The Spanish league is looking to youtubers to engage the younger audience that prefers eSports and, in the process, improve the ratings of a devalued competition. 

With Twitch, it's neither soccer nor LaLiga

photo_camera AP/MARTIN MEISSNER - Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane, center, talks to his team during a training session. 

First it was Josep María Bartomeu and now Florentino Pérez. Real Madrid and Barcelona have opened the drain of Spanish soccer, because the numbers do not work out. Neither before the pandemic nor, much less, now. Their balance sheets are not bad, but they could be better. The data of the audiences let them see a forest of trees from which millions of euros hang. UEFA does not negotiate and threatens players if their clubs play in the Superliga, but reality is stubborn. 

The clampdown on the Spanish league has many protagonists. The two locomotives that want to create the Super League of clubs. The public that has disappeared from the stands due to the health crisis. The public that already found it difficult to go to soccer before the pandemic. The clutter of schedules and competitions that the fans have to deal with. The low television audiences for matches other than Real Madrid and Barça. The lack of media signings. The departure of players like Neymar or Cristiano Ronaldo or, who knows, even Messi. To this must be added the dangerous gap that is beginning to open up with eSports. The young public has become hooked on watching virtual soccer and listening to the narrations of casters such as Ibai Llanos, Ander Cortés or Ulises Prieto. 

AFP/RFEF/PABLO GARCIA  -   Los jugadores del Athletic Bilbao celebran después de ganar la final de la Supercopa de España de fútbol entre el FC Barcelona y el Athletic Club Bilbao en el estadio de La Cartuja en Sevilla, el 17 de enero de 2021  

The cow of sport 

LaLiga is the organization that manages First and Second division soccer in Spain. They are in charge of milking the cow of the king of sports to get as much profit out of it as possible. They have not seen an enemy in eSports. On the contrary. They have opened a channel on Twitch that already has 2.5 million followers, they have promoted virtual leagues, challenges, promotional campaigns, and they have even allowed teams to form a division of professional players to compete worldwide playing FIFA. Years go by and they cannot accept that soccer is a product for an audience over 40 years old. 

The battle for match audios began more than a decade ago. SER was the only option to listen to the matches, because soccer belonged to PRISA. Over the years, the rest of the broadcasters have succeeded in broadcasting their narrations, also in the different official languages, and even Real Madrid has fought to have its own audio. In their case, they claim that they are the only ones who know how to objectively narrate their team's exploits (and the only ones who always find someone to blame for their defeats). 

Now comes LaLigaCasters, where the best influencers, youtubers or streamers of the national scene will narrate one match per day. Twitch is a streaming platform owned by Amazon where you can see how others play video games live, other sports matches, a program from the living room of a house or the chimes, where Llanos himself had a higher audience than the tacky duo of Chicote and Pedroche. 

Pedro Bonofiglio is one of the best soccer narrators in Spain. He has given voice to big national and international matches in esRadio, Punto Radio, Onda Madrid, in the Argentine radio TyC Sport... His best known facet is that of being the speaker of the Real Madrid basketball team for 12 years. An anecdote: Ettore Messina, coach of Real Madrid from 2009 to 2011, once thanked him for a miraculous comeback thanks to his way of getting the audience into the game. 

This ability to interact with the audience has allowed him to make the leap from soccer and basketball announcer to eSport caster. Radio and TV are dying as we know them. The change was not easy, "at the time I thought this was not for me, because I had never played sports video games. When I came across this product, I was about to close the door out of fear. But I jumped in to see what would happen and now I'm inside a room with three monitors, headphones, mixing desk, video capture...". 

From his Twitch channel, he narrates FIFA games or narrates live basketball with the commentary of other specialists. His voice is also that of small sports clubs that want to reach their fans by streaming their games. "It's a different world. They are virtual dummies. When I entered to narrate in Spanish radios, I tied myself because I was surrounded by big names, a lot of audience, specialists... and I had to restrain myself. That's how I worked for many years. When I find this world I don't change, I go back to being me. I laugh, I make jokes, jokes... I make a show, a spectacle. That's what I did in Argentina before coming to Spain". 

LaLiga wants streaming stars to narrate its matches. It's the only way to attract young viewers to their product. They've gone into a dangerous spiral of fiddling with soccer. We have taken the image campaign before and after the game for granted. Journalists have allowed questions to be asked at the dictation of the competition itself and they assume the consequences of going off script. Now comes the turn to influence the game with a special camera for the fan at home, where players are advised to go first to celebrate goals.

AFP/RFEF/PABLO GARCIA  -   Los jugadores del Athletic Bilbao celebran después de ganar la final de la Supercopa de España de fútbol entre el FC Barcelona y el Athletic Club Bilbao en el estadio de La Cartuja en Sevilla, el 17 de enero de 2021  
Boosting audiences 

The new voiceovers of the matches made by the youtubers or streamers on duty should raise the audiences. And these data should give value to Spanish soccer so that the next sale of rights in 2022, at least, equals the amount paid. It is impossible to surpass the more than one billion of the Premier League, because the level of Spanish soccer has dropped. And this is not fixed by technology, but by good signings. But there will always be Twitch. Amazon already broadcasts through this social network one Premier League match a week, for which it paid about 100 million euros for 60 matches. 

Real Madrid and Barcelona are the teams on which Spanish soccer depends. Their presence in any stadium means quadrupling the number of spectators who watch in front of the television. An Alavés-Sevilla match totals 207,000 spectators. An Osasuna-Real Madrid match reaches 862,000. The last Valladolid-Elche had 48,000 spectators. If we take the big two out of the equation, we are left with an Atlético-Sevilla with 600,000 fans watching that midweek match. In November 2020, Movistar LaLiga gathered 0.5% of share watching soccer matches in which there is no audience and the intelligent audio of FIFA no longer seduces the same way. 

The RFEF saw the new Supercopa as a clear move. A tournament where Real Madrid and Barcelona are always present, because that ensures them more than a million viewers, if it is broadcast on a pay platform, and up to seven times more audience, if any free TV is able to pay and amortize those matches. The 2021 final had 1,400,000 viewers for the final between Barça and Athletic. One million watched the semi-final that Real Madrid lost to the Basque team. 

To these figures and habits should be added the pull of the caster. Ibai Llanos has almost five million followers on his Twitch channel. And in his live streams of more than two hours he may have around 700,000. The big question is whether these guys fit in with the larger soccer watching public. If they're going to cut themselves off or go to the limit, as they usually do, and that's the spice of their live streams. Profanity, insults, disqualifications... all very hooligan. If they are restrained and censored to take care of that false image of modern soccer, they won't make it to Easter. 

LaLiga knows that soccer is going through a transition. Technology is already part of the king of sports and is the only one that can attract new fans. But it will no longer be soccer, nor will it be LaLiga. 

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