Last week, aminematue hosted the second version of his celebrity football match, “Eleven All Stars 2”. Featuring influencers from Spain and France, it was held at Wanda Metropolitano, the home stadium of the legendary Spanish football club Atlético Madrid, with Team Spain beating Team France 2:0.
The French side was led by aminematue himself while the Spanish captain was renowned YouTuber (and recent Twitch returnee) DjMaRiiO. The home side also exacted revenge for their loss by the same scoreline from two years ago in the inaugural edition, which was played at the Stade Jean-Bouin in Paris.
Crucially, the live stream of this exhibition football match on aminematue's official Twitch channel was a big success. It hit 991K Peak Viewers, making it the biggest French broadcast of 2024, more than double the next-best entry.
This broadcast also ended as the fifth-best one of all time in the French language by peak concurrent viewership. Only football club PSG’s coverage of the 2023 Saudi friendly involving Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi, Squeezy's two GP Explorers from 2022 and 2023, and amine's first football game between France and Spain are ahead.
The match itself was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests, with both teams doing their best to light up the exhibition game and give spectators some quality action. Musician and streamer Robledo opened the scoring for the Spain side, with a penalty from DjMaRiiO deep into injury time sealing the win.
Interestingly, the French team, thanks to its connections with a few of the country's top footballers, had the chance to train with PSG's first team at the reigning Ligue 1 champions' base ahead of the Eleven All Stars 2. The clip of their training with these footballing stars did the rounds on social media, giving the match between the two sets of influencers more hype.
The game was not short of controversy as well, with the likes of Brawks — the co-founder of Gentle Mates — alleging that racist chants and gestures were directed at him by a local supporter. As team captain, aminematue also got involved in the controversy, leading his team off the pitch in protest alongside their Spanish counterparts.
The spectator in question was quickly found and escorted out of the building after being confronted by the French team. Brawks noted after the game that he hoped the fan would be given at least a year's stadium ban for his actions if not any higher punishment.
The racism troubles also led to a lot of friction between aminematue and DjMaRiiO, with the former accusing his colleague of not doing enough to protect Brawks and the rest of his team. This has also put any further matches between the two sets of content creators in doubt, with the French Twitch star stating after the game that he would like to 'set things right' first and adding that if 2025 has to involve only online stars from his nation for safety's sake, then so be it.
More worryingly, a French supporter suffered a broken arm when he and his friends were recriminating with their Spanish counterparts. As per aminematue, the spectator was complaining about being thrown things and experiencing racism from home fans when security confronted him and broke his arm in the ensuing fracas, He ended up in the hospital after the match.
Despite all these troubles, this exhibition football match showed that putting influencers together for an event, be it in video games, sports, or a mixture of both, tends to attract huge audience numbers. Of course, nobody likes the fringe elements that come along with such occasions, but the success of aminematue's latest venture is sure to bring back more editions, although the addition of non-French creators remains to be seen.
