Ibai Llanos, a streamer and the Spanish eSports rapporteur, achieved something historic: the first appearance of Lionel Messi on Twitch. The Argentine ace was presented as a player for Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Ibai broadcast the interview live of the Parque de los Príncipes stadium to an audience that surpassed 300 thousand users, not counting the visits that the video will have in the next hours.
Ibai born on March 26, 1995 in Bilbao, as a child, he started playing video games and counting the games of one of his friends in videos on YouTube. But his professional career began at age 19, when he signed on to be caster of the Professional Video Game League (LVP) of Spain, mainly relating game games League of Legends.
In 2016 he left Bilbao to live in Barcelona and dedicate himself to eSports. In February 2020, Ibai left the LVP and signed an exclusive contract with the G2 Esports organization for content creation with his colleagues Ander Cortés, Reven and Ernesto BarbeQ Folch.
Ibai Llanos, Video Games and Twitch
But it was with the pandemic that Ibai went to Twitch, the streaming platform that Amazon bought in 2014 and which have the gamers as your main audience.
About his childhood and the importance that video games had (and still have) in his life, Ibai told journalist Julio Leiva, at Caja Negra, that “video games saved my life”. In 2008, the financial crisis hit the Llanos family hard, the fights between Ibai’s parents grew and they ended up getting divorced. It was on the Internet where the young man from Bilbao found a refuge from the bad times that were going on.
In addition to playing video games like Between us -very in vogue at the beginning of the pandemic-, Ibai started to make videos with relaxed conversations. So he opened a series of interviews that he dubbed “Chatting Quietly” and inaugurated with the player Gerard Piqué. Ibai also interviewed other football figures, such as Sergio “el Kun” Agüero (whom he befriended), Paulo Dybala, Ronaldinho or Andrés Iniesta.
Respondents from Ibai are not limited to sports. It also received rogue Argentine singers, such as L-Ghent, Duki, Bizzarrap and Nathy Peluso, as well as his friend, the argentine streamer Cosco.
Ibai, Messi fan
For the final of the Copa America, Ibai made a broadcast in which related the game and had the collaboration of pique and the Brazilian idol Ronaldo. The living had a total of 779,961 visits.
The young Basque was always a fan of Messi, but his first encounter with the idol was a little bumpy and ended up making news. Rosário and Ibai were at a sporting event and, nervous, when Messi reached out to greet him, Ibai had already turned to leave.
That’s why this week, when a photo was taken at Messi’s farewell barbecue, he posted the photo on the networks and wrote: “This time, we shook hands”. The anecdote of the dinner was told by Ibai on Twitch and this Wednesday, at the PSG stadium, he asked Messi to give details of the match. “You already know everything, you’ve told everything,” said the Argentine captain, laughing, who signed two jerseys that will be drawn among Spanish subscribers.
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