The Journey:
A few months back, famous FIFA YouTuber, Spencer Owen decided to start his very own ‘Sunday League’ football team along with his footy pals. He has taken the ordinary concepts used in the real game and has brought it out in a manner which has his viewers hooked to their gadgets for the next ten-fifteen minutes.
Be it a crossbar challenge, a penalty shootout or a free kick duel, Spencer has done it all. One may think what sets this very team apart from the other so-called YouTube football teams; Playing in Wembley, football’s Mecca and coming close to signing Adebayo ‘The Beast’ Akinfenwa ARE just a few of the many reasons.
Not to mention, Hashtag United earned the chance to feature on the new Football Manager game.
Hashtag’s matches are filmed by a four-man camera crew which includes Spencer’s younger brother Saunders. If you think Spencer’s family connection with the team ends here, I’m afraid you’re wrong.
Spencer’s father Stevie (nickname) is the team’s physiotherapist and Owen’s elder brother Sebastian ‘Seb’ plays as a winger for the team. The club also employs a professional FIFA player, Harry Hesketh.
Reason for Hashtag’s popularity:
They are nowhere near the footballing ladder and only a bunch of travelling supporters, but more than six hundred thousand viewers tune in to watch a team of ‘college mates’ play every week. How is this possible? Thanks to Spencer’s popularity on YouTube, the team’s twitter account has more followers than some of English Football League sides.
They have over one lakh followers on Instagram and their recent episode featuring the ‘free kick’ challenge has amassed over a million views. Without the massive efforts of Spencer Owen, Hashtag United would have been a mere entity.
Spencer Owen: The Pillar behind Hashtag’s success
A YouTube celebrity in his own right, Spencer has gathered over 1.6 million subscribers since he started doing this full time since 2013. It was his idea to film the journey of an amateur team playing against some of the famous lower league clubs across England.
"Using my channel and existing fan base as a starting point certainly helped. Creating a football team with games that play out on YouTube has always been a big ambition for me and this year felt like the right time to finally give it a go.
“There's been a lot of support for 'real-life' football content on YouTube for a while and it's great to see the responses I get every week. It's certainly an alternative to the business-driven Premier League with £100m transfer fees and £100 match tickets", said the 27-year-old to BBC.
The Internet Phenomenon and what does this mean to amateur footballers:
"We don't pretend to be top-quality footballers. We all come from different backgrounds and our squad is made up of players with varying abilities. We are just a group of down-to-earth guys who enjoy playing football with each other and we love some of the incredible things we've got to do together.
“We've taken a lot of influences from popular football gaming titles in the way that we've built accomplishments and challenges into our content and our own divisional setup is similar to the one you might find when playing games such as FIFA 16 online", said Owen.
Amateur players in our country can take heart from Spencer’s above statements. One may not possess the ability or the talent to become a professional footballer. But, with the right attitude, skill, and dedication, he/she can earn a good living out of things which they love doing.
Why do we love watching Hashtag United play?
We Indians love playing football games on our consoles. Be it FIFA, PES or Football Manager, there is a huge following for all these games in our country. However, in our country, there is a huge barrier when it comes to taking up sports as a profession. Not everyone will go on to become a Sachin Tendulkar or a Sunil Chhetri.
With parents forcibly putting their kids into an engineering/medical stream, one thinks that he has wasted his childhood on things he despises and fills up his life with regrets. The huge monetary benefits after completing our respective courses also cloud our judgements.
With the IIT’s and other so-called important exams being given a big priority, Indian kids have minimal time to spend on their hobbies. What better way to spend our precious time than by watching a group of middle-aged guys having the time of their lives by doing stuff they love.
In a country producing more than a million engineers every year, we teens live our dreams through Hashtag United!
