Telefónica Movistar has announced during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that it will continue to support the Movistar KOI eSports team for three more years. The company will celebrate ten years of supporting the world of eSports since its pioneering entry into this field.
Movistar KOI is the result of a recent alliance with OverActive Media, a global gaming and eSports company listed on the Canadian stock exchange, and KOI, a club led by Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué. This is Movistar’s biggest project in the world of eSports to date, and the most ambitious in Spain and in Spanish-speaking countries.
Movistar KOI includes the assets of Movistar Riders, a team linked to Movistar since 2017, the one´s of OverActive Media and of KOI, owned by Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué.
Throughout its history, Movistar Riders has stood out as one of the leading eSports clubs in Spain. Its players have represented the brand in multiple national and international tournaments, competing in the most popular games such as League of Legends (LoL), Counter-Strike: GO (CSGO), FIFA or Rainbow Six:Siege.
The team, founded in 2017, is the current champion of the Super League of the Professional Video Game League (LVP) Superliga and the present runner-up of EMEA MASTERS, a sort of Champions League between the winning teams of the respective national League of Legends leagues.
Within the CS2 territory, Movistar KOI has once again made history by qualifying for the Copenhagen Major, the first CS2 Major; and MadLions KOI has become the runner-up in the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) Winter Split, making them one of the top teams in Europe.
With the renewal of the sponsorship, which runs until at least the end of 2026, Movistar will achieve ten years of boosting the team. Movistar thus advances its exposure and support to the world of eSports and positions itself as a benchmark in digital entertainment worldwide.
Renewed commitment
The new Movistar KOI is based at the Movistar eSports Center, located in Matadero at Madrid, a high-performance centre where both players and coaching staff have the most advanced means to develop their activity at the highest level.
This eSports team will also remain committed to the responsible and safe use of Movistar technology, with initiatives such as ‘Family Game’. From 2019, Movistar Riders supports the international movement ‘My Game My Name’ to raise awareness of the problems faced by women when playing online video games. On the sporting side, the project under MAD Lions KOI promotes two leading women’s teams, one in League of Legends and the other in Valorant.
KOI has also stood out as one of the largest e-sports organisations in the world in terms of number of followers and fans. Its League of Legends games have reached historic audience records in the LVP Super League, with an average of more than 100,000 viewers in all its participations in broadcasts from the Twitch channels of the LVP and Ibai Llanos, the best known of all digital content creators in Spain.
