How Gerard Pique aims to make Kings League a different ‘parallel’ soccer ecosystem, but still be ‘mainstream’

Gerard Pique has a unique vision. He’s driven not only by his passion for soccer, but also led by his business mindset, always looking for what’s next, rather than sitting on what he has already achieved. Pique has clear ideas for the future of the Kings League, the seven-a-side format known for its unconventional rules that was founded by the FC Barcelona legend in 2022. Since October 2024, the Kings League has hired a new CEO, Djamel Agaoua, who is helping the innovative league reach its next targets, starting with the creation of the League in the United States, as both Pique and Agaoua revealed to CBS Sports. The Kings League, their thinking goes, is not opposed to the current model of soccer, but it’s just trying to propose a parallel one, as both Pique and Agaoua underlined during an interview with CBS Sports. “We don’t compete [with] soccer, but we want to create a product that is complementary. There will always be a traditional audience that won’t understand what we want to achieve, we aim to have a different audience,” Agaoua said. 

The Kings League is aiming for a product that can be appealing to many, starting from a younger audience, but also to investors and potential team owners around the world. According to their data, 40% of the potential soccer fans don’t watch traditional games anymore and 85% of their audience is under 35, coming mainly from ESports and streamers. This is why they started to build clubs owned by the same streamers, who can also bring their own audiences and stream the matches. It’s interesting to see how their model doesn’t seem to care much about piracy, one of the biggest issues of traditional broadcasters.

“For us, it doesn’t matter if there are different platforms of streamers showing the same content, it’s actually better for us. If there is one team owned by a streamer or a former player, our ideal watcher switches the channel to another streamer if something happens. They are consuming the same product but with a different experience”. 

The Kings League has also agreed to deals with traditional broadcasters around the world (including with CBS Sports), but not specifically for the revenues. “We want to reach the mainstream media, but our deals are not exclusive, they are a way to go in the market. We are more interested in a media that is willing to take the time to explain the rules and the system, rather than the money they are offering,” Agaoua says. 

In the Kings League’s model, the audience is always at the center of their decisions, like when they let them decide the colour of the pitch, as Pique underlined. “The 70% voted for a black grass, and now when you see a black pitch you immediately think about the Kings League.” Also, their model wants to create competitiveness to own a team. “We’re not increasing the number of clubs, creators can sell teams. This is why players have to find a way, to invest. We’re not increasing the number of teams. There is a lot of interest, also from players, but we want to create an ecosystem where all the teams are profitable, unlike soccer, as most of them are right now, but in the future they can make much more money. We were born with streamers, but we aim to become mainstream.”

The Kings League is now active in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Central America and Brazil, but in fall will be launched in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and in the United States before the 2026 World Cup. “We are an international ecosystem, and for us the World Cup of Clubs helped us understand which markets were ready for their own league. Last year we wanted to create international hype, and Brazil for example was the perfect fit for us. As a country, they have an incredible culture of street soccer and streamers, in fact in our first season there were nine or 10 million users connected per matchday, with the final played at the Palmeiras stadium. In France we probably have our best lineup, with players like Mike Maignan, Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga all involved. In Spain, Lamine Yamal was a fan of the Kings League before starting to play in the first team of Barcelona, and now that he has a team, he knows everyone, it’s incredible,” Pique says. 

And then, of course, the business partners are crucial as Agaoua mentioned. “In the new markets, kids don’t even watch TV but use their phones. On top of this, we have many sponsors coming to us also because there are no many chances like ours to target the young generations, knowing this is a really specific audience, they know what they get with us. We believe that soccer is not competing with basketball or other sports, we strongly think our main competitors are Instagram, TikTok, Netflix and the content platforms.”