Moves
- Start inside a microculture
- Run the brand like a franchise
- Ship the brand unfinished
2026 rank
Sidemen, rank 7
- Rival 50 Score
- 3.93
- Differentiation
- 5.0
- Relevance
- 5.0
- Talkability
- 3.98
Growth signalThe Charity Match raised £6.2 million in 2026, up from £4.7 million in 2025.
Seven friends built a media business from their YouTube channel. In 2026, the best known of them stepped back, and the business now has to prove it can thrive without its full original cast.
The Sidemen are a group of seven British YouTubers who started making videos together as friends. Most brands start with a product and then look for customers. The Sidemen did the opposite: they spent years building an audience through weekly videos, then started selling to it. Today, a fan who discovered them through a challenge video can eat at their Sides fried chicken restaurants, watch their reality show Inside on Netflix and join 90,000 other fans at Wembley Stadium for their annual charity football match. Most creators make money by promoting other companies’ products. The Sidemen kept control of their audience and built their own businesses around it instead. Their combined channels now have more than 155 million subscribers, and they’re one of only five brands in this year’s top 50 with perfect scores for both differentiation and relevance.
Scoring
Differentiation
Score 5.0
The category default: creators build a following, then get paid to appear in other companies’ ads, products and TV shows.
What Sidemen did: launched their own production company, Sidemen Productions, in January 2026. It makes shows for streaming platforms, starting with the third season of Inside on Netflix and a spin-off called Outside in August.
So what: by owning the shows rather than just starring in them, the Sidemen turn their personalities into intellectual property they control. A show format can also run with new cast members, so it can outlast any one person in the group.
Relevance
Score 5.0
The category default: creators launch on one platform and ask their audience to follow them there.
What Sidemen did: released their 2026 cooking competition, Sidemen Presents: SideMenu, on both YouTube and Prime Video, with episodes appearing on YouTube first and Prime Video a day later.
So what: existing fans watched on YouTube as usual, while new viewers discovered the show on Prime Video. Releasing on both lets creator-led shows reach a mainstream TV audience without losing the fans who built the brand.
Talkability
Score 3.98
The category default: a celebrity charity event gets a day of headlines and is quickly forgotten.
What Sidemen did: filled Wembley Stadium with 90,000 fans for the 2026 Charity Match, attracted 2.2 million people watching live at its peak, and raised a record £6.2 million.
So what: fans don’t just watch; they buy tickets, donate, stream the match and share their own highlight clips, spreading the event far beyond the stadium. Because the Sidemen own the event and run it every year, it keeps growing rather than starting from scratch.
Our take
The Sidemen’s most valuable asset is the chemistry between seven specific people. That’s also the one thing that can’t be bought, owned or replaced. In May 2026, KSI, the group’s best-known member, announced he would stop appearing in Sidemen videos to improve his work-life balance. For a brand built on a friendship, losing a founding member is a serious test.
Sidemen Productions is the strongest answer so far. Shows like Inside and Outside can run with new casts and launch in new countries, so the business no longer depends on any one person. The Sidemen already proved that you can build an audience before you have a product. Now they need to prove that what they’ve built can outlast the original group.
Marketer takeaways
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1. BUILD THE AUDIENCE BEFORE THE PRODUCT.
Years of content gave every Sidemen launch a ready-made customer base, though each product still had to earn its place.
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2. MAKE THE ROUTINE THE BRAND.
Regular weekly videos turned viewers into a habit, and habits are harder to replace than one-off hits.
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3. RELEASE WHERE PEOPLE ALREADY WATCH.
Launching on more than one platform reaches different audiences on their own terms.
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4. GIVE THE COMMUNITY A REAL ROLE IN THE OUTCOME.
The Charity Match turns watching into participation, from tickets to donations to fan-made highlights.
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5. BUILD THINGS THAT DON’T DEPEND ON ONE PERSON.
Shows, formats and events keep a brand going when the people at the center change.
Reviewers’ view
Reviewers credited Sidemen as a creator-led business empire whose content doubles as its advertising, with out-of-the-box ideas that go viral on YouTube and set trends. They also pointed to a huge, loyal digital community spanning generations and subcultures.