Gamechanger

by Spencer F. C.

  And above all else, quite simply, I didn’t need a coin sponsor. I was able to make content I was really happy with that got a good amount of views without one, and I would eventually be able to make a reasonable income on my own terms. Sure, I wouldn’t be buying a flash sports car or a penthouse apartment any time soon, but that was never why I did this. I wanted to be able to make ends meet, that was all, and by the time FIFA 15 came around I could.

  My stand on the issue paid off in the long run. I was one of the first YouTubers to work with EA, and that partly came about because they hadn’t blacklisted me for having a coin sponsor (although I hope it mainly came about because they thought I was pretty good!).

  Because of that decision, I’ve got to do some pretty amazing things with the company. I was the first person from the YouTube community to go into the actual game when I became the voice of the FIFA 16 tutorials. I have gone to Real Madrid and played the players at FIFA, same with Chelsea, and I was part of the presenting team that hosted both the FIFA 16 and the FIFA 17 launch events, which, for the kid who used to slide the mouse off the table while he lost to his older brother at the game time and time again, were amazing moments.

  I didn’t know my choice would lead to all these things, though, as it was a fair while after I’d done it that EA approached me. That didn’t stop some people giving me stick for it. Because of the negative opinion some people in the community held of EA Sports due to their very expensive in-game currency and various technical issues still prevalent in the game, I was labelled a ‘sell-out’ by some ill-informed FIFA fans despite the fact that I did things the hard way by not taking the coin-sponsor money and instead scraping and saving to make my way at the beginning.

  The irony was that I’d never received a penny from EA at this point either! It wasn’t until years later, in 2017, when I was honoured to be made part of the FIFA Ultimate Team eSports presenting team; that I actually did my first paid job for the company.

  My feelings about the price of FIFA points themselves weren’t complicated. Yes, they were expensive, and I could understand people feeling frustrated with that. I was using FIFA on my channel so I could justify the expenditure on them, but if I was playing just as a punter, as I had for so many years before, would I have felt comfortable shelling out for them?

  I probably wouldn’t. So there’s the answer as I see it: if you think they’re too expensive, stop buying them. If everyone made a real protest and stopped buying them, then the price would have to fall – it’s just simple economics. It’s the same thing I think every time Arsenal fans complain about the cost of their tickets. If they’re too expensive, stop buying them. As long as people are willing to continue paying more for them, the price is always going to go up. It’s business – and unfortunately that’s what football at the top level is now. The only thing that will prompt clubs to take action is an empty stadium, because no business wants to lose money.

  FIFA content was serving me well and was the backbone of the channel, but with Alex aboard I was more able to spread out into the area I really wanted to when I first conceived of the channel. I had always planned to make football content, not just FIFA, when I called it Spencer FC. I could have just called it Spencer Gaming HD if that had been the limit of my plans. I no longer worried about what anyone might think about the kid who got into football late voicing his opinions.

  I started putting some football opinion pieces in among the FIFA content, and some silly sketch videos about transfer deadline day. I started a series called IMO (In My Opinion), which consisted purely of me sharing my opinion on various controversial football stories. I created my own YouTube Football panel show called Bench Warmers. I even started a football podcast.

  Alex and I were still working all the hours and more that we could in our pressure cooker of a Hertfordshire flat, but we’d settled into a good groove by this point and I was even finding some release by playing Sunday league football every week.

  While I’d been living in London I’d played a lot of five- and seven-a-side football, but playing Sunday league had fallen away a little bit as I didn’t really have a team in the capital. Moving back to Hertfordshire meant I could more easily hook up with my old uni mate Rich Beck, whose dad ran the team Taplow Swans near Maidenhead in Buckinghamshire. I’d played for Taplow for three seasons at university and I was able to slip back into the team now, four years later. Playing for them was a highlight of the week for me, though it wasn’t without its pitfalls.

  During one match for them, I decided to try to tackle someone with my face. Not my brightest idea. As I was making videos every day for Spencer FC, I had a black eye for about three-and-a-half weeks’ worth of content. When I played MiniMinter – a member of one of the UK’s biggest YouTube groups, the Sidemen – for my series Football vs FIFA, my shiner was there in all its glory for every one of the 3.5 million viewers to see (what did I tell you about collaborations?).

  I was starting to play a bit of football on Spencer FC, too. I didn’t just play Simon (MiniMinter’s real name) at FIFA. One part of the Football vs FIFA series consisted of a real-life best-of-six football challenge, in which we would compete in a penalty shootout, a free-kick challenge, hitting the crossbar from outside the box, scoring direct from a corner kick, kick-ups and lobbing the goalkeeper. The goalkeeper would be my brother Seb.

  Any thoughts that I might enjoy a bit of fraternal help soon went out the window when Seb managed to make his first save of the penalty shootout against one of mine! And when Seb allowed Simon to do a cheeky chip on him in the free-kick challenge, all I could say was, ‘Sebby, what are you doing to me?’

  Simon beat me 4–2 on the football challenges, which meant he got a four-star team and I would play with a two-star team at FIFA. Simon rubbed salt in my wounds by going with my beloved West Ham, while I chose Bradford City, rivals of the team he supports, Leeds United. Defeat would hurt that little bit more for the loser.

  I somehow managed to draw the match 2–2, thanks to a calamitous own goal from Simon – the only time I’m likely to ever celebrate such a mix-up at the back for West Ham – and I had my revenge for the real-life penalties earlier when I beat Simon in the penalty shootout afterwards. The black eye wasn’t smarting quite so much by then.

  Following this, Football vs FIFA would see me go up against many other worthy opponents such as my brother Seb in the next episode. At least that meant I wouldn’t have to put up with his dodgy keeper skills. It didn’t make much difference, though, as Seb beat me by the same score in the football challenge that Simon had. We had a wrong-footed penalty shootout, and I thought all my years being right-footed but playing at left-back would come in handy, but I lost that challenge too!

  Once again, though, the FIFA section gave me a chance for redemption and the results probably weren’t too unexpected: while the student was definitely now the master at the video game, Seb’s real football skills were a different matter entirely. Maybe I should have got a headers challenge in there, too.

  I kept the FIFA series coming, with things like The Zarate Kid, in which I attempted a kind of anti-Road to Glory challenge, where I would actually start in Division 1, where all the best players and teams were, and attempt to win it, but I had such a weak team that it would be more like a relegation battle than a triumphant title cakewalk.

  The twist in this show was that the one permanent fixture in my team had to be maverick West Ham striker Mauro Zárate, and my bonuses involved Zárate scoring goals, getting assists or winning man of the match. Understandably, my number-one attacking tactic was simply to get the ball to Zárate.

  In the spirit of the Karate Kid pun in the title of the show, I wore a karate outfit throughout the series and made plenty of dubious kung-fu sound effects. Game on!

  This kind of flippant FIFA fun was in marked contrast to an assignment I took on from my friends at Copa90 to make the kind of content that could never be described as just some young YouTuber hiding out in their bedroom making v
ideos.

  The Copa90 guys sent me and one of their presenters, a good friend of mine called Eli Mengem, out to Bosnia and Herzegovina to report on the biggest derby in their league between two teams from the capital city, FK Sarajevo and FK Željezničar. Eli had been to the game before, and he had no hesitation in spelling out just what a crazy fixture it was.

  Everything around the game certainly backed that up, as firstly we enjoyed a ride from the airport with a taxi driver who was a bit of a nutcase, and then we went to check out FK Sarajevo’s stadium the day before the match. There, we witnessed a supporter of one Sarajevo team propose to his girlfriend, who supported the opposing derby team, in the empty stadium. It was pretty Romeo and Juliet, with two competing families/football teams coming together through the power of love. Though I thought the whole point of proposing in a sports arena was to do it in front of a huge crowd!

  Still, he lit a flare, which I would soon learn was very much the thing to do in this stadium, got down on one knee and she said yes. That was worthy of a cheer from Eli and me.

  Evidence of the troubles this city had endured in its turbulent past were apparent all over the place in the form of bullet holes. And on match day, as the ultras gathered, lit their flares and marched the streets, there was a whiff of conflict in the air once again when the police lined up against them.

  This was no ordinary derby. The two teams were fighting for the title. The stadium had nets up to stop people in the crowd throwing stuff, and once the match got started it became clear how pointless a gesture this was. Eli and I stood filming on the running track, pitch-side, when people in the crowd started throwing flares towards us. Smoke quickly covered the pitch and the match had to be paused, but that was only part of the madness.

  Željezničar were nicknamed the Smurfs, and some FK Sarajevo fans were burning and biting the heads off stuffed-toy Smurfs. Some people were climbing the poles that held up the crowd nets. Flares were landing by our feet. It was madness – this was football reporting from the front line. This was Ross Kemp on Gangs stuff.

  But would I do it again? You bet I would. It was great to work with the Copa90 guys again, and the atmosphere, while intimidating, was just sensational. My YouTube channel was opening doors I’d never thought possible before, and I was desperate to take advantage of them all.

  I was already enjoying a taste of club ownership after buying shares in Spanish club Real Oviedo a couple of years previously, when they had fallen on hard times and been relegated to the third tier of the Spanish league system. When they made an appeal to the football community, people responded from across the world, and it brought genuine football fans together in an amazing effort to save this unique football club, raising millions of pounds in the process.

  This time, in 2015, they were launching another appeal for funds. Unlike other clubs that might sell their shares expensively, the shares in Real Oviedo were going for the very reasonable price of €11.50 each, so I thought it was a great idea to share the opportunity with my viewers. Crowdsourcing can be a wonderful thing when it brings the fans together and helps a club that once had players like Juan Mata, Santi Cazorla and Michu in their ranks and wants genuine football lovers involved. It meant I would be co-owner of a club along with my viewers, and we would all have a genuine second team to support together.

  Going out to Oviedo for some of their big promotion-push games remains a highlight for me. The atmosphere was always electric and the fans were incredibly welcoming. Seeing Real Oviedo win promotion back to the second tier of Spanish football was not only one of my favourite moments in my career, but also as a football fan in general. I’ve been lucky enough to meet the squad, the staff and even collaborate with the team for my very own Real Oviedo Career Mode on FIFA 16, which featured the actual players popping up in my content from time to time.

  During all of this, my channel hit a real milestone: half-a-million subscribers. It was an incredible moment not just for me, but for Alex too, as I simply couldn’t have done it without her help and support. From where we’d started out, inheriting 130,000 subscribers from the FIFA Playa and not only holding on to those viewers, but almost quadrupling them in less than a year was an achievement I was just so proud of.

  Sure, half-a-million subscribers was small change for some of the biggest YouTubers whose subscribers number in the millions, but from where I’d come from, to have worked as hard as we had and to have done it all on my own terms was so, so special, and I was incredibly grateful to everyone who had tuned in, commented and enjoyed my content – and I hope plenty of you guys are reading this now. It’s a team effort and I genuinely treasure every one of my subscribers.

  I created a Draw My Life video to celebrate the achievement, a kind of truncated video version of this book so far, if you like (but don’t put this down and watch that instead just yet – there’s plenty more to come in this book!). And, given the reflective nature of a Draw My Life video, it felt like a pretty good time for me to take stock of how I’d got here.

  I knew my passion had played a major role, and I’d always believed that if I did something I loved on YouTube, it would come across and people would want to watch.

  Hard work had played its part too. But, as I’d found when I was made captain temporarily for Heybridge Swifts’ youth team years before, the right attitude will only take you so far. Sure, I’d worked hard, but so had everyone else who had enjoyed some consistent success on YouTube.

  The thing I kept coming back to was the fact that, at the ripe old age of 26, I was actually pretty old for a YouTuber, certainly compared to the 16- and 17-year-olds putting out videos. That meant I had a whole host of references and influences to be inspired by that wouldn’t necessarily be available to these other guys.

  I’d come of age at a period in time when the internet was only just coming of age, which meant I’d grown up watching programmes like Blue Peter and Art Attack on an actual television set (remember that old metal box that your furniture used to point at?). My real inspiration didn’t come from other YouTubers, because YouTube was never around for me to be inspired by. It came from television and movies and music and books, which inspired ideas for things like The Wheel of Futune and The Zarate Kid. It’s not that I was coming up with anything staggeringly original every time, more that I was able to provide a fresh twist on FIFA series using the influences that mattered to me.

  And being a few years older than many of the other YouTubers also meant that I was a few years into my career. I had learned production values from television jobs, and stagecraft from presenting and stand-up comedy gigs. I was committed to YouTube long before it was ever a career option for me, and I think achieving this level of success relatively late meant that I was better able to handle it.

  It must be really tempting and all too easy for a teenage YouTuber who achieves success quickly to think, Well, that was easy: I’ve smashed life, got a load of money in the bank – now what?

  It’s why I really admire the young guys who keep going, who keep working at it, because I can’t say with absolute certainty whether that would have been me. I think for some people, success can come a bit too soon. You only have to look at some of the forgotten teenage superstars in professional football to see that happen all too frequently.

  I certainly wasn’t satisfied with resting on my laurels. Having busted a gut to get to this point, I was already thinking about the next half-million subscribers. And I had a plan so secret, so cunning and so unbelievably exciting that I just couldn’t wait to share it with my viewers.

  I visited the West Ham United office in Westfield, Stratford, at the start of summer 2015 to choose my season-ticket seats for the 2016–17 season, the first that West Ham would play in their incredible new home, the Olympic Stadium in East London.

  But the Olympic Stadium was nothing compared to what I had planned next.

  SPENCER’S FAMILY TREE

  Mum: Sindy CB, self-confessed TV gameshow nut and a great support to all of us
. Just don’t ask her to take a penalty on FIFA!

  Dad: The magic hands of Stevie CB are an invaluable asset to the Hashtag squad, just as his fatherly wisdom is to me.

  Saunders: Saundie Daundie, my little brother and Hashtag’s man behind the camera – as important a player as anyone on the pitch.

  Seb: Older brother, career adviser, Hashtag United left winger, champion golfer and the toughest competitor I know – even if I can beat him at FIFA no problem these days!

  Me (Spencer): Middle-child syndrome sufferer and Hashtag United captain. I live by the motto ‘the coach never drops the fittest player’. Still working on being the fittest, but luckily I pick the team anyway!

  Alex: My girlfriend and partner, and an absolute gamechanger for me – without her, I wouldn’t have been able to chase my dreams.

  Joey the dog: The real Spen Doggy Dog – our puppy Joey became the latest addition to the family when I surprised Alex with him in 2016.

  Back in 2013, when the identity of a certain FIFA Playa was still a hot topic on YouTube, Copa90 put on a football tournament featuring the cream of YouTube talent – and FIFA Playa. In the final of the Copa90 Cup, a team of YouTube Allstars took on the Copa90 team, with people like KSI, Poet and MiniMinter on the pitch. Unbelievably, Copa90 turned their noses up at the opportunity to have Stevie Two Shoes on their team, and he turned out for the Allstars instead.

  The match was played in quite low-key surroundings and was settled on penalties, with the Allstars taking the glory. But the result wasn’t what was important – or at least it wasn’t once FIFA Playa stopped gloating about it. What was important was that it whetted the appetite for a proper YouTube football match.