Tottenham superfan from Limerick in running for major award

A TOTTENHAM Hotspur superfan from Raheen is in the running for a major award after hitting almost two million viewers on his YouTube channel.

Matt Hayes, 20, has seen his channel Matt Hayes – Tottenham Blog attract almost 11,000 subscribers since its birth in May 2019.

Now, he is bidding to win the title of Best Young Content Creator at the Football Content Awards.

“It’s a Tottenham fan channel. Any goings on around Tottenham, whether it is matches, or transfer news, or the change of the manager, I’d just cover that. For the most part, it’s me giving my own opinion on stuff. But I have a podcast which I run on the channel too. I’d get guests on from other Tottenham channels, other podcasts. If we’re playing a different team, I’d get a fan of them on,” Matt explained.

He even managed to secure an appearance from the respected soccer journalist Fabrizio Romano.

Speaking of how he managed to persuade the Italian transfer expert – who has 3.5m Twitter followers no less – onto his channel, Matt said: “I was tagging him jokingly suggesting he come on my channel. But then I saw on Instagram, his email address was there, so I just thought why not? I dropped him an email, and then two weeks later, he wrote back to me saying he’d love to come on. Thankfully, I’ve been able to make him a regular guest on the channel, which is not just good for the numbers, but I feel it adds a lot more value.”

Matt – works as a senior analyst at StatsPerform – broadcasts to his thousands of followers live and direct from his bedroom which is kitted out with gadgets.

I’d never been that confident in front of the camera. But I remember the week before the [2019] Champions League final against Liverpool, my dad asked why I don’t record something and see what happened. It started from there,” he explained.

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