Former soccer player and president of Kosmos, Gerard Piquéannounced, in an interview with EFE, that 2024 will be the year of the expansion of the Kings League throughout America -with a competition in Brazil and another focused on the Latin American market based in Mexico- and also in France and Italy.
Fifteen days after the Civitas Metropolitano de Madrid hosts the Four Finals of the Kings League and Queens League summer leagues, Piqué talks about the future of his successful football and entertainment proposal, which he intends to replicate in various territories until he has a dozen competitions spread throughout the world in a period of three years.
Tell us about those new projects for the Kings League that Kosmos has prepared for 2024.
2024 is the year in which we are going to expand, and that takes a lot of dedication and a lot of time. After carrying out an exploration exercise on which would be the most important or priority markets for us, we have decided to bet on all of Spanish-speaking America, Brazil, France and Italy.
All of them bring two things together: that they really like football and that they have an important community of streamers and that is how we were born and how we want to continue.
Where will the Kings League headquarters be in America?
We can say that it is already certain that in January we will go to Mexico. That is where we will have our house, our pavilion, as we have here in Barcelona (the Cupra Arena). And the League is going to be called Kings League Americas.
After choosing the pavilion, we will have to choose the twelve presidents who will be lucky enough to have a club there and who will be Spanish-speaking streamers from all over America, and also the one who will be the president of the League. In October it will be when we will surely go physically there and we will announce absolutely everything, then we will celebrate the draft and in January we will start the season.
America is a very large continent. Which countries will be represented in the competition?
The Kings League Americas will have presidents or owners from different countries.
We want to involve as many countries as possible. There will be countries from Central America, and from North America that speak Spanish, there will also be a couple. Then there will be a Colombian, Chilean, Argentine club… We have five or six that have already been confirmed, we can’t say yet, but we are in the process and there is less and less left for it to become a reality.
Why have you decided to create a Kings League just for Brazil instead of including this country in the American League?
We want to differentiate what the Kings League Americas is from what the Kings League will be in Brazil, where Neymar will have his club, because they will be two different competitions.
We have wanted it that way, basically because of the language, because we believe that it is an important issue. How the presidents interact with each other, how they do it with the president of the League. We want Spanish to be the language of the Kings League America and Portuguese to be the language of the League in Brazil. In addition, we believe that the market of this specific country is enough to have its own League.
Will the two Leagues start simultaneously in January 2024?
First the Kings League Americas will start. In the end, creating a competition of these characteristics entails devoting a lot of energy and a lot of time, not only to the part that the fan sees, but also to creating a structure, some offices, a team of 30 or 40 people and everything that entails also in in terms of operations, adapting the pavilion to everything we want at the production level, etc.
We have to dedicate time to all this and we cannot launch five or six Leagues at the same time, we would like to. We have to go step by step, and our first objective is to launch the Kings League Americas.
Can the expansion of the Kings League in Europe wait?
Both France and Italy are targets for 2024. I don’t know if at the beginning or perhaps in the second quarter, but it is where we have the most advanced talks, and I would say that there may be some last-minute surprises. We will surely leave the expansion in England and Germany for 2025.
I imagine that the idea is that this expansion of the competition finally leads to a kind of Champions League or World Kings League.
Correct. We are going to see where we place it on the calendar and how we do it to bring together the best clubs or teams from each League and compete to be the best team in the world.
Will the competition system of the new Leagues be the same as the original Kings League or do they intend to innovate?
Yes, we want all the competitions to have the same calendar and we are also going to create a committee that is going to ensure that all the Leagues are governed by the same rules.
In the end, what we want is for there to be an annual international competition where the best of each League qualify. So, from the moment you bring together several teams from each League in a new competition, you need the rules to be the same for everyone so that no team starts with an advantage.
Will the new Leagues also be created on the same business model based on sponsorship and open platforms?
In the end we were born in the streamer world, we were born open to the whole world and we want to continue like this. It is vital to reach as many people as possible and that there is no barrier to entry, be it financial or otherwise, so we will always try to preserve this.
We are also going to maintain the profile of the presidents, which we believe has been part of our success: a mix of players, former players and streamers.
Have you thought about exporting the successful Kings League format to other sports in the near future?
It is a possibility, but first we want to develop the Kings League world of football well. The idea we have in mind is to make eight to ten Leagues in different territories and that the best clubs in these Leagues, as I said before, can come together to face each other in an international competition.
We believe that we are going to have to dedicate at least two or three years to this, and once we achieve what we have planned, we will perhaps set ourselves the goal of going to other sports, but right now we believe that there is still a lot to do in football .