Gerard Piqué’s Livestreamed Soccer League Expands to Latin America

Former soccer great Gerard Piqué's Kings League — an ambitious bid to rethink and livestream soccer — will soon reach Latin America.

The indoor league, which features seven-player teams run by Twitch stars and other streaming-video celebrities, will have 12 squads playing in Mexico and establish its headquarter in Mexico. Former pro soccer star Miguel Layún will serve as the new Kings League America's president, which has already attracted major corporate sponsors like Santander bank.

“We want to have more leagues and expand to the entire world,” Piqué said in a livestream on Tuesday evening. “In the future, we also want to have an international competition [with the leagues from every country] that we plan to announce soon. It’s the start of something beautiful that we think has a lot of potential.”

Like Piqué's existing Kings League in Europe, the Latin American teams' have prominent digital stars at their helm from 10 countries, including Chilean YouTuber Germán Garmendia and Mexican-American Twitch streamer Castro_1021. The league's season begins in January and will be broadcast both on streaming platforms and linear television.

The Kings League held its first season in January of this year, drawing more than 92,000 in-person spectators to watch the finals at FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium and more than 1.1 million simultaneous viewers on Twitch, making it one of the top 10 channels in the platform’s history. In May, Piqué added his Queens League for women's soccer, which quickly became the most-viewed women's sports tournament on streaming on all-time.