In recent years, technological advancements and changing consumer habits have left sports properties scrambling to adjust to new broadcast realities and, in many cases, years after their adoption in other industries had become widespread.
As the younger demographics in society flock to new platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok to consume their content, properties and rightsholders are delving into these new mediums to try and reach prospective viewers, with mixed results.
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Soccer, as much as any, has had both its success stories and its travails in this regard. So far, just over three years since its formation, Kings League can be classed as the former. The seven-a-side format, founded in November 2022 by former Barcelona star Gerard Piqué and his Kosmos business vehicle, proved a hit domestically in Spain from the outset and was soon leveraged into several international expansions.
Spain is now one of seven domestic Kings League competitions globally. The concept has expanded both across Europe (France, Germany, Italy), and further afield (Brazil, Mexico, the Middle East and North Africa), with women’s editions in Spain and Mexico, following suit, as well as annual club and national team ‘Kings World Cup’ tournaments.
The first edition of the Kings World Cup Nations took place just before we last spoke to Agaoua in 2025. That inaugural edition of the tournament drew a combined 100 million viewers across a range of distribution networks. The 2026 edition exceeded that number drastically, capturing over 120 million cumulative livestream viewers across its 40 games, with the showpiece final drawing 41,316 fans to Sao Paulo’s Allianz Parque.
That tournament was broadcast in over 200 territories, with over 100 unique channels, and coverage in seven languages, illustrating Kings League’s growing global appeal. Kings League has leveraged this into clothing lines (both casual apparel and match kits, gaming accessories, lifestyle products, and even a range of children’s books published by Penguin Random House.
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By GlobalDataNow, speaking to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), Kings League chief executive Djamel Agaoua confirmed that the global expansion aims are continuing, with the US, Kings League’s first English language market, firmly in its sights.
Agaoua, previously of basketball’s NBA, has been a driving force behind the global expansion and spoke to Sportcal before the Kings World Cup Nations final to discuss how far the project has come, and where it will go next.
Since we last spoke, Kings League has expanded drastically, and is now midway through its second Kings World Cup Nations tournament. What have you learned over the last year?
“It was honestly a crazy roadmap. When we decided, with Gerard [Pique] and the board, that we would go for seven countries to be played in one year, it was some sort of crazy bet. We opened France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia (MENA), five new countries, and we created the first World Cup of Nations. It was a very, very active year.
“We are extremely happy with the results. The results are above expectations. Honestly, we had problems, millions of them. Some disruption here and there, sometimes in terms of the way we have been able to execute some things. But overall, it's a crazy success.
“If we go country by country, we have installed the brand very well in all those countries with incredible success above expectations in Brazil and in MENA. In those two regions, the level of audience is somehow double our initial expectation. Great success [also] in Italy and in France, where we had the best rosters.
“Germany was a little bit more challenging for us. We were expecting it to be challenging because we got into a country where there were already two copycats (Icon League and Baller League), two companies that copied our model. So it was a bit confusing for the audience. And of course, some streamers were already busy in some other leagues.
“But we are very happy because we did really sound numbers in terms of audience, and we started the journey. So we are preparing the base, and we are expecting to need a bit more time in Germany to lead the market. But we have no doubt that our product is better, and our execution is better, because we have now collected so many different experiences from our world that we think that we are equipped for success in Germany as well.”
Over the last year, you’ve also added a lot of new partners, including WSC Sport and SURJ Sports in the Middle East. What do you think makes Kings League such an attractive prospect for brands and investors?
“We have a very focused IP, focused on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. 85% of our audience is less than 30 years old. So all the brands working with us know that if they are looking for those kinds of targets, we are a pure channel to talk to them.
“Second, we have reach. This is by our model, the choice that we have made to distribute freely on all platforms, on Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Kick, X, Facebook Live, etc. We have a volume of impressions and reach that is actually much higher than some traditional sports. Mainly because those traditional sports, even the top ones, are behind a paywall, so they reduce the reach. Also, because we have invested a lot, and much more than some traditional leagues, into the social content that we create around our competitions.
“We create tons of content around our competitions. This content is designed to be very viral and very engaging, and as a matter of fact, when we compare the different traditional leagues in terms of level of engagement on their socials, Kings League is the number two in the world, just below the NFL. The NFL is number one, the Kings League is number two, NBA is number three. And all the soccer leagues that you know are behind. This is the nature of what we do. We're creating content that is very engaging and triggers conversation. And this kind of approach maximizes the reach and the awareness of our brand partners. And that's why we are a good value for them.
“The other aspect that is something very specific to Kings League is that Kings League doesn't belong to any kind of federation or global ecosystem. We are our global ecosystem ourselves. So we are completely flexible in terms of the integration of the brands into our product.
"Last we did [an activation] with Adidas, where for one game day, when they launched their new F50 boots, we changed the rules of this game day. We said that in each team, there will be a player wearing these new boots, and the player scoring with those boots, their goals will count double. So this is a kind of captivation and fun activation that we can do because we control the entire ecosystem. That is the flexibility that brands love because we allow them to create specific content that they cannot create with other sports IP.
“So that's the key to the success of a relationship with our partners: the fact that we have a very wide reach, very focused on Gen Z, and we are very flexible in terms of activation. We try to do with them, organic content. This young generation they are allergic to advertising. They want to see their brands inside the content that they consume. And this is what we try to propose to our partners.”
You talk about flexibility there. Is this why you have been able to launch in so many new geographies so quickly, or do you treat it as a one-size-fits-all approach?
“Our product is the same everywhere. It is the same experience. We film it the same way. In the same colors. When you go from games in France to Italy to Brazil to Mexico, you have to see the same kind of production, the same rules, the same game. This is very important for us, because we are creating a global brand.
“This young generation, because they consume the same type of content on the same platforms, likes to consume global brands that are produced in different continents. So yes, we are using local partners. Yes, we are making some adjustments to the way we work, to the entertainment we put inside, from one country to another. But the game is the game. The product is the product, and this must be the same anywhere in the world.
“We are a young company. A startup. We are only three years old. The first game was January 1, 2023. It's incredible to think about that. We are now in seven countries, nine leagues, and two international competitions. Our DNA is that we need to make decisions very quickly, try to execute as well as possible, and then when we fail, we correct on the way. We are a complete tech startup kind of culture in this company. I come from the tech world. I created three companies in the past. So I feel very comfortable in this company.
“We have the founder, Gerard, who is a super creative guy, extremely involved with us. I was not expecting that to be honest. He's extremely involved and spends a lot of time and energy creating new ideas and opening his network as well. That allows us to be fast and very efficient. Clearly, behind the curtain, there were plenty of problems that we had to solve, but overall, we have been able to deliver our product in the same way [in each country], which is something very important to us.”
Over the last year, you have also partnered with DAZN to widen your broadcast reach. What was the logic behind striking such a partnership for a product you already give away for free on other platforms?
“The age is different. We started with the young generation, and we are very proud of that, but what we see is that every time we expose our product to eyeballs that are a little bit older, 35 plus, we have a very good reaction. We have a very good thing, which is that those guys, the 40-plus [demographic], there is still a large number of those 40-plus that are not Twitch users, YouTube users. We wanted to have a limited number of partners around the world distributing our games to an audience that is a little bit more mainstream, not the core Twitch user, or the core YouTube users.
“The idea behind this partnership is to access a new type of audience. And for DAZN, which has a mixed audience of older and younger people, they saw we have a product that is complementary to what they buy everywhere for large amounts of money – the traditional football, that can be consumed in between the championships or during the FIFA [international break] windows – and that perfectly complements their portfolio of IPs.”
Now that you have this annual calendar of seven men’s leagues, two women’s leagues, and the World Cups, looking forward, have your ambitions changed? And what’s next?
“First of all, we are working actively on the US market. This is the next target for us, and we are still planning to launch a competition in the US in 2026. There are probably a couple of additional countries that we may want to operate ourselves, the [current] domestic leagues, the big animals in Asia, probably. However, we also have a dozen conversations around the world with local operators and companies involved in media, entertainment, and sports, who are our candidates to be franchise operators.
"We are looking at franchising the model in more countries. We have made every effort to document everything we do in the Kings League manual, and we are now in the process of selecting one partner per country.
“Our [overall] objective remains the same one that I shared when we met the first time, which is to have 30 to 40 leagues operational in a maximum of five years. But I said that one year ago, so let's say four years now.”
