Ibai Llanos, born in Bilbao in 1995, is one of the most recognized figures in the world of Twitch and eSports both nationally and internationally, but his influence does not end there. If you still don’t know him, he discovers his story with us.
History of Ibai: Index
The beginnings with League of Legends and the LVP
In 2014 Ibai casted (commented, broadcast) just for fun League of Legends games (LoL) along with his friend Ander Cortés in the bronze category, the lowest level at that time. After participating in a casting of the , both went on that same year to call games professionally.
From there he began to cast numerous competitions with the LVP of a national, European and international nature. in 2016 moves to Barcelona to work full time as a caster.
The emergence of caused more and more companies to become interested in sponsoring events and teams, helping to popularize and professionalize the sector, something that has also benefited Ibai, which was the winner of the Trasgo de Oro award for best caster between 2015 and 2018.
Life beyond eSports
The LVP gave him the opportunity to grow as a caster, but in recent years his role as a commentator has led him to narrate official football and basketball matches of the highest national category, as well as to give voice to the narrations of the Volta mode (street football) of FIFA20.
Since 2019, he went on to present, along with other colleagues, the late night “” on the subscription channel Ubeat, owned by Mediapro and dedicated exclusively to eSports.
His most mediatic appearance in front of the general public happened during the first week of quarantine, when he organized a with the aim of raising funds for the fight against Covid-19. The tournament featured stars from almost every La Liga team and managed to raise €180,000 for Unicef.
His time in G2 Esports
In February 2020 Ibai announced through Twitter that after 6 years left the Professional Video Game League (LVP) to sign for the G2 Esports team.
I start a new stage.
– Ibai (@IbaiLlanos)
In this way, he joined his former colleagues and casters from the LVP Ander, BarbeQ and Reven with whom he lived in a house in San Cugat del Vallés (Barcelona) and from which they dedicated themselves to create content. Thus, since his signing by G2, makes streams on Twitch almost daily from 7 in the afternoon in which, in addition to playing video games, he also comments on current affairs and conducts consultations.
However, this stage did not last long. In January 2021, Ibai Llanos announced in a direct video before more than 180,000 spectators that He left G2 Esports to start broadcasting under his own brand.
After living an incredible year in the house of , the time has come to separate our paths. It has been the best year of my working life and I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity they gave us.
– Ibai (@IbaiLlanos)
Ibai assured that I would seek to continue collaborating in the future with G2 Esportsthanking them for their trust and support, however he was sure of wanting to launch his own brand, with his own sponsors and collaborators.
“The channel is going to undergo a brutal change. It will change everything”, Ibai Llanos announced in his message. “In February all the change will be made by a professional company on the subject. The idea is to make some spectacular streams”and added: “simply we wanted to have our own brandwe do not want to collaborate with any club or with any institution”commented on a video uploaded to YouTube.
The reason for Ibai’s success
Their naturalness, spontaneity and charisma, along with his ability to comment on any type of content, have made him one of the most loved and followed characters by young Spaniards. How could it be otherwise? have played a fundamental role on Ibai’s path to popularity.
As soon as he began to be recognized among eSports fans, he worked on his presence on social networks by posting humorous content with that folksy attitude that characterizes him and that has allowed him to make a name for himself beyond this sector.
Pre-selectivity motivational speech by the national coach Mr. Ibai Llanos
– Ibai (@IbaiLlanos)
Today, he has more than 9 million followers on YouTube, more than 11 million on Twitch, 9.5 million on Twitter and 7.6 million on Instagram. Despite how stratospheric these figures are, what really impresses Ibai’s different profiles on social networks is his growth rate. Since in the summer of 2021 it had 6 million followers on YouTube, 7 million on Twitch and 5 million on Twitter and Instagram.
A full-fledged influencer
Ibai Llanos is quite a It has passed through numerous television and radio sets in our country such as La Resistencia or El Partidazo de La Cope.
His influence is such that it is common to see professional soccer players and top-level gamers in their streamingsamong many other celebrities, something that has undoubtedly helped boost Ibai’s popularity.
This popularity among the greats of sport has allowed him to regularly interview athletes who are not easily accessible to journalists, such as Piqué or Agüero, live. The best example of this type of content is the interview he did with Messi the day of his presentation as a new signing for Paris Sant-Germain, broadcast live from the Parisian club’s stadium, in what was the first appearance of the Argentine soccer player on Twitch, followed by more than 300,000 viewers.
Around 13:00 we have a historical streaming.
Messi will come to Twitch for the first time in history. Let’s have a talk with him.
From his new stadium. See you in a while.
– Ibai (@IbaiLlanos)
It is not surprising that many brands try to count on him for their campaigns. Takiswhose sponsorship allowed him to move to Barcelona in 2016, or Domino’swith which he recorded a , are just a few examples.
Carrefour allies with Ibai
In September 2021, launched a content creation project together with Ibai and his team of streamers (BarbeQ, Ander Cortés, Reven and Werlyb). Its objective was to make known to a younger public the advantages and facilities of the private label. Among the different actions they carried out, the one named «alone in «.
Emulating the dream that we all have had as children, of staying alone in a store and doing whatever we wanted, Ibai and his friends made a direct from a Carrefour hypermarket in Barcelona. During the streaming they were able to play hide-and-seek between the shelves, do scooter races, play “The Right Price” with the hypermarket products and even had time to broadcast the PSG match against Lyon. In addition, an Iphone 13 and a FIFA22 game download code were raffled off during the live show.
The direct was made from the Ibai Twitch channel and was a complete success, with more than 108,000 viewers following the live content and an accumulated over a million views in the first 24 hours. The recording was also uploaded to the channel of Youtube from Ibai, achieving close to a million views in less than a day.
Creating their own mass shows
Ibai’s success and popularity, added to an excellent business vision, have led him to organize large events, even typical of a more television format, through his Twitch channel. In a smart move that combines the best of both worlds, the set up of the television show with the connectivity with the public that Twitch allows.
The Chimes of Ibai
A clear example of this reinterpretation of the “traditional” is the Chimes. In 2020, Ibai said goodbye to the year in streaming through his Twitch channel, achieving more spectators in its golden minute than laSexta or Cuatro. According to TVTOP data, Ibai had 243,256 recurring users throughout its broadcast and became one of the broadcasts most views of 2020 in Spain.
After the success of its Chimes in 2020, Ibai decided to repeat the play in 2021, willing to turn the event into something epic, taking the farewell of the last night of the year to the next level. And, it is that, the scene of its Chimes that year was none other than one of the emblematic balconies of the Sun Gatewhich shared with an icon of the Spanish New Year’s Eve: Ramon Garciawho gave Ibai the bow tie that he himself had worn in his first Chimes in 1995.
The live show also featured the appearance and special participation of Ibai’s inseparable friends and colleagues: Reven, BarbeQ, Werlyb and Ander. In this way, Ibai orchestrated a broadcast that would excite young and old, attracting a greater number and variety of audiences. This was reflected in its results: an average of 337,432 screens connected to the broadcast during its 3 hours, being 801,074 connected devices in the golden minute (at 11:59 p.m.). Y, in total, 2,242,000 devices were connected at some point live, as reported by Ibai on his Twitter account.
800,000 peak viewers and 2.2 million unique.
Oleeeeee ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you very much for watching with us. I hope you had a good time. How handsome it has been to live this, dammit.
– Ibai (@IbaiLlanos)
As for the brands that acted as sponsors of the event, these were: Grefusa, AXE, Pepsi and Domino’s, which repeated this role, since it had already been one of the sponsors in the 2020 Chimes. For its part, Amazon also supported Ibai through Amazon Prime Video and by Amazon Music.
Ibai makes the first Balloon World Cup a reality
What began as an “innocent” tweet published by Ibai himself, in which he shared a video of a couple of young people playing to hit a balloon in his living room without it touching the ground, soon became a viral challenge. . Piqué, the famous soccer player, reacted to Ibai’s tweet by launching a challenge to the Twitter community. If that post got more than 50 thousand retweets, the based in Spain, an idea that of course ended up becoming a reality thanks to the virality of the .
The goal was more than achieved and on October 14, 2021 PortAventura It hosted the first World Balloon Championship, which was broadcast on Ibai’s Twitch channel for six hours. In this they participated 32 people representing different countries with the aim of winning the Golden Globe trophy and a prize of 10,000 euros. Finally, it was Francesco de la Cruz, from Peru, who was the absolute winnerleaving Jean Spieb, from Germany, in second place and the Spanish representative, Jan Franquesa, in third position.
The event kept over half a million viewers on the verge of emotion during each game, and when it was the turn of the representative of Spain, the figure rose to more than six hundred thousand spectators. According to data from TV Top Spain, the event touched the two million visits. The World Cup also managed to be a trending topic on Twitter, surpassing…