Edition 22 of the SportsBiz Spotlight sees us sit down with the founder of Footballer Fits! The Gen-Z media brand covering the world of football and fashion, Jordan Clarke takes us through the journey so far!
What does Footballer Fits do?
Footballer Fits is the driving force behind the growth of football x fashion, a niche relatively untouched before we came onto the scene. As a digital media platform, we cover the game in a different light to most, delivering athlete fashion and lifestyle content to Gen-Z via our Instagram and TikTok channels.
A year into our journey, we’ve created one of the most engaging communities on social media, including countless professional footballers at the highest level, many who we have now built strong relationships with.
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When was it founded?
Footballer Fits was founded in 2020, during the height of COVID-19. Over the course of lockdown, having always wanted to find a way to mix both passions of football and fashion, it became clear that whilst athletes were beginning to express themselves fashion-wise, there wasn’t a platform that was celebrating this in the same way NBA fashion was celebrated in the U.S.
Footballers were only allowed to post things away from the pitch if they and their club were performing or face backlash from supporters and even pundits, who would suggest they weren’t able to focus on both the game and their interests outside of it. From this, Footballer Fits was created to be the platform that backed the players in being themselves, regardless of criticism they may face and really encourage these guys to show there’s more to them than what they do with a football at their feet.
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What’s the main purpose of the organisation?
As briefly mentioned above, we are the digital platform that champions footballers expressing themselves through fashion. From Dominic Calvert-Lewin breaking down boundaries with his Chanel bags to Jadon Sancho’s Dior drip, footballer fashion is evolving as it becomes more acceptable and our purpose is to continue pushing the culture to a level that eradicates this idea that athletes should just stick to the day job.
The average Millennial and Gen-X football fan is not our target audience, but Gen-Z users aged from 9-24 (63% of our Instagram audience) and that’s why we publish our content where they live – Instagram and TikTok. To shift a culture and make athlete fashion a part of the game, the younger generation of football fans will be the ones to create an environment where players feel comfortable expressing themselves and that’s why everything we do is aimed at them through eye-catching and easily consumed visual content showcasing their favourite players in the latest high-end fashion.
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If failure wasn’t a possibility, what would be your biggest ambition?
Our biggest ambition would be to directly shift football culture, creating change within the game across a global level to a point where athlete fashion and lifestyle are big parts of the game, as opposed to the robotic nature that the sport currently holds. From bringing tunnel fits to the Premier League to pushing for England players to don international duty fits of their own, we want to be the biggest culture-led brand in the game that helps to deliver young football fans the content they want to see from their favourite players.
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What’s your USP?
I think I’d be doing a disservice to the Footballer Fits community if I didn’t name them as our USP. I’ve been in the social media industry for seven years and I’ve never encountered a community so strong. From messages of support to the engagement each posts receive, the organic reach we manage to hit on a daily basis means whatever message we’re trying to get across not only gets heard, but heavily engaged with. That was something we prioritised before taking the leap into working with brands to ensure their message didn’t fall on deaf ears and with 142k followers on Instagram and 297k followers on TikTok, we’re now looking to take that next step into helping brands reach Gen-Z through our community.
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Who would be your dream client?
We wouldn’t limit ourselves to one dream client because any brand wishing to help push the football x fashion culture forward would qualify as dream-worthy to us! We’ve turned down countless partnerships during our come up that didn’t fit within our purpose as with everything we do, we want to be a step forward on the journey to achieving the end goal. So to answer the question directly, it would be anyone who wishes to create culture-shifting content that resonates with our community!
How can people connect with Footballer Fits?
You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok by searching ‘@FootballerFits’ and should you wish to know more about what we do, you can reach me at any time on jordan@footballerfits.co.uk.
Thanks to Jordan for taking us behind the scenes of Footballer Fits and sharing so much great insight.
If you would like to feature your sports based business or know of an organisation you would like to see feature on SportsBiz Spotlight, get in touch.
