The last matches of Kings League, the main media football league in Spain, came to an end on February 26. Streams Charts has summed up the results of the event and also compiled the most popular teams and broadcast channels. The numbers are great! It seems that Spanish streamers have a new niche in addition to Minecraft.
The semifinals and the Grand Final of the league were held on the same day — the matches were hosted by Camp Nou, FC Barcelona's home stadium. According to organizers, more than 92K spectators came to watch the matches live. The broadcast also showed that the stadium was nearly full.
In the decisive match, El Barrio defeated Aniquiladores FC 3-0 and won the championship. It is noteworthy that these teams were not considered favorites at all in the Group Stage and advanced to the playoffs from 8th and 7th place, respectively. We should remind you that the president of El Barrio is popular Spanish streamer AdriContreras4 (214.5K followers on Twitch), and Aniquiladores FC is headed by top Colombian YouTuber JuanSGuarnizo (10.3 million followers on Twitch).
Kings League Viewership Statistics
Kings League overall viewership statistics
In total, Kings League Season 1 games accumulated slightly more than 47 million Hours Watched. The event saw 532.3K Average Viewers and 2.11 million Peak Viewers. It is interesting that the Peak number was not recorded at the Grand Finals, but in Week 8 of the main stage. Then Ronaldinho, the former Brazilian striker, played as a guest in one of the matches.
Viewership dynamics during the Kings League playoffs
Playoff matches accumulated slightly more than 12.5 million Hours Watched, twice as many as the most popular game week of the Group Stage. The Average Viewers number was 949.4K, the best total during the league. As for the Peak Viewers number, it reached the 2.1 million viewer mark at the final game, but it was just 10K PV short of the Week 8 mark. However, we can count more than 90K spectators at the stadium, and then a new record can definitely be set!
Kings League’s Most Watched Coverage Channels
Most popular Kings League channels
During the season, Kings League matches were covered only in Spanish. Among the platforms, Twitch accounted for more than 76% of the total Hours Watched, while YouTube and Tik Tok accounted for almost the rest.
Most viewers preferred to follow the league on its official channels. The Kingsleague channel on Twitch, for example, accumulated more than 28 million Hours Watched and drew 1 million Peak Viewers during the season. Second place by both metrics goes to the league's official YouTube channel.
As for community casting, ibai, one of the league's organizers, had the largest audience. He racked up 2.7 million Hours Watched on his channel and drew more than 403K Peak Viewers. The personal channels of JuanSGuarnizo, TheGrefg, Rivers_gg and Slakun10, who are all presidents of teams that participated in the league, are also among the popular channels.
Kings League's Most Popular Teams and Matches
The most popular league match is the game between Pio FC and Porcinos FC during the Week 8 game. In that match Ronaldinho played for Porcinos FC. In second place in popularity is the Grand Final between El Barrio and Aniquiladores FC. It should be noted that the composition of participants in the top matches was quite diverse.
Most popular Kings League matches
The most popular playoff team by the total Hours Watched is Aniquiladores FC (6 million HW). As for the Average Viewers, El Barrio (1.32 million AV) leads the playoffs by this metric.
Throughout the season, Kings League matches were not only watched, but also actively discussed in the official and community casting channels on Twitch. The most frequently mentioned team of the tournament is Jijantes FC, whose name appeared in over 116.6K messages from the beginning of the season. Interestingly, a significant part of these messages was written on the channel of club president Gerard Romero, a football journalist and FC Barcelona insider, who has more than 531K followers on Twitch. Romero's channel has many trademark emotes that use the name of his football team in the title. The viewers of Romero's streams actively spammed these emotes in the chat to support the team and the streamer himself. In some ways, it even became a meme, as Jijantes FC performed poorly all season and placed last in the league with only one win and ten defeats.
Most mentioned channels during Kings League
Second place in terms of mentions goes to Pio FC, which is headed by popular Mexican streamer Rivers. The team's name appeared in 75.6K messages. At the same time, Pio FC showed the best result by the number of unique senders — 33.3K viewers. On average, it is a little more than two messages per viewer. In comparison, Jijantes FC had as many as nine messages per viewer (when the name was simply spammed with smiley faces).
The Top 5 in terms of mentions also includes El Barrio (46.8K messages), Kunisports (32.4K messages) and Porcinos FC (27.9K messages). It is interesting that the last place by the number of mentions in chats was taken by Ultimate Móstoles, the leading team of the Group Stage, headed by the popular YouTuber DjMaRiiO (8.7 million subscribers).
About Kings League
Kings League is an amateur football media league organized by former Spanish football player Gerard Pique and popular Spanish streamer ibai. The first season featured 12 teams, with top Spanish-language streamers and YouTubers as presidents, and former footballers Iker Casillas and Sergio Agüero. They covered Kings League matches on their personal channels, participated in various media activities and promoted the league.
A distinctive feature of Kings League is its format. In contrast to traditional football, the field in media football is significantly smaller, and each team is represented by 7 players. Moreover, halves of the match last only 20 minutes. Kings League season was held in two stages — first, participants played a series of round-robin matches in the general group. After that, the top eight teams continued to compete in the playoffs.
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Kings League is definitely a contender to be the main discovery of 2023 in the streaming industry. The Spanish content creators led by ibai once again show that popular streamers can and should go beyond the usual limits of the Internet, try new formats and look for interesting collaborations. It seems that the second season of Kings League won't be long in coming.
