Influencer match to dwarf Carabao Cup final between Liverpool and Newcastle as stunning figures revealed

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The Sidemen Charity Match hit eight million live views on YouTube, nearly double the amount expected for Sunday's Carabao Cup final.

Liverpool and Newcastle will go toe-to-toe at Wembley this weekend just a week on from the Influencers taking to the field at the national stadium.

The Sidemen played in front of a sell out crowd at Wembley

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The Sidemen played in front of a sell out crowd at WembleyCredit: Instagram @sidemen

The two incredibly well supported Premier League clubs will have a tough time matching the viewing figures the online personalities drew in.

Currently, the charity match is at 16 million YouTube views with the highlights hitting five million. 

The game kicked off at 3pm on Saturday during the Premier League's blackout, helping boost its audience to the masses.

Manchester United’s win against Newcastle in 2023 set the Carabao Cup viewership record at 4.26 million on British television. 

The Sidemen also sold out the national stadium with 90,000 people in the stands to watch KSI, Logan Paul, and co.

This trumped the official attendance for last year's final between Chelsea and Liverpool, with 88,868 people there on that day 12 months ago.

A similar amount are expected for Sunday's Carabao Cup final between Liverpool and Newcastle - which is live on talkSPORT.

The Sidemen game was a huge success raising £4,733,004 for three charities: BBC’s Children in Need, Bright Side and M7 Education.  

This was the sixth edition of the charity match, having previously played at Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium, Charlton Athletic’s The Valley and West Ham United’s London Stadium.

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Liverpool are the defending Carabao Cup holders

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Liverpool are the defending Carabao Cup holdersCredit: Getty

The Sidemen are a British YouTube collective formed in 2013 by KSI (Olajide Olatunji), Miniminter (Simon Minter), Zerkaa (Joshua Bradley), TBJZL (Tobit John ‘Tobi’ Brown), Behzinga (Ethan Payne), Vikkstar123 (Vikram Singh Barn) and W2S (Harry Lewis).

Their collective subscriber amount is more than 100 million and their group page - the Sidemen - has 22 million.

It is an amount that thrashes the Premier League’s current top four YouTube channels as Liverpool, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest and Chelsea have a combined 20 million. 

Attracting more eyes to the charity match were the likes of Logan Paul, iShowSpeed (Darren Watkins), MrBeast (James Donaldson) and Kai Cenat has the most active Twitch subscribers.

Paul is now a WWE star, Watkins has appeared on CBS Sports alongside Thierry Henry, Donaldson is the largest YouTube channel with 372 million subscribers and Cenat.

Former footballers Emile Heskey, Jermain Defoe and Eni Aluko provided match analysis in the studio.

The match also raised millions for charity

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The match also raised millions for charityCredit: Instagram @sidemen

Rapper AJ Tracey performed at half-time and KSI also performed his song, Thick Of It.

The match was an entertaining spectacle as the YouTube Allstars beat Sidemen FC 5-4 in a penalty shootout following a 9-9 draw.

After the match Joe Weller said to talkSPORT: “It’s special. I’m so grateful to create such a special moment and share this with all of our people.”

KSI added: “We’ve raised so much money. Over $4million. It’s incredible so for us it’s such a joy to be able to do everything with our friends and have our family watching. Good vibes all around.”

He revealed a seventh match will happen but they are not set on a location yet. 

Wembley is the UK's biggest stadium so there is speculation the Sidemen will go abroad next.  

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