The Baller League is the latest in the trend of football and internet personalities joining forces to create high-quality entertainment-orientated football games, featuring professional players showcasing their skills and supported by large internet personalities and their followers. The German league launched to promising viewership, competing even with the likes of the Kings League 2024. All information about the league and its first-week viewership is included below.
The Baller League’s first season will run for 11 weeks, holding 6 games every Monday. The first week began a week ago on January 22, and the season will culminate in a final four event on April 6. Although the German-speaking Twitch community is not as large as the English-speaking or Spanish-speaking ones, they are incredibly loyal viewers and regularly show up in huge numbers to support events and special broadcasts by their favourite creators.
What is the Baller League?
Led by Mats Hummels and Lukas Podolski, who won the 2014 FIFA World Cup with the German national team “die Mannschaft”, the Baller League prides itself as the “new old football”. With a heavy emphasis on preserving the street football origins of the game, players are technical and experienced professionals thrown in an atmosphere that is more similar to how people enjoy football in their everyday lives.
Matches are played in a six-on-six format on a small pitch similar to those found for public use all around Germany. Games are short, divided into two 15-minute halves, and are broadcast free of charge on Twitch, as well as German platforms Joyn and Pro Sieben Maxx. The league has partnered with some of the most famous streamers, celebrities, and personalities of the German-speaking DACH countries.
Which streamers are involved?
12 teams compete in the Baller League and many, although not all, are represented by well-known German-speaking celebrities. VfR Zimbos are represented by Gamerbrother and TisiSchubech, with a combined 970K+ Twitch Followers. Eintracht Spandau is co-captained by HandIOfIBlood, who has over 974K Twitch Followers. Hardstuck Royale is captained by Trymacs, Germany’s second-largest Twitch streamer with 3.5M Followers, and Gönrgy Allstars is co-captained by Montana Black, Germany’s most-followed streamer on Twitch with 5.25M Followers.
Aside from these streamers, other content creators like Diyar Acar, Brotatos, rapper Kontra K, and comedian Felix Lobrecht are also involved in captaining teams within the league.
Week 1 viewership statistics
Week 1 of the inaugural Baller League season has started off incredibly strong already, in just over 6 hours and across 6 30-minute matches, the first gameday generated over 780K Hours Watched.
The first day of matches was heavily supported by the content creators who are partnered with the league, and it reached a peak viewership of over 163.5K Peak Viewers. The official BALLERLEAGUE Twitch channel was the most popular option for fans to watch, having received 71.5K Peak Viewers on its opening day.
Viewership for the first day was both strong and stable. Compared to other live-streamed football leagues, the Baller League showed regular viewership, with only a small increase from Average Viewers to Peak Viewers. 123.2K average concurrent viewers watched throughout the 6 hours of broadcasting, and from this average, viewership increased by only 33% to the peak.
We can compare the opening week of the Baller League to the opening week of the established Kings League. Kings League is entering its second year of operations, and the Spanish-speaking league was extremely popular last year. Although it is receiving noticeably less viewership in 2024, the Spanish-community-backed project is a solid benchmark for the Baller League to measure itself against.
The Kings League, which is broadcast officially on Twitch, YouTube Live, and TikTok, garnered 1.29M Hours Watched during Week 1 of its first 2024 Split. The Kings League has one key advantage over Baller League: size. Kings League appeals to both a larger potential demographic, as well as hosting more content creators backing the league. The first week of Kings League in 2024 was streamed by 20 channels across 3 platforms; Baller League was covered by only 6 channels on Twitch.
The first week of the Baller League featured much more stable viewership dynamics compared to the Kings League. The Spanish-speaking league saw viewership drastically rising and falling, depending on which teams were playing, featuring a 55.1% increase from its average viewership of 178.4K concurrent spectators to its peak of 276.7K viewers. Compare this to the much milder 33% increase for the German league.
Baller League was not able to compete with Split 3 of the Kings League when it came to peak viewership, but the German-speaking league came far closer to the Kings League in average viewership. Baller League still has the hype and excitement of a fresh, new football league behind it, which definitely boosts its viewership. Critical for the league now, is whether will it be able to retain this viewership and grow throughout the season.
Keep your eye on Baller League’s first season and how the viewership evolves with Streams Charts, where users can track the viewership statistics for all individual streamers to cover the games. Alternatively, Esports Charts will track the accumulative viewership statistics for the league as a whole on the relevant tournament page.
