Rising Ballers: From Foden DMs to Nike campaigns and multi-million revenue
How three friends turned the Rising Ballers Instagram account into a lucrative content business, via Phil Foden, Jamal Edwards, Iliman Ndiaye and some big life decisions.
Jamie Pollitt vividly remembers the day that changed his life. He was spending more time on his hobby – a social media account showcasing promising young footballers – than on his anthropology degree at Bristol University and decided it was time to take the plunge. So he called his friend and Rising Ballers collaborator, Eni Shabani.
“I said, ‘Listen, I’m thinking about doing something crazy’,” Pollitt, 28, tells City PM. “I think I’m going to drop out of university and go all in on this. And he was like, ‘Well, I can’t let you do that alone. If you’re doing it, I’m doing it too’.”
For Shabani, 31, an economics graduate who had already embarked on a career in the City, it was arguably an even bigger gamble. “My dad was extremely upset with me,” he says. “I graduated, got into a private equity consultancy. Insane 15 hour days. Thoroughly enjoyed it. But I love football. I had a thirst for business as well, and I guess an entrepreneurial spirit.”
Shabani had some savings and told himself he’d give Rising Ballers six months to be viable. He and younger brother Brendon, a youth player at Leyton Orient, had started the platform around a year earlier. The idea was simple: showcase the football stars of the future, who were making a name at academy level but not widely known, through homemade highlights reels.
Space for Rising Ballers
“It was a time when everything on Instagram was so exciting, because there were so many opportunities and people really taking them,” says Brendon, 23. “We noticed very quickly there was a massive space for it, because no one was really speaking about the players that I was playing against week in, week out.”
Those players, like future England internationals Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho and Mason Mount, were eager to be featured, sending their highlights to Rising Ballers via direct message. “We spoke directly to the players and those players then gravitated towards the platform which just authenticated it,” says Eni. “We can’t say that we did that on purpose. It was purely just, ‘Foden wants to feature on Rising Ballers, amazing. Let’s get it out ASAP’.”
Soon brands started taking notice and Nike asked Rising Ballers to create content for the launch of a new football boot. Pollitt says: “We’re like, ‘OK, wow, there’s a billion-dollar sportswear brand that we grew up loving that wants to work with us.” They also got an assist from the late Jamal Edwards, of the pioneering YouTube channel for emerging music artists SBTV.
“Jamal was quite a big mentor for us in the early days, because he’d been on a very similar journey,” adds Pollitt. “We landed, through Jamal, our first ‘major’ [deal]. We made some money working with a phone brand [Huawei]. And at that point we had some money in the account, and we sort of started looking at each other, like, ‘Well, okay, we can, we can really do something’.”
Sell Rising Ballers? Only when it stops being fun
Rising Ballers has been on the up and up ever since. They have 10m followers on social media, several channels – including She’s A Baller in women’s football and a minority stake in Footballer Fits, a fashion crossover project – and worked with 24 different client brands last year. Revenue grew by 70 per cent last year and is now on track to reach the high end of seven figures in 2025.
While work with brands makes up the vast majority of income, Rising Ballers plans to keep its balance of 80 per cent editorial, 20 per cent client content. It is working on a brand repositioning, however, to reflect the evolution of the business and what it can offer: material that speaks to Gen Z and the platforms to reach them directly.
“We take growth on socials so seriously and that’s our offering,” says Pollitt. “Anyone can create a football marketing campaign for you. We’re specialists in it, but ultimately we reach over 100m people monthly on social media by our own brands. So if you work with us, we can pump it out to the market like no one else can.”
Talent spotting
The trio also have a non-league team, Rising Ballers FC, which they took over in order to showcase unsigned talent and whose games they stream on YouTube. Their most famous find was current Everton star Iliman Ndiaye, who went from them to Sheffield United – they didn’t take a fee – and then representing Senegal at the World Cup all within three years.
The Shabanis and Pollitt own the business outright, having decided against raising funding early on – “the best thing we ever did”, says Eni, – and rejected all subsequent approaches. Even the brothers’ dad has now warmed to the idea.
“Once the investment and acquisition offers started coming in, we just looked at ourselves and thought, ‘the offer is that much? Then keep going. It can be bigger’,” says Eni. “And even then, we’d need to ascertain, ‘have we stopped having fun?’ Only then would we consider it.”