When the Kings League premiered in 2023, it became an immediate phenomenal success. The combination of live sports, top athletes, and popular streamers was the perfect drawcard for Spanish-speaking audiences in live streaming.
Riding the wave of popularity, Kings League has since branched out into new formats. The Queens League Oysho brought female talent to the football pitch, while the Princes League saw young players proving their skills to an online audience of thousands. The Kings League has now expanded beyond Spain into America for the first time, with the Kings League America Santander having recently concluded on the 4th of May.
In light of this new region coming under the Kings League umbrella, it’s worth seeing how the passion for football on live streaming platforms has transferred to an overseas audience.
Kings League America Santander Debut Shows Promise for The New Region
Comparing the 2024 iterations of both the Kings League Spain and Kings League America shows a surprising similarity in viewership, despite this being the first ever Kings League America event. On a per round basis, Kings League America averaged 70% of Kings League Spain viewership with 10.1M hours watched in total. Looking just at the semi-finals and finals alone, Kings League America achieved 89% of Kings League Spain’s own finals matches with 1.4M hours watched.
The only event in which Kings League America outperformed Kings League Spain was the first round, generating 8% more hours watched. This is most likely due to fans of the original Kings League tuning in to support the premiere of this new tournament.
As we’ve seen for many other big esports events over the past year, co-streaming is incredibly important for driving viewership. Kings League is particularly reliant on fans getting behind key personalities taking part in the event. For Kings League Spain, 49% of all viewership came from co-streaming. Kings League America wasn’t far behind with 32% of viewership stemming from co-streaming. It’s possible that this fraction may grow in coming years now that fans are more familiar with the American teams.
Spanish Streamers Flock to Support the Homegrown Kings League
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the creators covering Kings League and Kings League America in 2024 were Spanish. Mega-popular streamer Ibai led the charge, bringing in 3.7M hours watched across both leagues. This makes sense considering Ibai co-founded the Kings League with former football player Gerard Piqué.
Some of the other streamers featured on this list are a little more unexpected, however. Neither of the next two streamers came from Twitch, with Kick streamer Westcol bringing in 2.2M hours watched while YouTube streamer DjMaRiiO generated 1.8M hours watched. These high viewerships are due to the streamers’ roles in each league, with Westcol (Luis Villa) acting as chairperson for West Santos FC in Kings League America, and DjMaRiiO (Mario Alonso) acting as chairperson for Ultimate Móstoles in Kings League Spain. The same can be said for many of the other featured streamers, such as rivers_gg and xBuyer.
Hopefully this same level of personality-driven enthusiasm will be brought to the upcoming Kings World Cup, slated to be hosted in Mexico from the 26th of May to the 8th of June this year. The Kings World Cup will see teams from both leagues competing against one another for a prize of $1 million. Stream Hatchet will be tracking the success of the Kings World Cup in the coming weeks.
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