Following the extraordinary success of the project initiated by the Spanish football legend, a tournament is born in Italy, bringing together YouTubers, former celebrities and entertainment personalities. Here’s what you need to know.
The Spanish birth of football as pure spectacle
There Italian version of the Kings League on the way now. As announced at the Games Week held in Milan last November, 2024 will be the year when the Heroes League, a 7-man football tournament in which teams consisting of YouTubers, retired football players and names from the entertainment world will compete, will start.
The new phenomenon of the sports world He combines his passion for football with new heroes of entertainmentThe YouTuber and influencer was born in Spain at the end of 2022, thanks to an idea from Catalan and Spanish football legend Gerard Piqué, which in hindsight can only be described as brilliant.
How was the 7-a-side Football Heroes League born and how does it work?
Piqué, who has come under constant media fire in recent months due to the sudden end of his relationship with ex-wife Shakira, noticed in 2022 that his two children, Milan and Sasha, were watching football instead of watching it directly. matches, but through a type of mediation developed by some YouTubers on social media channels.
In practice, children engaged with the matches not in a direct and exclusive way, but as part of a real-time spectacle featuring YouTubers on stage. From there came the inspiration to create A football tournament far from traditional rulesIt is based on a concept designed to attract a particularly young audience and puts entertainment above the classical spirit of sports.
That’s why Piqué has signed some well-known Spanish names, from former Real Madrid legend Iker Casillas to broadcaster Ibai Llanos, one of the world’s best-known internet celebrities. The all-star group invited amateur football players residing in Spain to apply online to play in the new 7-a-side football league. The response has been phenomenal more than ten thousand candidates.
As if this were not enough, always with the idea of establishing a strong and direct bond with the public, some decidedly unorthodox rules It was agreed directly with the tournament’s followers, always with the idea of innovating, surprising, provoking and sparking debate.
The concept behind the next Italian League of Heroes, continued by Piqué’s League of Kings and now copied all over Europe, is clear. At a time when the number of viewers watching football on television has decreased significantly, tournaments such as the Heroes League and Kings League represent a huge development. Transforming the general mission statement of sports is for entertainment purposes.
These events come together thanks to an innovative format Some elements of e-Sports and conventional football, to bring to life a unique combination of sports and entertainment with technological components omnipresent in the background. This is a real revolution that has just begun and from Spain it spread not only to Italy but also to Germany, France and the United Kingdom; to name a few countries that already have leagues inspired by the Kings League. launch start.
League of Heroes: Information and rules about the new Italian 7-a-side football tournament
The NC Media group did not provide exact details about the new competition, but there is some solid information that forms the basis of the startup project. It will start in 2024, probably in the second half of the year, and The names of seven out of ten “presidents” have already been announced Who will be the commander of the participating teams?
Among these we have Some of Italy’s best-known online content creators. For example, there is Tumblurr, known to enthusiasts as Blur, which has collected 1.3 million followers on Twitch, breaking an Italian record for the platform. Another notable name is PirlasV, who has over one and a half million subscribers on his YouTube account. Again, there’s Luca Campolunghi, a sports-focused social star with almost 750,000 followers on Instagram; just to name one of the channels it is available on.
The rules have not yet been announced, but it is currently known that the teams will be divided into two groups of five, as in the Spanish format initiated by Piqué. “Spotlight” participation of external guest stars is expectedusually football players who have a great influence in the media. Now all that remains is to wait for the tournament to start: we will see whether the Heroes League can repeat the great success of the Spanish tournament in Italy.
