In February this year, we helped raise $8 Million+ USD for charity during the Match For Hope, held in Doha (Qatar), alongside some prolific creators and Footballers.
That’s worth taking a moment to truly appreciate.
The funds were raised for Education Above All: A Foundation that provides educational opportunities for marginalised children in Palestine, Pakistan, Sudan, Mali, Rwanda and Tanzania.
This event just felt special; for the region and for the impact of a first time event.
Before I dive into that spectacular event, let’s rewind to April 2023 last year. MiniMinter (real name Simon) invites AboFlah to play in the longest-standing creator football match in the world: The Sidemen Charity Match. Featuring some of the world’s biggest creators. I’ve watched a tonne of MiniMinter’s content (including his What’s Good Podcast) and heard good things about him from our team. He was kind and encouraging when extending the invite to AboFlah to play in the match. He genuinely comes across as someone you want to root for.
Back to the Sideman Charity Match. In 2022, The Sidemen Charity Match became the most viewed live sports event on YouTube, with over 2.4 Million people watching live. For us, being part of the 2023 event was a surreal experience. Being inside a packed out stadium and feeling the energy of the crowd all there to watch YouTubers play football. It felt like a crowd ready for a Champions League match.
For AboFlah, it was his first ever charity football match and his first time visiting London. His content is all in Arabic. He’s the most beloved and impactful YouTuber in the Middle East. He famously sat in a glass room for 11 days and raised over $11 Million USD for charity.. alone. He’s single-handedly raised more money for charity than 3 years of Sidemen Charity Matches which have featured a collection of the biggest YouTubers in the world. He’s achieved levels of impact a handful of creators have in their entire careers. May God reward him and continue to test him.
But in London, for his first ever public Football Match, he was a fish out of water. We knew this heading into the event but accepted the opportunity and encouraged AboFlah to get out there and embrace the unknown. There’s growth in discomfort. Four people from the 8Flamez team and a friend flew to London to support AboFlah and be on the ground to learn what made this event so special.
Behind the scenes, there was little to no communication between our team and the Sidemen Management. On the 28th of August, the Sidemen announced AboFlah as one of the players. It was clear that the vast majority of their community didn’t know him. And we can’t blame them. He’s an Arabic speaking creator. But a quick search will tell you he’s won Guinness World Records for his charity events and that he’s the biggest in the Middle East. He was invited by the Sidemen but little to no effort was made to connect with AboFlah himself or drive interest to the event through his audience. No content, No further announcements, nada.
Behind the scenes, we reached out to the Sidemen’s team and offered to co-stream the entire event in Arabic ourselves. With just a few days before the event, we offered to pay for the stream ourselves, with a plan to get some of the best Arabic speaking casters and produce a show fit for the region. All we needed was a feed of the match. We said we’d offer 100% of all stream revenue and donations to the event. The outcome?
Radio silence.
AboFlah was the first Middle East creator to ever be invited to the Sidemen Charity Event since it started in 2016. Whilst we could do better at making friends, perhaps we expected they might be eager to capitalise on the impact he could have as one of the most prominent charitable creators in the world. We were wrong. My co-founder Eyad and I had pushed so hard for AboFlah to attend the Sidemen event. The day before the match we were walking through Camden and AboFlah spotted a Luffy straw-hat. For those who don’t know, Luffy is the main character in one of the most popular anime series ever: One Piece. AboFlah stopped at the shop, bought it and wore it to the match the next day.
The Sidemen Charity Match 2023 was an even bigger success than 2022: £2.4 Million raised for charity, 2.5 Million people watched live and 60,000 people filled out a packed London Stadium. KSI, Mr Beast, xQc, iShowSpeed, Airrack, Kai Cenat, LazarBeam and other epic creators made up some of the players.
For AboFlah and 8Flamez, it was an eye-opening experience in so many ways. Seeing how content was used to drive the promotion of the event, living the hospitality offered to the creators and ticket holders, watching how most international creators prioritize clout > all else, but most importantly, seeing a truly entertaining event that brought together millions of people online and 60,000 in person for a noble cause.
Back to January 2024. The Qatar government reached out to us and after some back and forth, the decision was made for AboFlah to be the Team Captain for their inaugural Charity Football Match: Match for Hope.
The experience dealing with them in early stage negotiations was professional, fast-paced (as is typical in the Middle East) and collaborative. Wow. It’s no surprise that a year ago, they were hosts to one of the most phenomenal FIFA World Cups of all time.
The stage was set. Team AboFlah vs Team Chunkz. We flew out to Doha while the rest of the players were still being picked and the promo got started with the full support of the Qatar Media Office. Bare in mind, whilst this event brought in some fantastic creators from across the world, it was also headlined by some of Football’s greatest stars: Arsene Wenger, Roberto Carlos, David Villa, Makelele, Eden Hazard, Drogba and Kaka.
The pace at which this event got organised was borderline unbelievable and the execution on the day almost flawless. Knowing charity was the wind behind everyone’s sail, it felt like things just moved with more ease.
The project director was Qasim. He represented the Qatar Government and was by far one of the most active and passionate on-the-ground directors I’ve ever worked with. The first time we met him.. he flew to Dubai on a regular weekday (landed in Sharjah because flights were full) and spent under 2 hours efficiently going through the plans for the event and asked us for input and feedback. He was honest about this event being the first they’d ever done and that he was looking to us for support. He listened attentively yet also artfully pitched the event and described the progress his team were making in Doha.
In the span of 4 weeks, the entire event had been planned, promoted and organised. And how good was the organisation?
- Every single creator and their guests stayed in the best hotel in Qatar, The Fairmont in Doha (famous for its fancy largest chandelier in the world). As guests of the hotel, during the course of the entire stay, every single player and their guests at the hotel were able to eat/drink/spend at the hotel completely comped by the organisers. They each had a private driver and were taken across the city to experience Doha, all paid for by the events sponsors.
- Each team manager had direct access to the Director of the Event who was available almost 18 hours a day. Not his PA, not a third party agency, the man who made it all come together. Even on the day of the event when I was asked by event security to store my laptop at their Special Items tent, he was available and tried to help. The event team organising the event connected with every single creator each day.
- A week or so prior, our team asked if we could host the Arabic language stream on AboFlah’s YouTube Channel. To date, it’s hit 6.3 Million views. Without hesitation, we were connected to the on-ground broadcast crew and encouraged to do whatever we felt was necessary to promote the match to AboFlah’s audience. We got the event feed and moderated it for over 150,000 live viewers. YouTube Middle East even organised a call to offer their support and one of their key men showed up to the event to help (shout-out to Abdul-Rahman!)
- In the lobby of the hotel, there was a 24 hour desk where 4 different members of the organising team were available for any creator at literally any time of the day. I remember seeing iShowSpeed arriving to the hotel in crutches, wondering how he would be playing a football match 48 hours later. The organisers arranged for him to see specialist doctors who assessed whether he could play and what could be done to help him out. Creators were treated to the standard provided to World Cup Footballers.
Team AboFlah Lost the match but none of us cared. We weren’t there to win a football match.
$8 Million USD raised for charity.
34,000 live fans in the arena.
Match For Hope 2024.
For me and Eyad, we saw AboFlah in his element, legendary footballers having the time of their lives and international creators celebrating the organisation and hospitality of a charity football event like no other.
The Sidemen event is a class act and without that experience, we would have never known what it takes to truly be part of and support a world-class creator event. I think we in the Middle East often look to learn from the experiences of more developed creator ecosystems in the US and Europe. This is tremendously valuable for us but we must not forget the religious and cultural values that underpin our region and give us natural competitive advantages.
Charity is not special here, it doesn’t require a pat on the back and if you’re doing it with the intention to earn clout, you get none of the reward. It is a mandatory requirement for every Muslim to give a portion of their wealth and you are encouraged to give as much as possible to earn benefits that outlive this life. Charity makes a soul feel calmer.
The Holy Quran, Surah 2 (Al-Baqarah): “O believers! Donate from the best of what you have earned and of what We have produced for you from the earth. Do not pick out worthless things for donation, which you yourselves would only accept with closed eyes. And know that Allah is Self-Sufficient, Praiseworthy.”
Surah 2, Verse 264
Marthad Ibn Abdullah reported that our beloved Prophet (ﷺ/PBUH) said, “The shade of the believer on the Day of Resurrection is his charity.”
23490 مسند أحمد بن حنبل
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And my favourite clip of the event? Kaka, one of the most legendary footballers of all time, who had met with Hassan the day before after he walked into the Team Meeting with the R9 haircut, had this to say before the match started:
Here’s to more creators and sports events being hosted across the Middle East.. to entertain and give to those who need it most.