06/19/2021 11:06 AM
Clarín.com
Technology
Updated 06/19/2021 11:25 AM
Ibai Llanos, the best-known streamer in Spain and one of the most popular in the world, dropped a bomb this Friday afternoon: through an alliance with Gerard Piqué, he bought the rights to the Copa América
to transmit it legally on Twitch
on Spain.
The Basque streamer will be in charge of broadcasting the most important matches of this competition, and he premiered it with Argentina's victory over Uruguay.
"
I have assimilated it for a few days and I am still freaking out
: the Copa América 2021 is going to be seen with an image and totally free in Spain on my Twitch channel," Ibai announced a few hours before the second day of the tournament.
Twitch is a streaming platform that began with the purpose of playing video games and showing them (what is known as
gameplay
).
However, in recent years it began to migrate to other types of more casual content where
video games are not the only protagonists.
We are going to give the WHOLE Copa América with IMAGE and totally free for all of Spain on my Twitch channel.
We started this same morning at 2:00 with Argentina-Uruguay
LETSGOOOO pic.twitter.com/oZvcpsRQ1n
- Ibai (@IbaiLlanos) June 18, 2021
In fact, Twitch, a platform that belongs to Amazon, had been a way of watching matches with
the consequent legal problems
, since by not having the transmission rights, an artificial intelligence system usually cancels and even prohibits the channels that broadcast .
How did you buy them
Messi, against Uruguay, during the game that Ibai broadcast.
Argentina won 1 to 0. Photo EFE
The acquisition of the rights to the Copa América was done in collaboration with Kosmos, a company chaired by Gerard Piqué (FC Barcelona footballer).
Ibai himself acknowledged that the decision
is "strange" since he is usually associated with video games
.
But in turn, he took the opportunity to tell that his most recent projects involve the creation of content outside of games, but without losing the line of entertainment.
"The Copa América 2021 will be seen with an image, and totally free in Spain,
on my Twitch channel,
" Ibai announced in his video.
The streamer explained that the rights to the Copa América
had not been acquired in Spain
.
This logically opened the door to negotiate them without the usual problems found
in other countries.
For this reason, they only bought the broadcasting rights for Spain, so only people who reside in this country will be able to enjoy
the games through the Ibai Twitch channel.
This responds to the fact that in each country the rights belong to different companies.
In Argentina, the Copa América is seen by DirecTV Sports, the transmission rights are held by DirecTV (Argentina's matches can be seen by TyC Sports and Public TV).
The America's Cup trophy.
AFP photo
What in any case may be striking is that in Spain it did not have the negotiated rights to broadcast, but if you remember that the Copa América was surrounded by uncertainty, it is a little better understood why Ibai exploited that gap.
The original plan of CONMEBOL (South American Football Confederation) was for it to be played in a shared venue between
Argentina
and
Colombia
but due to the health situation of Covid 19, added to the protests in Colombian lands, they changed the plans and moved to Brazil.
In this context,
Kosmos
, the company led by Gerard Piqué, helped Ibai get the rights.
Piqué's support thus has sporting experience: Kosmos has the rights to the Davis Cup and is also a representative of athletes.
Dominic Thiem, the Austrian tennis player, signed this week for Kosmos.
Ibai's initial match was, thus, Argentina-Uruguay,
which he himself recounted.
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