Ibai is now the biggest streamer in the world, with almost 20M followers on Twitch. Here are La Velada del Año V’s numbers.
He shared goofy moments with iShowSpeed, filmed challenges with Mr.Beast, and now hosted one of the biggest online events in history: This is Ibai "Ibai" Llanos, the biggest streamer in the Spanish-speaking community and the creator of La Velada del Año V.
Roughly translated to "The Boxing Night of the Year", La Velada featured some of the biggest Spanish streamers and content creators. Also, between matches, a selection of very well-known musicians would play short set lists for the public. The live event sold out 80,000 tickets, valued at:
- Grandstand: 170 - 100 EUR (~197 - 116 USD)
- Bleachers: 35 - 95 EUR (~40 - 110 USD)
- Floor level: 170 - 100 EUR (~197 - 116 USD)
Despite how massive this number of people may look, "La Velada V" was even more impressive on Ibai's Twitch channel. According to a recent study from Streams Charts, the event reached an astonishing number of 9,334,179 peak views across all platforms. This is the most-viewed stream in Twitch's history, and it's now ranked third among the most popular events broadcast on any platform.
The secret behind Ibai's La Velada V success
Before being the most followed overall Twitch streamer, with 19.7M followers, Ibai used to be a League of Legends caster. He still broadcasts Riot events, and even owns an esports team: Movistar Koi. But his biggest following transcended video games a long time ago.
He was a pioneer amongst Spanish streamers, replicating long-time traditional events with a twist, like "Las Campanadas", a New Year's television broadcast of the twelve bells that sound before midnight. He was even more successful than the traditional show, and started building his persona around this new audience. Ibai jumped from contests to tournaments to content around traditional sports. And then, he created La Velada del Año — a boxing night with only one aim: making famous streamers and content creators train for months to reach their best shape ever, and fight against each other.
La Velada is not only about boxing, but he made a real show around it. Last year, he had Will Smith on-stage and almost got Amouranth to fight in what he wanted to be a "Spanish vs. English streamers night". If you follow Ibai, you know he will keep doing La Velada del Año until he gets to invite Bad Bunny (who, by the way, he has already interviewed twice).
This year, Ibai focused even more on La Velada V's storytelling. He hand-picked rivalries that made a lot of sense for the fans. And, of course, the hype behind some of them was notorious.
Related articles
Top fights at La Velada V (according to peak viewers) and their story:
- Alana vs. Ari Geli: 9,253,386 peak viewers.
Historically, the women's matches are the most appreciated by La Velada's fans. Alana, being a trained boxing enthusiast, came to the fight as a clear favorite. However, the fight reached historical peaks due to Ari Geli's incredible performance. Alana won the match, but X was flooded with love for Ari.
- Abby vs. Roro: 9,107,020 peak viewers.
Roro was 23 centimeters shorter than Abby, but she still told Ibai that she wanted to fight at La Velada V. This made every fan instantly fall in love with her story. At first, some fans wanted her to lose due to her content being labeled by them as "trad-wife." Despite this, she trained hard, even developed an injury in her ankle, and still decided to fight. This earned her the viewers' love. Unfortunately, she lost in the end by a small point margin against Abby.
- Perxitaa vs. Gaspi: 7,814,194 viewers.
A fight most thought wouldn't be relevant reached more viewers than the main event. Gaspi, a retired YouTube comedian who recently made a comeback, had to face Perxitaa, a legendary creator from Spain who's also ten years older than him. Gaspi joked about not taking it seriously, but he did, and lost 26 kilos in just four months. Despite the efforts, he lost by technical knock-out, which ended with him giving an apology speech in tears: something nobody expected due to his personality, based on not taking anything seriously.
However, none of the aforementioned fights were the main event, which belonged to Westcol vs. TheGrefg. The first is the most-followed streamer on Kick and is very well known for not being disciplined and partying. His declarations through the training months showed him as the villain, someone who constantly said he didn't need training to beat his opponent. TheGrefg, on the other hand, used to be the biggest Fortnite streamer in Spanish. He has a custom-made skin in the game and is perceived as a try-hard at everything.
International reaction to Ibai's La Velada V
To everyone's surprise, TheGrefg destroyed Westcol. But this fight was still big enough to reach Ludwig's ears, who said on stream how massive Ibai's La Velada V was. His chat asked him to do a new edition of "Creator's Clash," a similar event for the English community. He only giggled at the possibility, but Ibai's numbers may incentivize him to try.
La Velada V made Ibai the biggest Twitch streamer of the month, and he set a record that will be hard to beat. But the Spanish content creator will keep trying to beat his own record, which sparks the question: What's next?
Keep following esports.gg for more streamer news!
