KSI says Dagenham & Redbridge can get to the Premier League, but only if the small east London club climbs five divisions over about a decade or longer. The 32-year-old, who became a co-owner in early March, said the project is now part of his life and that anything under his wing would get all the passion and love it deserves.
The change has been immediate at Victoria Road. Attendances have almost doubled since KSI arrived, and his first home game there was livestreamed to more than 350,000 views, a number that shows how far the club’s reach has already stretched beyond the sixth tier.
Dagenham & Redbridge’s pitch is ambitious because the football reality is unforgiving. The club has suffered three relegations since 2011 and now sits in the sixth tier of English football, a level where progress is usually measured in survival first and dreams later. KSI’s arrival has not altered that arithmetic, but it has given the club a louder platform and a very different kind of attention.
He said he had not watched the Wrexham documentary on purpose, insisting he did not want to be influenced by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s story. He said he is making his own documentary and wants it to be his story, not theirs, a clear sign that he sees this project as more than celebrity sport and more than a copy of another club’s rise. He also said he did not want the focus to be on his deep pockets, adding that he would rather figure out how to make problems not exist in the first place than throw money at them.
That line matters because football ownership by public figures has become more common, and not only in England’s top flight. Snoop Dogg has been linked with Swansea City, Michael B Jordan with Bournemouth and Tom Brady with Birmingham City, part of a growing pattern in which fame, money and attention are becoming a regular part of the lower leagues’ business model. For Dagenham & Redbridge, though, KSI is trying to frame the experiment differently: not as a cash splash, but as a long climb built around his mindset and his connections.
He says the target is starkly simple. The goal for Dagenham & Redbridge is to be in the Premier League. So five promotions. I’m talking about 10 years, could be more. It is an audacious statement for a club with modest crowds and a history of falling down the pyramid, but it is also the clearest marker yet of what the new co-owner thinks he is building. The question now is whether the surge in curiosity at Victoria Road can turn into something more durable than a burst of online interest and a headline.
