A new series of short-format football leagues are subverting traditional commercial models and challenging the notion that the sport should expect to derive the lion’s share of its income from the sale of media rights.
Start-up properties like the Europe-based Kings League, Baller League and Icon League, and the Asia-based Soccer7s Series are plotting a new path for the game by combining high-energy, short-format football with fan-focused, influencer-led content on digital platforms.
Kings League
Kings League, the seven-a-side football competition founded by former Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué in 2022, claims to derive less than five per cent of its income from media rights sales while sponsorship revenues account for 65 to 75 per cent of the property’s overall income. In new leagues it has launched this year, that figure rises to 70 to 75 per cent, as time to activate other sources of income, such as ticketing, merchandising and licensing, has been limited.
With most teams owned by streamers or influencers, the league claims it offers a rare opportunity for brands to reach and engage Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences.
The start-up league has focused on widespread distribution across platforms like Twitch, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, leveraging its relationships with these well-known streamers and influencers to achieve cut through with their established followings. Where the league has worked with more traditional linear distributors like ESPN Latin America and Sky Italia, the main objective is to explain the concept and disruptive rules for the competition.
The unusual format features 20-minute halves and sees each team pick one of five ‘secret cards’ ahead of kick-off. These can be used to the teams’ advantage during games and include an instant penalty card and a card that removes an opposing player for two minutes.
Former Manchester City and Manchester United stars Sergio Aguero and Javier Hernandez are two of the biggest names to have competed in the competition so far. But, in an example of the league’s disregard for convention, for one season there was a further masked player referred to as the ‘enigma’, who fans speculated to be Piqué’s former Barcelona teammate Denis Suarez or one-time Real Madrid star Isco.
In a recent interview with SportBusiness, chief executive Djamel Agaoua suggested the disruptive format was designed to target younger viewers: “This generation, they are not consuming the image of a brand, they want interaction and involvement,” he said.
Sponsorship agreements with blue-chip brands like Adidas, Cupra, JD Sports, Spotify, Air Asia and Red Bull all point to the property’s success in communicating its audience proposition.
The Adidas deal, which sees the sportswear brand provide all of the balls and kits used in the competition, emerged out of its existing ambassador agreement with rising Barcelona and Spain star Lamine Yamal, who now owns a team in the league.
Other brands are activating around the disruptive format for the league, with JD Sports, for example, sponsoring the huge dice that determine how many players are allowed to play for each side in the first three minutes of the second half.
Beyond this, the league’s influencer-led distribution strategy is also attracting newer, more digitally native brands like ‘live social commerce app’ Bazr, which blends online shopping with influencer marketing.
In February, Bazr announced a deal to sponsor Kings League Italy. Its activation invited fans to vote for the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in each match via unique banners during live Twitch streams.
At the time of publication, the outfit was operating leagues in Spain, MENA, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, France, and Germany, and has plans to launch a league in the US before the 2026 Fifa World Cup.
“This generation are not consuming the image of a brand, they want interaction and involvement”
Djamel Agaoua, chief executive at Kings League
Baller League
The rival six-a-side Baller League is based on 15-minute halves and currently operates events in Germany and the UK. It is also expected to export to the US, with a new event planned in the country in January 2026.
Like the Kings League, it also has backing from high-profile current and former players in Lukas Podolski and Matts Hummels. The format includes ‘Gamechanger’ rules in the final three minutes of each half that introduce random twists like 3v3 play, long-range goals counting double, and goalkeepers not being allowed to use their hands.
At between 85 and 90 per cent, its percentage of revenues from sponsorship is even higher than the rival league.
Sources close to the property claim a sponsorship agreement with Xing, one of the largest job networks in German-speaking countries, covering the two seasons of the competition held in Germany in 2024, was worth around €6m ($6.4m at the time the deal was announced). The brand appeared to corroborate this information when it referred to the deal as a ‘mid-single-digit million amount’ in a Q&A on its website.
For this sum, the brand was granted branding shirt sponsorship rights for all 12 teams in the competition. In the same Q&A, the brand argued that the digital rights included in the deal made it preferable to a shirt sponsorship agreement with a Bundesliga club.
Tim Elsner, vice-president of marketing solutions, said: “This sponsorship offers much more than advertising on boards and the jersey chest. As the main sponsor from the very beginning, we have been given significantly more opportunities for creative and tailor-made forms of cooperation. In particular, we can produce content for our own channels and tell stories that fully contribute to our brand and our communication goals.”
Sponsors to sign up for the UK event on the back of widespread media distribution included O2, Pepsi, Nike, Footlocker, Cupra, Procter & Gamble (Head & Shoulders), Philips and Grenade, the energy bar and drinks brand. Deals with the likes of Nike, Procter & Gamble and Grenade spanned both the German and UK events, with the plan being to transition into more global deals in the coming editions.
Marcus Gossen, director at Cupra UK, told SportBusiness Sponsorship that the automotive company’s challenger brand positioning aligned nicely with the disruptive football property.
“Baller League is an example of a partnership that gives us the opportunity to connect with people in a variety of ways across multiple platforms,” he said. “It is also a product that creates emotions, which is a great platform to build on when driving brand awareness.”
In a recent interview, Baller League chief executive Felix Starck said he intended to “remain authentic” with “culturally relevant brands” by snubbing approaches from betting brands or cryptocurrency exchanges.
“We believe we have a responsibility towards our younger audience, so we don’t just take any sponsor. Probably 80 per cent of the Premier League [shirt] sponsors we wouldn’t even approach,” he said.
“We believe we have a responsibility towards our younger audience, so we don’t just take any sponsor”
Felix Starck, Baller League
Icon League boycott
The recent experiences of the Germany-based Icon League show how carefully these leagues have to tread when engaging new sponsors.
Like the Baller League, the Germany-based 5-a-side football competition has backing from a former German national team player, Toni Kroos, and positions itself as a digitally led property, with streamer Elias Nerlich a co-founder.
The league has learnt to its cost that the influencers and young fan communities it has so assiduously cultivated can often enforce a strict moral code where commercial agreements are concerned.
Ahead of season three of the league, a newly formed team, FC Istanbul United, led by YouTuber Mert Ekşi, boycotted the competition in protest at a new sponsorship agreement between the league and Coca-Cola. Ekşi cited the company’s links to Israel and accusations that it is profiting from the illegal occupation of Palestine by operating a bottling plant in the Atarot settlement in the West Bank.
The withdrawal represented the first true setback for the competition as for the first time it took matches on tour rather than playing them in a single location.
Soccer7s Series
In contrast to these tournaments, The Soccer7s Series, which launched this July at the Jalan Besar stadium in Singapore, has positioned itself as a more Asia-centric property.
In a recent interview with SportBusiness Sponsorship, Dom Lane, a former wealth manager in the region for UBS, HSBC and RBC, explained how the seven-a-side event is designed to offer fan outreach opportunities for Western clubs in the region.
Unlike its two rivals, the series is played on conventional-sized pitches and provides men’s and women’s iterations, as well as a ‘Masters’ series for retired professional players. The new event eschewed some of the more disruptive rule changes embraced by the other two properties.
EFL Championship clubs like Leicester City and Queen’s Park Rangers sent men’s teams to play a combination of local Asian club sides and influencer-led teams like the UK-based Hashtag United.
“A lot of clubs want to do something in this part of the world and don’t know how to connect with their fan bases,” said Lane. “We basically see ourselves almost as like a concierge service to connect clubs with fan bases and with that, obviously, brands are interested as well.”
While the league has sought to leverage the social media audiences of the participating teams and the fan communities of the influencers behind Hashtag United, it also struck a global media agreement with Dazn ahead of the tournament to stream the event for free.
The league is an offshoot of the annual Hong Kong Soccer Sevens event, founded by local entrepreneur Tony Bratsanos and the Hong Kong Football Club. Lane said its investors are primarily family offices from the region.
Ahead of the event, he said the league planned to draw on its links to the Singaporean business community to identify sponsors. A case in point is the league’s sponsorship agreement with CMC Markets, which offers client entertainment opportunities and sees the brand adorn the clothing worn by the ball boys at the event.
Sponsorship deals with IHG Hotels and Qatar Airways were believed to be budget-relieving rather than have significant cash fees attached to them, although sources close to the league claim it is already earning money from the sale of sponsorship rights in some cases. The Qatar Airways agreement also points to the league’s ambitions to launch further editions in other countries and bring teams from other regions to the tournament.
“We’ve got 36 teams flying in from all over the world, so there’s a lot of cost with regards to accommodation and flights,” said Lane. “Those are two of the big levers that we needed.”
At the time of publication, the most popular video on Soccer7s’ YouTube channel had been viewed 721,000 times. Attendances, however, appeared sparse in online coverage of the three-day event on the same platform.
The challenge for all of the IP owners will be to deliver the recurring commercial revenues, which have often lagged behind consumer attention for more traditional football rights-holders in the digital space. The proliferation of the new leagues will also lead to competition for talent and sponsors.
Only some of the new ventures will have the ‘golden cards’ to succeed in this disruptive new offshoot for the industry.
Ben Cronin is the global editor of SportBusiness Sponsorship. Additional reporting by Imran Yusuf and Martin Ross.
Photography: Kings League, Baller League, Soccer 7s Series.
