Gerard Piqué, ex-star du Barça et de l’Espagne, raconte en exclusivité ce samedi 14 juin au salon VivaTech, à Paris, sa vision du football et ses projets avec la Kings League.
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00:00Bonjour, bonjour à tous, bonjour à toutes et tous. Merci, merci.
00:10Je n'ai pas encore commencé à chanter, déjà vous applaudissez, c'est peut-être pour ça d'ailleurs que vous applaudissez, c'est que je n'ai pas chanté.
00:16On est très très heureux d'ouvrir cette quatrième journée de VivaTech, comme on dit, la journée grand public, la journée tout public.
00:24Et c'est une journée qui nous est particulièrement chère parce qu'après trois jours de beaucoup de business, il va y en avoir encore aujourd'hui.
00:30VivaTech, c'est un endroit où on fait beaucoup de business. Il y a aussi cette envie de partager avec tout le monde des joies, les joies de la tech, les joies de l'innovation et aussi les joies du sport.
00:40Alors, les échos, le Parisien organise et a fondé avec Publicis. On est deux fondateurs de ce grand événement qui est VivaTech, qui fait sa neuvième édition.
00:49Et on a plusieurs fois rencontré le monde du sport. Aux Parisiens, c'est une grande tradition. Le Parisien est le plus grand des généralistes sportifs, j'allais dire.
01:00On a une chaîne YouTube qui est extrêmement fréquentée. On a énormément de couvertures, 400 millions de vidéos vues par mois, donc beaucoup, beaucoup de vidéos qui sont liées au sport.
01:10Et on a souhaité s'associer cette année à la King's League. Je pense que certains par ici sont de grands experts de la King's League. D'autres vont la découvrir.
01:20La King's League, elle a été fondée largement par Gérard Piquet, que vous allez voir. C'est un immense footballeur.
01:25J'ai eu la chance de rencontrer lundi et de voir en lui à la fois un footballeur avec une carrière absolument exceptionnelle, une carrière très longue au Barça,
01:34avec ce sens du placement, ce joueur avec une vision formidable, et footballeur et homme d'affaires.
01:42Un homme d'affaires, là aussi, quand vous l'entendrez, vous comprendrez ce que c'est qu'une bonne analyse du business, une bonne analyse de la projection et du développement de son nouveau sport.
01:51Voilà. Donc on va accueillir deux grands journalistes sportifs du Parisien, Benoît Lallement et Dominique Sévrac.
01:57Et puis ensuite, ils vont faire venir Gérard Piquet.
01:59Et avec no further ado, I want to thank you all for being here and give a warm, super warm welcome to our journalist first and then to Gérard Piquet.
02:08Enjoy your day at Viva Tech and thanks for coming again. Thank you.
02:27A mega-leyenda, eh.
02:29Vamos a pasarnos el juego.
02:31I'm the king of the same.
02:33Valga Bellado, vaya.
02:36Gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol.
02:42Les refieres, ils sont déjà prêts.
02:45Final de shootout. Final de shootout pour Pío.
02:48D'où le fais ?
02:49Allez, gente, votez, votez tous.
02:51On va avec Málaga, eh.
02:52The battle for a new rain begins now.
03:04Bonjour à tous.
03:06Je suis Dominique Sévrac du journal Le Parisien du service des sports.
03:09Et je suis venu avec mon chef.
03:11Bonjour à tous.
03:12Je suis Benoît Lallement, responsable des sports aux Parisiens.
03:15Et ravi d'être avec vous ce matin pour parler football.
03:19Avec Dominique, l'un des experts du foot en France.
03:25Donc, vraiment heureux d'être ici ce matin avec vous.
03:28Et nous sommes vraiment heureux et heureux d'inviter
03:32l'un des plus prestigieux football players de l'histoire.
03:37Winner de tout ce que vous pouvez gagner en football.
03:40Football World Cup, Euro Football, Champions League et plus.
03:45Donc, vraiment heureux d'inviter Gérard Piquet.
03:48So, Gérard, happy to welcome you.
04:04What are you doing in Paris?
04:05Well, good morning to everyone.
04:09Yeah, we have the Kings World Cup of Clubs here happening.
04:12Today is the final in La Paris-Defense Arena.
04:17And we, well, we're organizing the whole event for the last two weeks.
04:23We are very happy to be here in Paris.
04:26It has been amazing.
04:26I think the whole journey since the beginning when we started Kings League France a few months ago.
04:33And yeah, today is the last day.
04:35Hopefully, I'll see you there in the event tonight.
04:38But it will be, it will be a great party to end the journey.
04:41Okay, so, let's have a seat and we have the honor of asking you a few questions.
04:48So, Gérard, when did you realize you wanted to build business in sports and not just play it?
05:00Well, it's a different world.
05:04I mean, when you play in football, you work to perform on Saturday.
05:09And depending on the result on Saturday, you have a good week or a bad week.
05:13In business is different.
05:16In business is a daily, in a daily basis, you have to work.
05:21You have some announcements to make.
05:23You are excited because things are going well.
05:26But it's not the level of adrenaline of being a professional football player that you play in front of 50, 60, 90,000 people.
05:33And that everyone is watching you on TV and that you have a pressure to perform and to win.
05:39It's a different kind of world, but I also enjoy it a lot.
05:43Did you need, like, taking risks, finding something to get this kind of adrenaline back after the football career?
05:55Well, I like to take risks in life.
05:58I like to move away from the comfort zone and try new things.
06:05And this is why I wanted to start my own business and my companies while I was a football player.
06:12This is not normal.
06:15But at that moment, I decided to do it because I wanted to explore different other things rather than just playing football.
06:23And I knew that at some point my career will finish.
06:26And you have to be prepared for what's next.
06:28This is the advice that some of my teammates were telling me when they were retiring.
06:36They were saying, Gerard, you really need to find something else because when your career will be over,
06:42you will wake up in the morning and you will not have that routine for the last 12 years,
06:47which basically is go to have training and then traveling on the weekends and playing games.
06:51It's a different kind of life and you have to be ready for it.
06:56Gerard, can you explain to us and to the audience how comes the idea of the Kings League and what is the Kings League really?
07:03Well, the idea of the Kings League, it was because the last couple of years of my career,
07:10I was seeing myself and my kids that they had a little bit more difficulty to watch the 90 minutes of a full game.
07:18Obviously, if it's a quarterfinal, semifinal or final of Champions League or important games, they would do it.
07:23But there were other games that were more difficult for them to stay the 90 minutes connected to what's happening on the game.
07:30So we decided to try to find a way of using the most beautiful sport in the world, which is football and the most followed one.
07:41And try to change a bit the rules so it's more video game rather than traditional football.
07:47So, I don't know, just to give you a couple of examples, to have a goal double the last two minutes of the game.
07:55So if you're losing 4-0, all of a sudden you manage to score two goals in the last two minutes and you can draw the game.
08:01Or last two minutes of the first half, we throw big dice from the stand and if it's a two, it becomes two versus two, three versus three,
08:09which this is kind of different and very wild for the audience and they love it.
08:13So this is the kind of rules, or maybe just to give you another one, the streamers are the owners of the teams
08:19and if they are in the venue, they can push a button and they can shoot a penalty whenever they want
08:24and they can help the team to win the game and to participate in the results.
08:29So this is the kind of rules in order for the audience to be more connected to what's happening on the pitch.
08:36The game is shorter, it's 20 minutes, two half of 20 minutes, it's seven a side instead of 11 versus 11
08:45because it's very dynamic, the pitch is shorter and a lot of things are happening.
08:50So we decided to go in that direction on real life football, but with video game rules that I think it worked pretty much.
08:59So you feel it was necessary to create, to invent a new kind of football?
09:06To invent a new product that is complementary to football.
09:1185% of our audience is less than 34 years, meaning that I think that we are going to a kind of audience
09:19that it's not the same as one traditional football.
09:22Part of our audience is coming from the e-sports, so from the video game industry.
09:30And this at the end of the day is what the brands and our partners want.
09:34They want to arrive and to reach this kind of audience that it's not anymore international TV.
09:39And the fact that we created this product for them, it's a great tool to arrive to them.
09:45Gerard, how Kings League was inspired by gaming and streamer culture?
09:53Well, it was inspired a lot.
09:55In a way, streamers, some of them, they are coming from the video game industry.
10:01Some of them, they have e-sports organizations like teams that participate in League of Legends
10:08or FIFA or Dota, and the fact that we use them, because at the end of the day, streamers are the ones that own the teams.
10:18And they bring their audience, which is a big one, a very loyal and engaged community.
10:26And we give the streaming rights of the games to their channels, meaning that they can react to what's happening to the game.
10:33If they score a goal, they celebrate.
10:36If they lose, they are angry.
10:38If the referee makes a mistake, as you can imagine, they react to it.
10:43So this is one of the things that people love, to see that the streamer is really committed
10:48and at the same time that they are able to stream the games.
10:51One of the big differences that we have from traditional football is that we wanted to put the audience in the center,
11:11meaning that we ask the audience absolutely everything regarding Kings League.
11:16We ask them the rules, we ask them the time of the games, what day and time they want the games to be played.
11:24We even ask if they wanted the grass green, because we have a turf, we have artificial grass.
11:32And it was green when we started, but then using our channels in Twitter, in Instagram and so on,
11:38we do polls and we make them vote and decide what they want.
11:44And for example, the grass, we put different options, black, green, blue, pink.
11:49And 70% of our audience, they decided that they wanted black.
11:54So now all the pitch that we have in all the different countries is black.
11:58And when you watch on TV and you see football in a black pitch, everyone knows it's Kings League.
12:05So this is the kind of things that we do that it's different from traditional football.
12:12Obviously, I mean, in traditional football, you have FIFA, UEFA, you have the leagues.
12:17The audience cannot vote, cannot decide anything.
12:21And in Kings League is totally different.
12:23We try to be different.
12:24And regarding the rules that this was your question and you're mentioning, at the end of the day, we propose different rules.
12:32We are changing time to time the rules.
12:35But the audience are the ones that at the end of the day decide if we go in one direction or the other.
12:41How is the Kings League has grown, becoming a huge phenomenon in the world in seven markets?
12:46How do you do this?
12:49Well, it's pretty crazy, the whole journey, because we started January 1st, 2023.
12:55So it was two years and a half ago.
12:58We started with Spain.
13:00We started the first league with the final at Camp Nou in front of 92,000 people sold out.
13:06This was March 2023.
13:08Then we did the second edition where we started also Queens League in Spain.
13:13And the final was in Atletico Madrid Stadium in July 2023.
13:18We sold out, 60,000 people also.
13:21And then we decided to expand.
13:23We went to Mexico.
13:2540% of our audience was from Mexico because of the language.
13:29It's the same one as in Spain.
13:32So we started in February 2024 in Mexico.
13:3612 teams also.
13:38We call it Kings League Americas because it's all the region of Central America and South America.
13:42Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and so on.
13:46So we have teams in all these regions, but playing in Mexico.
13:50Then we did Queens League in Kings League Americas.
13:54And then we decided to expand to Italy, Germany, France, and Brazil.
13:57That is what we did in the first half this year, 2025.
14:01So right now we already have leagues in six different countries and we have eight different leagues because we have two Queens Leagues in Spain and in Americas.
14:12And last week we announced Kings League Mina in the region of Middle East and North Africa that we will start at the end of this year.
14:19And the next one, hopefully, that we will announce in the next weeks will be U.S.
14:25That it will be for February 2026.
14:29Yeah, great.
14:30Do you think two types of football can cohabit?
14:33And how Kings League positions itself vis-à-vis traditional football?
14:38We believe that we are complementary to traditional football.
14:42At the end of the day, we are more or less the same.
14:45We use the same rules.
14:47The new generations now, they are very adapted to consume two or three different screens.
14:55So they are watching traditional TV and they can watch PSG versus Inter, the final of the Champions League.
15:02And at the same time, they are watching the tablet, the iPad or the iPhone and they can watch Kings League there.
15:08So the way of consuming is totally different from 10 or 20 years ago where we just had traditional TV and we were watching there everything.
15:18And Kings League is a way of, okay, if you can consume different, why we don't create the product thinking on that way of consuming.
15:29Let's talk about the French team.
15:31How is the French team have performed in the World Cup?
15:35Well, we expected to perform a little bit better because we will not have anyone, any team, any French team playing tonight.
15:42But I think that overall, the level of Kings League in France was good.
15:48The players were good.
15:49There was a couple of teams qualifying for quarter final.
15:53And what is true is that in Champions League, Paris is, I think, the city that you have more players playing Champions League coming from Paris.
16:04So this means that the level of producing players and talent from France, it's huge.
16:13It's very big.
16:14The national team of France in the last few years have been very successful in international football.
16:20So we know that for the next years, Kings League France, the level will be better and better.
16:26I'm sure that at some point they will become world champion.
16:30So it was really important for Kings League to come to France and to Paris.
16:35For sure.
16:35For sure.
16:36I mean, first time that we brought the product to France, it was through Amin Mathieu that I'm sure that most of you, you know, the guy.
16:44We invited him as a wild card in our first World Cup.
16:48It was in Mexico back in June 2024.
16:51And even the games were at 2-3 a.m. in the morning here in France because obviously we were playing in Mexico and the time zone games were very late.
17:03But the level of audience of Amin in his channel streaming those games were incredible.
17:10Like he was putting millions and millions of people in his channel streaming his games.
17:16So we decided after that reaction, we said, OK, we need to bring Kings League to France.
17:21And this is what we did in March 2025 that we started the first edition.
17:27And then the best teams of Kings League France qualified for the World Cup a little bit similar to Champions League in international football.
17:36And the result was incredibly well.
17:38I mean, the audiences of all the games in Kings League France and then in the World Cup has been incredible here.
17:44And we are very proud and excited to keep going because France, for us, it's a very important country.
17:50Ja, how legends like Aurelien Choumini, Jules Koundé, Mike Menon, Adil Ramy became involved in the Kings League?
18:00Yeah, it's funny because a lot of active players and legends are part of our ecosystem.
18:04So we have Lamin Jamal has a team, Neymar has a team, we have Kaká in Brazil, Zlatan, Ibrahim Wicke in Italy, Bastien Svansteiger, we have Iker Casillas, Kun Agüero, Chicharito.
18:19Good players.
18:20Yeah, all of them big legends of the game.
18:22At the end of the day is what I said before, Kings League is football.
18:27And they want to be part of it because you arrive to a generation that maybe they didn't see them play, some of them, like, I don't know, Zlatan or Kun Agüero, Iker Casillas and so on.
18:40So they love to be part of it.
18:42They love to own a team and to make decisions and to manage everything regarding the club.
18:51Lamin Jamal is fun because he's 18, he's 17 right now.
18:55And when we started Kings League, he was 14, so he was the perfect target.
19:01And he was following everything what's happening in Spain, so he knows all the players and he was desperate to have a team.
19:08And he reached out to us and we decided to give him a team and he's having fun.
19:11For him, it's like a video game.
19:13He's managing his team, he played in the World Cup here in Paris.
19:18But at the end of the day, this mix between the digital wall with the streamers and the traditional football with the active players or the legends of the game, it works very, very well.
19:31because one gives the credibility and the other ones bring the audience of this digital wall.
19:39And it's been very successful, the fact of mixing both walls.
19:43So, I think it's time to see a film of the games, Walker.
19:49Yes.
19:50Each game has four rules.
19:53But what happens if you change those rules?
19:56Walker begins now.
19:58It's in the head, it's in the head.
20:02It's in the head, it's in the head, it's in the head, it's in the head.
20:32It's in the head, it's in the head.
20:35A final.
20:35¡Tenid!
20:36¡Veic
20:43¡Grimir!
20:43¡Grimir!
20:44El rey
20:50Ganao, el final, el final, el final, el final, el final...
20:55¡Ele!
20:56¡Gliet!
20:57El primer campeón de la historia de la Tinex Wall,
21:01C'est un beau aperçu de ce qu'est la King's League.
21:12Exactement.
21:13Donc, la King's League War Cup a commencé le 1er juillet.
21:17Oui, le 1er juillet de l'année.
21:20L'année dernière, nous avons fait la première édition.
21:22Ces images étaient de la dernière édition au Mexique.
21:25L'année dernière, c'était le 1er juillet jusqu'à aujourd'hui.
21:28Aujourd'hui est le dernier jour.
21:29Comment ça a été?
21:30C'était incroyable.
21:32Je veux dire, le niveau de l'excitation et de l'hype de tous ces pays,
21:35parce qu'à la fin du jour, ce qui se passe, c'est que les meilleures équipes de chaque ligue qualifient.
21:40Donc, c'est très similaire à la Champions League, en un certain nombre.
21:43Et la narrativité de ces équipes qualifient dans la Liga local,
21:49fait que maintenant, il y a beaucoup de hype pour regarder la World Cup,
21:54mais qui va devenir le champion.
21:55Et ça veut dire que chaque jour, il y a beaucoup d'audience de tous ces différents pays dans le monde,
22:01following the teams and seeing, obviously, great football, great show,
22:07and who will become the world champion that we will see it tonight.
22:12Your best moments so far?
22:15Best moments?
22:17Well, there has been incredible games, great comebacks.
22:22Yesterday, for example, Porcinos, they were losing 4-1 against Furia,
22:25which was the favorite, the Brazilian team.
22:28And they won in the last second with a goal double, so they won 5-4.
22:32We had an incredible goal from a Brazilian player called Lipao.
22:37He did an incredible bicycle.
22:40I think it's by far the best goal of the competition.
22:45Tonight, we will see a packed, sold-out Paris La Défense watching the final,
22:51so it will be also a great moment.
22:53Before the final, we have a game between the French streamers
22:57against the rest of the world streamers,
22:58so it will be fun to watch Amin Mathieu playing against DJ Mario,
23:03that I know that there is a big rival here in the France versus Spain kind of rival.
23:09So I think during these two weeks, there are plenty of incredible moments
23:15between streamers creating a lot of content that people really enjoyed.
23:20So tonight, the final between two Spanish teams,
23:25Los Troncos, who beat Fluzio 6-5 yesterday night,
23:30and Porcinos, who beat Furia, a football club, 5-4.
23:36What are your expectations for the final tonight?
23:39Well, it's fun because the first World Cup winner was Porcinos last year,
23:43so they can become world champion again.
23:47They beat Furia, which is the team of Neymar,
23:49and Neymar called me and he told me that if he was qualifying for the final,
23:55he was taking a private plane and coming to Paris to shoot the penalty.
23:59At the end of the day, he was out, so he's not coming.
24:04But it's fun to watch how involved the streamers and the legends of the game are
24:10because they really want to help their team, even if it's shooting a penalty.
24:16Furia, they have a streamer.
24:18When Neymar is not there, it's the streamer shooting the penalty,
24:20but he missed the five penalties that he shoot in the whole competition.
24:24So this is why Neymar wanted to come to shoot the penalty
24:27to help his team win the final.
24:29but at the last minute, they lost in a gold double in the last second yesterday,
24:35so he will not be able to come.
24:38Ja, we talk about Kings League.
24:40Do you have other revolutionary projects in sports or in business, in sports business?
24:47I like to think out of the box and think about different ways of disrupting sports in a way.
24:54I believe that the sports, they have to go more into entertainment.
24:57There is a lot of traditional sports that they are very focused on the technical side,
25:04the physical side of it, but the sports are not anymore competing against other sports.
25:11So football is not competing against basketball or tennis.
25:14Football is competing against entertainment, against Netflix, against HBO, against Amazon Prime,
25:21against TikTok, against Twitter, against Instagram,
25:23because people have 24 hours, you sleep 8 hours, the other 8 hours you're working.
25:30So you really have 8 hours to have fun every day, and what you want is to be entertained.
25:35And sports, I think that they have to adapt and modernize in a way that can be entertained.
25:41It's not possible that, it's normal because it's more than 100 years of history and we are adapt to that,
25:48but it's not possible that in a game you go to a stadium with your kids,
25:53you take the car, you park the car, it's one hour, you take the stadium,
25:57it's 90 minutes and the game finishes 0-0.
25:59There is no goals, no winner, and you are home, and now what?
26:05So, of course, we adapt to that, and the most traditional people will say,
26:10we cannot change this.
26:13If football is football, it has to go this way.
26:15Well, I understand it a little bit different.
26:18I think that we can change.
26:20We don't have to be radical.
26:21We don't have to change football and become Kings League,
26:24because, obviously, we have some crazy rules that never in the history will be part of traditional football.
26:31But I really believe that we have to change it a little bit.
26:35And the way the structure of football with FIFA and UEFA and the leagues is very political.
26:41It's very difficult to change things.
26:43You need a lot of years to change a small thing.
26:47There has to be a way to change things in a quicker way.
26:51Do you like your new life, the life now, after the players, the good players you were?
26:57Do you like this life, to think about projects, business, about sports?
27:02I love my life.
27:03I'm a very privileged guy, and I realized that from the beginning of when I was very young.
27:12So I wake up in the morning.
27:13I tried to have an objective, something to fight for, because at the end of the day, you need to have a motivation in life to wake up.
27:22But, yeah, I realized how privileged I am.
27:25I mean, I did whatever I want in my life.
27:28I enjoyed so much playing football.
27:31It was a job, but it wasn't a job for me, because at the end of the day, it's what I loved to do.
27:35And now I'm doing the same.
27:38I started this project and this business, but I'm not looking to make profit or money.
27:44I mean, obviously, at the end of the day, to make money means that you are successful.
27:48And this is what all of us, we aim to, but it's not the purpose of it.
27:53The purpose of it is the journey, is having fun, is having a team.
27:56We started being 15, 20 people.
28:00When we start back in January 2023, we are more than 270 people right now and growing.
28:06And at the end of the day, what you want is have fun.
28:09These two weeks here in Paris, we had a lot of fun.
28:11People in the team is destroyed right now.
28:15It's the last day, and you can see that they are all over the place.
28:19But after the final, we organize a big party tonight.
28:22We'll have some drinks.
28:23We'll have fun.
28:24And, yeah, we will enjoy.
28:27It's part of life.
28:29Gerard, we're in Paris.
28:31It's impossible to finish the session without a question about what happened on the final of Champions League.
28:40Were you surprised by the victory of PSG and surprised by what Luis Enrique, you know very well, did with this team?
28:51Well, I know Luis Enrique very well.
28:55I had the opportunity to have him as a coach three years in Barca.
28:59The guy is amazing.
29:01You are starting to discover him a few months ago.
29:05But his mentality, his way of seeing life, he's a true leader.
29:12And he showed that with PSG, his message was always, I don't need big stars, I need the team, I need players playing together for an objective that is the same for everyone, to be aligned.
29:28And he showed that, it seemed when Mbappé was leaving, that obviously it was a big blow for PSG, but it was the other way around.
29:40They were, they become more a team and they finally won the treble, making the best football in Europe and winning 5-0 in the final against a team like Inter Milan.
29:53So, I think that PSG fans, you should be very proud of what you have achieved.
30:01I've heard our CEO in Kings League is French and he's an Olympique Marseille fan.
30:07And he's all the time saying forever second, because they were the first winning the Champions League back in the 90s with the Olympique Marseille.
30:15But it's true that at the end of the day, you become championship winners and you have to be very proud of it.
30:23John, last thing.
30:25Who deserves a Ballon d'Or of France football?
30:28Lamine Yamal or Ousmane Dembele?
30:30You are in France.
30:33They say, Akemi.
30:35I've played with both of them.
30:37I had the opportunity to share dressing room with Ousmane and with Lamine.
30:41Both of them, they are incredible guys.
30:44I love them.
30:44And Ousmane was like a brother for me, because the guy when he arrived, you know how he is.
30:52And Lamine also, I think that he's very, very talented, very special.
30:59I would prefer Lamine because he's in Barca now and he's in Kings League also.
31:06He owns a team.
31:07So, I would like Lamine to win it.
31:11He's very, very young, very talented.
31:12and I think that he's very special.
31:15But I like also Ousmane a lot.
31:17And if Ousmane finally wins it, I'll be happy for him.
31:21So, Gérard, thank you very much for this time and good luck for the final tonight.
31:27Merci, merci to everyone.
31:29Thank you.
31:30On va demander à...
31:31Il est temps de faire la photo.
31:32Photo.
31:33Photo souvenir.
31:34Pierre, est-ce que vous pouvez nous rejoindre ?
31:36Merci.