In a very short time, the Queens and Kings League numbers have skyrocketed.
This 7-a-side soccer competition that incorporates rules and dynamics typical of board games and video games already has more than 15 million followers on social networks.
In January 2023, it already brought together more than 400,000 devices each day, with more than one person behind each screen.
In last season's final, it reached a historic peak of 2.16 million devices connected to the Camp Nou broadcast, which more than 90,000 people followed in the stadium.
These figures are not happening on conventional television, but on Twitch, the live broadcast platform owned by Amazon.
The pull of some of its main promoters, such as the
streamer
Ibai Llanos and the footballer Gerard Piqué, partly explains the phenomenon.
Twitch broadcasts mostly content from creators who record themselves with a camera from their bedroom.
To live up to the audiovisual ambitions of the Queens and Kings League, which multiplies audio and image sources by placing subjective cameras and microphones on referees, coaches and even in the presidential box, those responsible have hired a historic television director .
Álex Miñana, the man who for years governed the broadcasts of two live classics such as
Crónicas marcianas
(Telecinco, from 1997 to 2005) and
El hormiguero
(from its premiere on Cuatro, in 2006, until 2016, now on Antena 3).
“I suppose they sought in me to enhance that point of spectacle that would make this new sports broadcast more attractive and surprising,” says Miñana by phone in mid-February.
Ondas Award for best entertainment
With a team of four people in the control room and technical means typical of the Champions League, Miñana tries to ensure that the hyperstimulated gaze of the young audience never gets bored.
He orchestrates the eight operated cameras, and the 15 fixed cameras that are in a standard match of this new sporting modality.
“In the finals there are even drones,” he says.
Los Ondas awarded them in their 2023 edition as the best entertainment program of the year.
“It is a broadcast that has grown very quickly and, at a technological level, has not yet reached its ceiling.
Now, we are exploring Augmented Reality and ways to show live data and statistics of the match,” says the director.
In both women's and men's modalities, the Queens and Kings League, 12 teams compete, chaired by social media stars such as DjMaRiiO (1.4 million followers on Twitch alone) and Lluna Clark (who generates millions of views on TikTok) or by athletes like Iker Casillas.
The interest was so immediate that in its first season Cuatro aired some of their meetings.
Control room for a Kings League match. Manuel Queimadelos (Manuel Queimadelos/Quality Sport Images/Kings League)
Its emissions do not stop growing.
The competition in Spain is already underway in 2024. And at the end of February, in parallel to the national competition, the Kings League Americas began, where 18 presidents from 10 different countries lead the 12 teams in a competition based in Ciudad from Mexico but is also celebrated from the United States to Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, among other countries.
In addition, 2024 will be the year of the Kings World Cup, a two-week World Cup next summer, with 32 participating teams from Spain and America, as well as several guests to be discovered.
Miñana himself, who the closest he has come to being a sports director was collaborating in the 1992 Olympic Games and in
Ninja Warrior , the
Yellow Humor-style
physical skill contest
, is not a regular football spectator.
He says he finds him boring.
That is why he enjoys the infinite number of twists and resources that he has to manage in a live Queens and Kings League match, which does not follow the official rules of the International Football Federation (FIFA).
In their case, coaches can make an unlimited number of changes and have a secret weapon, which they can reveal at any time.
All those unexpected events of this new sports competition remind him of his time in
El hormiguero
.
He was on Pablo Motos' program from day one, when he had not yet made the jump from Cuatro to Antena 3, and he remained behind the camera for 10 seasons.
“It is a format that requires you to learn something new every day, on the go, because you now have to emit a hologram than a scientific experiment.
It was pure trial and error, although always trying to ensure there were as few errors as possible.
In both cases, they are formats that allow you to take risks and try new things, something that often does not happen on television, with very closed patterns,” says Miñana.
In the remembered
Martian Chronicles
by Javier Sardá it was maintained from the first to the last day.
“I am not in favor of following the rules that set the script's guidelines to the letter.
I prefer that they only channel the program at specific times.
And in The
Martian Chronicles
we didn't pay much attention to the ladder.
We rehearsed in the afternoon, but what happened later live was something very different.
That continuous improvisation was what gave it life and hooked the viewer,” defends the television director.
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