Popular Spanish streamer Ibai Ibai Llanos teamed up with FC Barcelona defender Gerard Piquet to found KOI, an esports organization first presented on December 15 at Palau Sant Jordi Arena, Barcelona, Spain.
Ibai’s and Pique’s desire to enter esports first became known in September 2021. This was when the Spaniards, both famous in their respective fields, acquired the Astralis Stormbringers team, along with a slot in the regional LoL league. However, as was revealed during the KOI presentation, there were no players from the old roster left on the team. They were replaced by more eminent esports athletes from Vitality.Bee, G2 Arctic, BT Excel, UCAM Esports Club, and BIG.
12 streamers will be representing the KOI organization in the media space, each of them will appear on the broadcasts of the SquadKoi club channel on Twitch from time to time. The list includes tvandeR, Mayichi, Knekro and even JuanSGuarnizo, who is one of the most watched Spanish-speaking streamers on Twitch in 2021.
Although KOI has just started its journey, the organization has already had its first sponsors. The club's partners are the telecom operator Finetwork, the car brand CUPRA, the sportswear brand KELME and even the international streaming service Disney+.
The event was broadcast on Ibai's personal Twitch channel. The presentation was followed by almost 380K Peak Viewers, while the number of Average Viewers did not fall below 266K.
The League of Legends roster became the first representative of KOI in esports, with Valorant being the next discipline for the club to tackle. The LoL team has already passed the baptism of fire, beating the French team Karmine Corp with a score of 2:1 in the show match which started immediately after the presentation. It should be remembered that the star player Martin Rekkles Larsson, who previously played for G2 Esports, joined the Karmine Corp roster earlier.
In addition to Ibai, the game was broadcast by kamet0, the owner of Karmine Corp and one of the most popular streamers in France. The meeting between KOI and Karmine Corp was followed by 417K Average Viewers and 477K Peak Viewers.
The creation of esports organizations by media personalities is not so common. The presentation of the KOI club caused such a stir that the sports newspaper Marca streamed it live on its website. And thanks to the collaboration with the popular French content creator, the show match managed to gather a huge audience – which is something that not every esports tournament can boast of.
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