How smart is Gerard Pique?

0:03Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, the sports business podcast from Leaders in Sport for Leaders in Sport. My name is James Emmett and I'm flying solo today as my great good colleague David Cushnan is taking some well-deserved time out. Hope everyone is doing well. Big week this week in Leaders Land. We have just had our agenda reveal. The balloon has been popped and what's the colour? That's right, it is Leaders Blurple. we will be hearing from the likes of Commissioner Roger Goodell Tom Wagner, Jimmy and Dee Haslam and Ted Leonsis on October 1st and 2nd at the Summit at Twickenham also if you have a look at the agenda at leadersinsport.com forward slash agenda you'll see it's absolutely stacked with the likes of Ferrari, Chicago Bulls, Heineken, Def Jam Bruin Capital, UEFA, the FA, the Bundesliga and many more of the sports business constellation's brightest stars.

1:16Yeah, do have a look at that agenda online, leadersinsport.com forward slash agenda. It is a hot one. Right, on the show today, we're going to dip back into, it's not quite the archive, but it's a little something that I put together while I was out in Cannes for the Festival of Marketing out there earlier in the summer. It's a conversation that I had with former Barcelona legend and Spain international footballer Gerard Piquet, who retired from playing in November 2022, but took up immediately an arguably busier role as a leading sports business executive. He is the founder of Cosmos, the big agency, and pertinently for this conversation, he is the founder of the Kings League, which, according to Google's AI, is a seven-a-side football competition that began in Spain in 2022.

2:16I think it was actually January 2023, Google. The Kings League features rules that deviate from traditional football regulations to create a more dynamic and entertaining product aimed at a younger audience. Google's AI continues. The league features 12 teams that play an 11-game league season followed by playoffs. It incorporates unique rules such as unlimited substitutions, sin bins for yellow and red cards, and secret weapon cards that teams can play during the game, e.g. instant penalty. removal of an opposition player goals counting double matches are 40 minutes long split into two 20 minute halves if a match ends in a tie it's decided by a penalty shootout where players dribble from the halfway line in a one-on-one scenario with the goalkeeper early mls style i added that that's not google ai um google continues teams are led by a mix of former professional players streamers and internet celebrities examples include aika casillas and Sergio Aguero.

3:21Some teams have also featured notable players like Javier Hernandez. Matches are streamed for free on Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Kings League has also made deals with traditional broadcasters like CBS, DAZN, ESPN and Sky. It started in Spain and has expanded internationally with leagues in Hispanic America, Kings League Americas, Italy, Germany, France and Brazil as of 2025. Five plans include further expansion into the United States and the MENA region, which is actually a pretty good summary, I would say. So well done, Google AI. But if you scroll down a little bit further, there's a fly in the ointment here because the common questions that Google's AI believes are asked of Gerard Piquet go like this.

4:11Who does Gerard Piquet? How smart is Gerard Piquet? And who is richer? Gerard Piquet or Shakira. So make of that what you will. As I mentioned, I spoke to Gerard at Cannes in June. We talked about his whirlwind schedule with the Kings League, the new deal that the Kings League has with Serge in Saudi Arabia, Danny Townsend et al, targeting the US as a market and Gerard's thoughts on the Club World Cup and his response to baller league emerging as competition to the Kings League. But first, on a very hot day at the Cannes Festival of Marketing, we talked about knitwear, of course, and moving from the pitch to the boardroom.

4:59Here is Gerard Piquet. James Emmett here for Leaders in Sport and Sports Business Journal at Stagwell Sport Beach. And I'm with Gerard Piquet, the CEO of Cosmos, founder of the Kings League, Spanish international, everything else besides. Gerard, how are you doing? Good, good, very good. Having a great day here. Yes. I see you have chosen to wear knitwear today. Is that warm? No, no, it's a fresh one. So there is not a lot of wind here. So we really need to be very fresh because it's, I would say it's very hot. It's hot. Yeah. How does Barcelona compare? It's very similar. when you are next to the beach as we are here.

5:42I mean, the weather is great. It's fantastic. Great atmosphere. People, nice people. So, amazing time. Yeah. Now, Gerard, when did you retire from playing? November 2022. November 2022. So, not too long ago. Almost three years. No, yeah. Yeah, less than three years, yeah. So, I was listening to a session earlier with Alex Rodriguez, the former baseball player and now the owner of Minnesota Timberwolves. And he said an athlete, dies twice once when they actually die uh but the first time when they retire because it feels like it feels like a kind of death and you've been very busy since you retired arguably more busy than when you were a professional like does that ring true for you how does it feel not playing anymore but running a business now it's true that it changed completely your life and your routine I would not like to call it death but I remember when I was still an active player and some of my teammates were retiring like Carlos Puyol for example that he is a brother for me he told me Gerard you really have to be ready when you retire because you will not wake up in the morning anymore going to training you will not have adrenaline to play on Saturday in front of 90 ,000 people.

7:04So your life changes and you need to adapt to that because if not, mentally you suffer. And one of the ways of really, I mean, not suffer is to think on something or to have another project or to wake up in the morning and really have the motivation to do something else. And this is why, really, I started Kings League. I mean, I was nearly too retired at that time. I had this idea. we started to work internally and yeah just when I retired I started to work dedicate full time 100 % on King's League I'm traveling more than before when I was an active player I'm working more than than before so I didn't have time really to think about my change of routine and I'm quite happy I feel like privileged I think that I have a privileged life and every day when I wake up in the morning I have so many things to do I think that this is great.

8:01People talk about, or athletes talk about the feeling that you get the kind of adrenaline and endorphins that you get from winning or scoring a goal in front of 100 ,000 people or whatever. Completely unmatched feeling. In your sort of current business life, is there anything that gets close to the type of feelings you get on the pitch? Impossible. To play any kind of sports, but in my case, football for so long and playing for big crowds like, I don't know, Camp Nou every two weeks because it was our home home stadium. There is no job in the world where you work the whole week just for 90 minutes and depending on that result, you will have a good week or a bad week.

8:52There is none in the world. And the level of adrenaline that you generate because you are doing your job in front of so many people not just in the stadium which we're talking about 80 ,000, 90 ,000 but also on TV that it's millions of people and the pressure of the need of winning every three days because at the end of the day in clubs like Football Club Barcelona you need to win every three days if not it's a failure. You cannot compare to anything else. And it's great to be part of a company that we have so many objectives and it's absolutely great, but it's not the same. I want to talk about King's League now, if that's okay.

9:33Last time we saw each other was at Leaders in London in October. You were talking about the business then. I think you're at the beginning of a really busy phase for the business. You just hired or were just about, I think actually you announced at the event in London that you'd hired a new CEO. He's now in place and working away. you've expanded into all sorts of different territories i think the last couple of weeks you've just spent in paris for the uh the club finals the finale of the club season how's it going how would you how would you you know what would you grade yourself so intense and so crazy but so fun at the same time in the last five months we we have expanded in four different countries so we started with spain and we went to mexico in 2024 and this first half of the year we started the league in Italy, in France, in Germany, in Brazil in four months.

10:28As you can imagine, pretty crazy. We have different offices in all these countries right now. And then we end up with the World Cup of Clubs, which is our jewel crown, where the best clubs of each league qualifies to play this last tournament and to become world champion. A little bit like the Champions League in international football. And it happened these first two weeks of June here in Paris. And it was amazing. The level of excitement, the level of audience, the level of football. Because at the end of the day, it's a competition that we like the show and the entertainment. But it's very competitiveness.

11:06And it's very serious. And people really care about winning or losing. And you can see on the pitch when they play. We are very happy. Everything is going very smooth. And the plans that we have and that we tell to our investors and to the world, then we make it happen, which I think is very important. It gives a lot of credibility. And now the idea is to launch Kingsley Mina for the region of Middle East and North Africa. We just announced a deal with Shorts that will be our partner there. And the next one is the U.S. We really want to go there. We believe U.S. is a perfect country for our product because U.S.

11:47understands much better than any other country the fact that the sports need to be entertainment and it needs to be a show. And yeah, we're ready for that challenge. It's a big one, of course. But we've been working for the last few months on having the best league possible, the best product. And I'm sure that we will be very successful there. Yeah. So the deal with Surge that you mentioned, how long was that in the pipeline? Obviously, that's a MENA as a region, hugely important for sport. Well, for the world at the moment. How did that Surge deal come about and what does that give you to have a partner like Surge in that region?

12:24Well, it takes time. Everything in life takes time. And at the end of the day, to close these kind of deals are not easy because obviously there are a lot of details to take care of. But at the end of the day, the fact to close a deal with Surge, which obviously is part of the PIF, it gives us a lot of things. First of all, obviously the knowledge in the region. By far, they are the leaders, number one. They have all the know-how, all the connections with the brands, with partners, operating partners and so on. So they will help us a lot to open doors in the country. Not just in the country, but in the region.

13:06Because as I said, Kings League will be not just in Saudi. In Saudi there will be a venue where all the games will happen. but teams will be from Saudi and for other parts like Morocco, Algeria Egypt UAE, Qatar and so on and for us strategically it's very important it's a region that I think it's perfect for us for two reasons football is a religion there I mean they love everything related with football and also it's a very young population with everyone has advice an iPhone, a tablet us as a product we have 85 % of our audience that is less than 35 years so it fits perfectly to what we want and we believe that Kingsley Mina will be one of the biggest ones in our ecosystem You also mentioned the US as being firmly on your radar at the moment, something that you want to get right when you go there it's obviously an area of huge potential for football no matter what competition no matter what rights holder we've seen the last few years major leagues clubs etc moving over to america to try to take advantage of the momentum commercialize things obviously the world cup next year we're seeing the club world cup now we've seen all sorts of friendly competitions in the summer but it's not always the safest bet that people seem to think it is you look at the work of the club world cup at the moment the stadiums aren't full it's not necessarily a 100 success it's not easy what lessons can you learn from that do you think well i mean it's a tough one because of course you you would think that fifa world cup of clubs it's a very sexy name and sexy competition with most of the biggest brands and clubs in in the world but it's always difficult i mean it's a new competition it's for the first time that FIFA is organizing the competition.

15:07It's in a country like the US that we know that it's not the main sport there because you have basketball and you have American football and you have baseball and so it's not easy and I know that FIFA is trying and they really want this competition to be a success and also the FIFA World Cup of 2026 that obviously it's a big huge priority for FIFA. But then they see yesterday, I think it was, or two days ago, the Chelsea game and all this criticism. It's difficult to handle. You never know. I'm sure that they knew in advance FIFA because you can control the numbers and everything and they expected that it will be difficult and tough to sold out all the games.

16:00But no one expected those images, they are painful and let's see how FIFA react to that. What about the plan here in Cannes? You've been here for more or less 24 hours talking to lots of people, so much talking here in Cannes. Yeah, what's your game plan here? What do you want out of this? Just to know more people of the industry at the end of the day, we have two years and a half of history. We are very early stage, very, very young. and this platform gives you an opportunity to meet a lot of people, a lot of interesting people that really can help you in your journey, companies, brands, people, agencies that can really help you and we are here meeting, meeting, meeting, as you can imagine, interview, meeting, interview.

16:52We came in the morning, we're going at night so it's a pretty crazy schedule but we're having a lot of fun really. I mean, the weather is great. Food is great. We are in an amazing place. Are you doing anything fun this evening? Have you got any leisure planned? They told me there are crazy parties here. There are crazy parties. So Virgil van Dijk and Kevin De Bruyne are out on a yacht just over there. Ah, yeah? Yeah, I saw them last night at one of the parties. Ah, I didn't know that. Yeah. Lucky them. Well, maybe, you know, get on the boat. We are basically in Barcelona 45 minutes from here by plane, so it's quite easy for us to come and come back.

17:26Yeah. going home back home why not why not in the position that you're in now uh you must receive a lot of pitches right people want your business and likewise you have to i presume give a lot of pitches as well you want business from other people what's the best pitch you've ever given and what's the best pitch you've ever received i don't know i always try to be the best pitch the next one yeah you're improving every time that you do a pitch you add something new maybe you take off something that is not quite convincing. So I think that as much as you're having experience, obviously the product is also evolving and you have more things to explain.

18:09But I always try that the next pitch is the best one. And this morning, for example, we had a meeting with 20, 25 people, which I love this format because it's a very close one and you can really see eye to eye to people and to engage with them because when you go to, I don't know, 200, 300, thousands of people. You talk, but it's difficult to interact with people. It's hard to know who's listening. Exactly. So this format, I like it a lot this morning and I really enjoy it because it's in a much calm situation, relaxed. It was very hot outside and they put me in a room full of AC and a sofa. Perfect.

18:46Yes, please. And I said, please, I love that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I would say that I had a lot of fun this morning. Very good. I didn't want to talk to you without mentioning an organization that seems to be mirroring yours in a lot of ways and definitely competition for you guys at the Kingsley but Borla League seems to have a very similar product making a similar noise in the market what's your take on facing them as competition? Well one thing we have clear is that if people copy you it's because you're having success at the end of the day in life when we started in January 2023. Three months later, in March 2023, we were sold out Camp Nou, 92 ,000 people.

19:32You can imagine that for us, this was like, whoa, what's happening here? Then we sold out again in July, Atletico Madrid Stadium, more than 60 ,000 people. And then we started our expansion to Mexico and to the rest of the countries. During that process, if you have success, if people see you having success, they try to copy. and Bowler is a copycat like others that are trying to do the same in different countries. In Italy, we have one called Goat League. In Mexico, People's League. We have another in Germany called Icon League. So, I mean, it's normal. It's flattering, right? If no one copies you, it's because whatever you're doing is not interesting.

20:14So, it's fine. We have one year of advantage. We are the original ones. They started in 2024. I think that obviously we are the only one that have this global ecosystem which at the end of the day gives the opportunity to streamers and also to fans to enjoy not just the local league but also then going to watch the World Cup and international competitions and I think this is a big advantage and also we have this year of advantage that we did a lot of mistakes as you can imagine but that we knew how to really find solutions to that and we have that know-how that I think that puts us in a position where comfortable, we can see right now the landscape, the whole ecosystem and in terms of social, in terms of audience, in terms of all these numbers, you cannot even compare to all the other leagues that are existing right now.

21:09So we are very happy. We are in a great position. We did a round last year of 60 million from different funds of the US and Mexico. And these allow us to expand to all these countries. The idea is to keep expanding. Football, at the end of the day, is the most followed sport in the world. And these allow us to really start leagues in all the countries. So why not in three to five years to be in 20, 25, 30 countries? And maybe not operating ourselves all the leagues, but licensing to other operational partners that can help us on that. And we are working towards that also. So, yeah, I mean, hopefully we can have even more and more competitors that can challenge us.

21:56And this will make us in a position that we will have to put more effort, more sacrifice, and we will try to be better. And finally, Gerard, you've won pretty much everything there is to win on the football field. You've played for top, top clubs, Manchester United, Barcelona. Obviously, you captained the national team as well. You've done everything that you can do in football. You're now running your own business. When you eventually retire and you look back at your whole life of work, I guess, what do you want to be remembered for? Well, I had the opportunity to have all the dreams that I had to accomplish them.

22:41And this, not everyone can say that. I played 15 years in Fútbol Coupe Arsona, which I was a fan since I was a little kid. I went to Camp Nou every two weeks to watch the team play. And I had the opportunity to have an incredible career. I won all the possible titles with that shirt. So I want to be remembered with a guy that loved my club, that I really gave everything for that shirt. And that I had the opportunity to win everything with an incredible generation of players. that of course without them it was impossible to win what we have won. So just a guy that played football, that had fun and that had the opportunity to do it in the club of his life.

23:27And I want to remember like this. Yeah. Gerard Pique, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.