Kings League is a seven-a-side football league established by Gerard Piqué in collaboration with ibai and other various Internet celebrities and football personalities. After a largely successful year of events in 2023, the Kings League is entering 2024, but viewership is not as strong as the organisers may have been hoping. The Américas Kings League may be the saving grace for the football league to combat the dropping viewership statistics.
The Kings League will now employ what has been dubbed “the ladder”. As was the case for the Kingdom Cup, matches start as a 1vs1 of outfield players who start from the backline of the pitch. Players will be progressively added every minute until both teams are fielding 7 players.
The first week of matches saw guest players join from all walks of life. Professional footballers Alberto Bueno formerly of Real Madrid and Marc Torrejón formerly of Union Berlin joined Ultimate Móstoles and PIO FC, respectively, and MotoGP motorcycle racer Augusto Fernández joined Saiyans FC.
The Kings League 2024 Split 3 began on January 21, kicking off with 6 matches featuring all 12 teams. In terms of viewership, the third split of the league saw yet another downturn in viewership. Although the inaugural 2023 Split 1 was wildly successful, the second split saw a considerable drop in viewership, with about 30.9% fewer Hours Watched, and the third split has continued this trend.
In total, the six matches held throughout the Sunday garnered 1.29M Hours Watched. The most-watched channels broadcasting the matches were the official Kings League Twitch and YouTube Live channels. However, creators such as ibai, rivers_gg, and DjMaRiiO also covered the event, each receiving sizable viewership.
The most popular match of the day was the first one of the day between Ultimate Móstoles, DjMaRiiO’s team, and Rayo de Barcelona, Spursito’s team. The match reached 276.7K Peak Viewers. Both Spursito and DjMaRiiO covered the match on their respective channels and generated a significant portion of the match’s viewership.
After the first match, viewership fell throughout the day. The only match to receive significantly more viewership than the previous one was the final match of the day between Saiyans FC and Porcinos FC, which became the second most popular match of the day. Saiyans FC’s Chairperson is TheGrefg and Porcinos FC’s is ibai; these two have over 27M Twitch Followers combined, and together their broadcasts contributed roughly 100K concurrent viewers to the 240.7K Peak Viewers achieved by the game.
Key to note here are the dynamics for Week 1 of Split 3 compared to Week 1 of Split 2. Across all viewership metrics, Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers, the Kings League 2024 Split 3 received at least 53% lower viewership than the second split of 2023.
In general, channels broadcasting the Kings League found themselves receiving lower viewership this year than in the previous year. Both the official broadcasting channels and the live-streaming personalities involved in the league found themselves receiving less attention.
Although the league still receives hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers, it is losing viewership with each event that takes place. Hopefully, the Américas Kings League will bring some hype and excitement back to the Kings League name, and be able to recuperate some of the losses in viewership suffered by the Kings League.
The Américas Kings League was officially announced in mid-2023, and later in the year, the organisers revealed the teams and chairpersons. WestCol, who ranked as the third-most-watched Latin American streamer of 2023, is the chairperson of the West Santos FC team alongside American-born rapper Arcángel, and many other sizable streamers and content creators have joined the league.
The draft for the upcoming 2024 Américas Kings League took place a week ago. Sporting director of the league Marc Crosas revealed that the Queens League and Prince Cup will also come to Latin America; although the Queens League will not begin until the second split of 2024. The first day of matches for the Américas Kings League will take place on February 18.
The Kings League received 117.99M Hours Watched in 2023, becoming one of the biggest live-streaming phenomena of the year. However, with viewership waning for the events associated with Kings League, the organisers will be hoping that the upcoming Américas Kings League will breathe some life back into the fanbase of the seven-a-side football league.
