The first season of Prince Cup 2023, a children's media football league organized by Kings League, took place in Spain from August 29 to September 3. Twelve teams with players aged 9 to 11 participated in the competition. At the beginning of the tournament, the organizers conducted a draft and assigned the participants to franchises of adult teams from Kings League.
The participants of Prince Cup 2023 played under slightly modified rules — instead of the traditional format of a football match, they played 4 quarters of 10 minutes each. Additionally, there were several additional rules set by the organizers, such as the double goal rule, etc.
The championship of the first junior tournament of the Prince Cup series was won by the Los Troncos FC team, which defeated Jijantes FC in the final with a score of 5-4. The match was highly intense, with the initiative shifting from one team to another, and the winner was determined only in the added time of the last quarter.
Prince Cup 2023 Sprinter 1 Viewership Statistics
The Prince Cup 2023 Sprinter 1 matches accumulated 2.5 million Hours Watched. The broadcasts reached 113.8K Average Viewers and 259.2K Peak Viewers. The Grand Final between Los Troncos FC and Jijantes FC became the most popular match of the event.
Jijantes FC also became the most popular team in terms of total Hours Watched and Average Viewers. Its high popularity is attributed to the fact that Jijantes FC was one of the highest-scoring teams in the league. Furthermore, its matches were often highly intense and filled with suspense.
The Prince Cup 2023 Sprinter 1 broadcasts were shown on 11 unique channels. The main channel was Kings League on Twitch. League ambassadors, such as ibai, TheGrefg, rivers_gg, and others, also streamed match broadcasts on their personal channels. However, the latter mainly covered only matches of their own teams.
Comparison With Other Leagues
The children's media football league Prince Cup 2023 Sprinter 1 fell behind its adult counterparts (Kings League and Queens League) in terms of both viewership and Hours Watched. The biggest difference is seen in the metric of Peak Viewers, where children's football is lagging behind women's by a factor of 3.3 and men's by a factor of 8. The gap in terms of Average Viewers is also significant but not as pronounced, with 113.8K viewers compared to 163.2K and 532.3K, respectively.
It is important to note that the Peak Viewers numbers in the debut seasons of the Kings League and Queens League were recorded during matches featuring Porcinos FC and PIO FC. The presidents of these teams, ibai and rivers_gg, are the most prominent media ambassadors of the league. In the Prince Cup, the Peak was recorded during the final match between Los Troncos FC and Jijantes FC, managed by the less popular Perxitaa and Gerard Romero. The media prominence of ambassadors plays a significant role in media football leagues and directly influences their viewership results.
Prince Cup is an excellent format to further expand the audience of the Spanish media football franchise. The youth league may not be able to compete with the adults yet, but it still demonstrates good viewership statistics. For example, in terms of Peak viewership, it even managed to surpass Battle of the Socials 2023 — a German media football tournament that took place on July 30, attracting 235K PV.
