The Kingdom Cup is a mixed-gender competition held between the Kings and Queens League teams where one half is played by the Kings League team and the other by the Queens League. The inaugural Kingdom Cup began on October 29 and concluded on November 25, marking an end to this year’s season of the Kings League competitions.
The final of the event was held between Porcinos FC and Ultimate Móstoles, concluding in a 7-2 win for PFC. Porcinos FC took home the €100K prize and the final of the event garnered 413.1K Peak Viewers and the full event accumulated millions of hours watch time.
Across the entire Cup, 6.91M Hours Watched was accumulated by the league throughout its 46 hours of broadcasting time. The Cup was not the most popular Kings League event of the year by any means, but it still amassed a large amount of viewership.
The two finalist teams, Porcinos FC and Ultimate Móstoles, feature ibai and DjMaRiiO as Chairperson, respectively. Both of these streamers were covering the event on their personal channels, and they were responsible for roughly 950K of the total Hours Watched.
The Kingdom Cup not only enjoyed a peak viewership of 413.1K concurrent viewers but also a full house at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona. More than 12K avid fans attended the event in person and enjoyed the various musical performances and party atmosphere of the cup.
Compared to other Kings League events of 2023, the Kingdom Cup falls into the lower half of the scale in terms of popularity. The event was more popular than the Prince Cup, but fell behind the Kings Cup and the mainstay Leagues.
The inaugural Season 1 of the Kings League and its various sister events concluded with the end of the Kingdom Cup, and the football competition has quickly become one of the most popular events in online live-streaming.
The Kings League 2023 Split 1, which received 2.11M Peak Viewers, was more popular than many of the top esports events of the year. The first Split of the year received more concurrent viewers at peak than the MPL Indonesia Season 12, the most popular mobile gaming esports league of 2023, and far more than the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, the most popular Counter-Strike tournament of 2023.
In total, the 2023 Kings League season received 117.99M Hours Watched. Such large figures can be hard to wrap your head around, so let’s compare the viewership of the 2023 Kings League to other live-streaming events.
The year of football content and competition received more watch time than the entire MPL Indonesia Season 12, which is currently the second-most-watched esports event of 2023. Compared to esports events, the 2023 Kings League was second to only one tournament, the 2023 World Championship for League of Legends.
In terms of live-streaming culture, the 2023 Kings League received more watch time than ibai’s entire watch time for 2022 and received more watch time than the entire platform of Twitch during a single weekend.
Compared to mainstream culture and live-streaming services, Season 1 of the Kings League received more watch time than the new David Fincher movie. ‘The Killer’ managed 100M Hours Watched in a fortnight in early November. Staring Irishman Michael Fassbender, the film was the most-watched English-language film on Netflix for the two weeks selected, receiving double the watch time of the next-best performing film for both weeks.
Season 1 of the Kings League has been a monumental success. The revolutionary sports league combines the viewership power of football with live-streaming culture and celebrity. The year of football events outperformed the biggest esports events of the year and even mainstream movies.
Although founded by Gerard Piqué alongside Ibai Llanos, the league has quickly outgrown ibai, the third-most-followed channel on Twitch, and the league will expand next year into Latin America. With such grandiose plans ahead of it, the Kings League will likely continue to dominate live-streaming viewership and become a fan-favourite for Spanish-speaking fans across the globe.
