Crawley Town head coach Kevin Betsy: Sidemen partnership will help us in so many areas

Earlier today, the Reds and owners WAGMI United announced a new partnership with the Sidemen – Europe’s largest YouTube collective – ahead of the 2022 Sidemen FC Charity Match on Saturday, September 24.

As part of the agreement, Crawley scouts will evaluate players participating in the charity match, with a view to potentially recruiting new talent to join the team in training and in the dugout for the Reds’ upcoming FA Cup first round match on Saturday, November 5.

The initial announcement was met with backlash by the Crawley Town faithful on social media.

In a rebuttal to the negative online comments, Reds co-owner Hunter Orrell said the partnership would ‘bring eyes to what Crawley is doing’.

These sentiments were largely echoed by Betsy, who said WAGMI United’s innovative way of advertising the club, as well as the Sidemen’s global online reach and appeal, will only prove beneficial to the Reds.

Started in 2013 and consisting of best friends Olajide ‘KSI’ Olatunji, Simon ‘Miniminter’ Minter, Joshua ‘Zerkaa’ Bradley, Tobit ‘TBJZL’ Brown, Ethan ‘Behzinga’ Payne and Vikram ‘Vikkstar123’ Barn, the Sidemen are among the most high-profile internet personalities from the United Kingdom – with more than 130 million combined subscribers on YouTube and millions more followers on their various social media channels.

Betsy said: “The football club is always going to be one that’s looking for innovative ideas to increase attraction to the football club.

“Crawley is made up of some fantastic fans from the local area. That’s the history and the nature of the football club. Without the supporters that we have in the local area and community, we would be nothing. We all know that.

“The owners want to increase and improve the fanbase by making worldwide statements to attract more people to our football club, whether it’s coming to the games or watching us remotely on the internet.

“All extra revenue into the football club will help us improve in so many areas. The owners have done an amazing job in how they’ve helped us this season, and what we’ve improved so far in the last three or four months off the pitch. You wouldn’t believe the change that’s been made here.

“But there’s more to come and more to do, and without increased revenue we’re going to be standing still.

“The integrity of everything that we do is fundamental to us, but we have to be creative, think outside the box, and pull in a new fanbase to our already existing, and amazing, fans.”