size of the pitch and the unceasing nature of the game means that it's hard to pick up on the macro tactics, the individual performances, and the mano a mano battles that define a game of 'real football'. It's too much, too fast, at far too small a scale. Because there is no chance to breathe, a 3-0 lead feels like nothing at all, and is almost immediately reduced to one during a convoluted gamechanger phase.
During a break, I start to consider what Baller League is pushing against. It is probably something like Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca's style of football; dogmatic systems of possession, pressure, release and restraint. Listening to the hype blasting off the tannoy, I'm reminded of the early days of the UFC, when Dana White promoted his sport as an antidote to Klitschko-era boxing, which he declared dull, with fighters not 'going forward anymore' and instead spending their time in grinding, technical clinches. There is a definite sense of 'Make Football Great Again' in play.
As curious as their methods are, Baller League are not outliers in this school of thought. There is a widely held belief that this year's Premier League season – with a decidedly half-built Liverpool team coasting to a title – was a particularly tedious one, while the Champions League didn't get going until the semi-finals. The likes of Ruud Gullit and Marcelo Biesla have bemoaned what the game has become, and in recent years there has been a nostalgia cult around what the Premier League used to be, with endless references to the unpredictable 'Barclaysmen' of old: Morten Gamst Pedersen, Jay Jay Okocha, Hugo Rodallega. Baller League is trying to fill this void by creating their own stars, but at time of press, the closest thing they have to an icon is 'PK Humble', an all-shooting, all-dancing attacker (who was recently released by Enfield Town having scored one goal in 33 games).
More than the game, though, it's the atmosphere it sorely lacks. Because, beyond the pantomime jeers at Angryginge, and Ian Wright forcing some post-game handbags a few weeks back, nobody actually supports a Baller League team, or cares what happens in the league. The overwhelming impression is a version of football without tribal allegiances, or 'skin in the game'. To my Premier League-addled, thirty-something mind, it conjures up the same plainness and futility of drinking a non-alcoholic beer, or sitting through an open mic night. There is a glaring lack of threat, or emotional investment at the heart of it.
But clearly there are believers in this project, and a certain amount of thirst for something like this to exist. To understand what Baller League is attempting, you have to look at what KSI and the Paul brothers have done with their massively successful Misfits Boxing promotions. In lieu of real sporting quality, they have cleverly created a behemothic content machine, one which spits out personalities, disputes, narratives across a highly marketable multi-platform model, that is entirely native to their target audience. The problem is that Misfits boxing will always provide the opportunity to watch KSI get a right hook in the chin, whereas Baller League largely consists of ex-Morecambe Town midfielders taking wild potshots in a strangely low-stakes atmosphere.
Then again, the audience seem to be enjoying themselves. It's not quite the Belgrade derby, but there is real anticipation in the rafters. The crowd is also young, dripped-out (a lot of tech fleece, 2009 Barcelona shirts) and diverse in a way that most professional football crowds are not. My guess is that a lot of this comes down to accessibility. My ticket cost £15, bought just a few days before. Compare that to my trip to suffer Chelsea vs Djurugarden the week before – which cost me £40, and a visit to see a 69-year-old man who has been going home and away since 1979 – and you can see both the problem with top level football crowds, and a tantalising opportunity for the disruptors.
Walking back to the station, still light outside, through the half-realised vision of the Westfield shopping centre, with its ping pong bars, eSports hubs, bubble tea cafes, it occurs to me that Baller League is just part of a new leisure reality. One which is both plugged-in and physical at the same time, a new version of entertainment which fuses sport, tech, celebrity, gaming and spews it all into hard content. Baller League may collapse under the weight of its own hype soon enough, but it seems to at least understand its audience. For better or for worse, young people want their sport well-lit and TikTok-ready; they want to be grabbed by big personalities and yet remain emotionally unattached. If they can't get the Yamals and Mbappes of this world, they'll settle for YouTubers. The market has already found something to suit them, whether it carries on this current incarnation or not.
[See also: Is Labour's football regulator already falling apart?]
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