Newsletter

Piqué’s Kings League success agitates Spanish football

«All sports have to go towards entertainment. The new generations want changes, they don’t want 90-minute games. They want much shorter and more exciting things. There are ideas that come out and others that are emerging ». For Gerard Piqué, the Kings League marks the way forward for the world of sport and its conception as entertainment. The former Barcelona player was able to gather 92,522 spectators at the Camp Nou to live the Final Four of this project that mixes pachanga football and a good dose of ‘show’ created by the now businessman together with the streamer Ibai Llanos, one of the most recognized in its sector. According to the organizers, the competition in Barcelona was followed by 2.1 million viewers on Twitch, YouTube and TikTok.

Piqué also invoices, and in what way. The competition has not stopped breaking audience records since it officially began on January 1, the day on which the first day was held in a large warehouse located in the port of Barcelona, ​​in one of its five areas: the Zona Franca. The structure hides an artificial grass pavilion with stands, cabins for the streamers who preside over each team, a VAR (Video Assistant Referee) room and changing rooms. Outside the venue there is a production room where the signal from more than a dozen cameras is collected, including the one worn by the referee on his body, and from where it is broadcast for the official Kings Twitch channel. League, which hosts an average of views of more than half a million viewers for each game, with a peak of two million the day Ronaldinho was invited to play with one of the teams.

Related News

To understand this other way of looking at soccer that is successful among young people, we are going to start by explaining what the Kings League concept consists of. It is a real competition with seven players per team organized by the Kosmos company, whose leader is Gerard Piqué and his right-hand man Oriol Querol, CEO of his company since 2020 and who comes from the audiovisual world.

Most of the players come from the lower divisions of Catalan soccer and before reaching the streamer league they were chosen in an NBA-style ‘draft’: A selection process in which 8,000 applicants sought to join the teams, with a final selection of 120 players. Many of them fulfilled their dream of playing on the Camp Nou pitch, others had already tried it during their professional days. Because athletes who hung up their boots some time ago also play in the competition, such as Ricardo López, Alberto Bueno, Kun Agüero, Iker Casillas, Ibai Gómez, Javier Saviola, Sergio García, Joan Capdevila, Joan Verdú, Jonathan Soriano, Alberto Lopo or Martín Mantovani .

The audience decides the rules of the game

The matches -which are played on Sundays from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.- last 40 minutes, divided into two 20-minute parts. It is contested by 12 teams (120 footballers) chaired by some of the biggest Spanish-speaking streamers and content creators on the planet, so that, beyond the strictly sports, there is a powerful relationship with online platforms, where you can not only follow the competition live, but also the interactions between them, with the controversies of each day.

It also involves the audience to decide the rules of the game through social networks, very different by the way from what we are used to seeing in this sport. For example, if there is a tie, the winner is decided with a penalty shootout from midfield; substitutions are unlimited; the kick-off follows the same format as water polo (the ball is placed at the kick-off point in the center of the field, and the players of each team run towards the ball from the bottom line of their goals); and teams have five ‘secret weapons’: cards that make up the main dynamic element of the competition, but present options that can change everything in a game. They can only be taken once during matches, and they hide different options: a penalty in favor of the team that takes it (including the presidents), a goal with double value in the next two minutes of play, the exclusion of a rival player choose during that same period, wildcard, card draw (comes into play to take away the opponent’s weapon when both take it out at the same time) or shootout, which has the same mechanics as penalty shootouts, in which the players Throwers drive the ball from the center circle and have to shoot without entering the box.

The month of April will be quite busy for fans of this competition that lights flares behind the goals after each goal. Every Monday of that month there will be a transfer market, and with it movements of all the teams, which will have their own budget and will have to impose clauses to prevent their best players from leaving. According to information from Relevo, the players charge 70 euros per game, money that would be increased from next season if success continues to be the current one. The presidents do not get paid from the competition and their economic benefits come in two ways: content they generate for their online channels and own sponsorships that they can search for on their own and integrate into their team shirts.

The main source of income for this competition, since it does not have financial support from television rights or income from ticketing since it does not sell face-to-face tickets, are sponsorships. It has a main one, InfoJobs, and another that gives its name to the pavilion in which they play, Cupra. Other major brands such as Xiaomi, Adidas, Grefusa, Spotify, Mahou or McDonalds have joined the project and there are already more than a dozen companies with which they work.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending