Marc White has become one of the most recognisable faces in English non-league football, and a large part of that recognition has arrived through a camera lens rather than from the touchline. The founder, owner and manager of Dorking Wanderers features in a documentary series called ‘Dorking Uncovered’, made by Rich Phippen for the YouTube channel ‘Bunch of Amateurs’, which has charted the club’s rise from a group of friends paying a fiver each to rent a pitch to the National League South.
The record behind that rise is unusual. Dorking have been promoted 12 times in the 26 years since they were founded, and their only relegation came in the National League in 2024. White, 52, is the longest-serving manager in the top six tiers of English football — a status he jokes is permanently under threat with behind-the-scenes cameras following his every move.
“I love the fact that so many people watch, we had half a billion views in 2025,” White tells BBC Sport. “I’m involved in the edit because if I wasn’t, I would probably be banned constantly. I’ll probably be the first football manager to get a lifetime ban.”
Social media now plays a huge role in promoting non-league football. With local newspapers’ ability to cover the level strangled by dwindling resources, clubs have taken it upon themselves to expand their reach on their own platforms. Those around the game believe that helps build stronger relationships with the community and expands marketing opportunities, as well as helping advertise matches. Goal highlights, interviews and in-depth features such as Dorking Uncovered are all contributing to growing interest — and to growing attendances. In Dorking’s division, average crowds reached 1,221 during the 2024-25 season, a 134% rise on the average a decade earlier.
White started Dorking Wanderers just outside the M25 radius with his friends because they were bored of paying for Premier League matches and simply wanted to play. He believes the rising cost of watching top-tier football — whether through tickets or television subscriptions — is pushing more and more people towards the non-league game, but only if they know where to find it.
“I think a lot of people underestimate how little people know about their local football club,” he says. “And when you’re now talking about decades of people that have never picked up a newspaper, and that target audience probably watches the Premier League and they have no idea what’s going on near their local high street, where probably the beer is cheaper, the travel certainly cheaper, and they know a lot more people there. And it’s quite a social connection for them. So, you know, I think for me that the power of social media largely is taking the clubs to their own target market and also taking the target market to the clubs. It’s kind of connecting the two.”
Online attention is also arriving from less conventional directions. Aaron Hunt gained thousands of followers streaming on Twitch about his success with his local club Daisy Hill FC, based in Westhoughton, Bolton, on the management simulation game Football Manager. Hunt was then invited to become chairman of a side in the North West Counties league, whose stadium is now sponsored by the YouTuber AngryGinge and called GingePower Stadium, after he streamed one of his visits to a game to more than a million people.
There is also the Wrexham effect, with other clubs inspired by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney leading the Welsh club from non-league to the Championship. One of the latest celebrity names to invest in a team outside the Football League is the YouTuber KSI, who bought a stake in Dagenham & Redbridge while claiming he can take them to the top tier.
“Just more eyeballs, more exposure,” White says. “We’ve seen a flurry of well-known names. But obviously, there’s only one thing better than a well-known name, and that is a well-known name that’s social media connected. And KSI, he’s the perfect candidate for that. And it benefits every single club in the league because he’s bringing attention to the product. And that’s great. We spoke briefly when we played them, but I think it’s all a bit of an eye-opener for him, really. There’s no glamour. It will be just great to see the impact that has over the period of time. But I think it’s brilliant.”
For White and Dorking, the ambition is to reach the Football League. They are two more promotions away and have started this season in mixed form, with White’s side averaging a crowd of around 1,600 at their Meadowbank home in Surrey. He believes the achievement would resonate far beyond the club’s own support. “We think that getting to the Football League would make us one of the world’s — it sounds mental — but we do think it’ll make us one of the world’s most recognised sports successes,” he says. “I mean, if we go anywhere in America, who are obsessed with the English football pyramid, they know us. I’ve always wanted to win at Wembley, too. So maybe if we could go up via the play-offs, that would tick two boxes.”
White has also courted controversy along the way: last year he was given a six-match touchline ban for a comment he made on a podcast about women. Despite the fact that his clips are widely shared on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, he is not on social media himself. “I get plenty of clips sent to me,” he says. “But if you saw some of them that get edited out, I’d be out of the game. I’ve never been bothered about the cameras. If they went tomorrow, it would be all about the football like it always has been. I love the fact that it resonates with loads of people that might have played non-league football, Sunday football, might have given up, might have followed a team, no longer in love with the game. That’s our market. It’s like people that fell out of love with the game, people that have become disillusioned with the Premier League, the TV sport, they’re the people that love us the most.”