Gerard Romero

In October 2021, Gerard Romero switched off the red microphone at RAC1 after fourteen years covering the daily life of Camp Nou. He was taken off first-team match coverage and preferred to leave rather than accept a comfortable corner in the newsroom. He set up a camera in front of a white wall in his apartment in Vilanova i la Geltrú.

Nobody saw such a transformation coming.

Veteran columnists spoke of decline, and he responded by launching marathon live broadcasts. Scoop-hunting journalism gave way to a vaudeville where exclusive transfer news shared airtime with ritual dances in front of bewildered soccer players.

The Eviction from the Booth

Romero was born in Vilanova i la Geltrú in December 1985. He grew up glued to his transistor radio and spent his youth in press booths following FC Barcelona across half of Europe. On programs such as El primer toc or the morning show Fricandó matiner, he learned the timing of comedy and the tension of live broadcasting.

But mainstream radio imposes constraints that suffocate anyone trying to break the formal mold. When management decided to pull him from match coverage in 2021, the split was abrupt and there was no going back.

The silence lasted just one week.

Instead of sending résumés to other conventional networks, he decided to broadcast under the Jijantes FC brand on a platform built for video games. At first, it was just a handful of people in the chat. But during the summer 2022 transfer window, he managed to draw more than 150,000 simultaneous viewers, all waiting for him to drop an exclusive on Robert Lewandowski while police sirens and festival bells sounded in the background.

The split screen and pure spectacle

The media turning point came in front of Luis Suárez. During a live video call with the Uruguayan striker, a paid subscription alert went off, and Romero jumped out of his chair to perform a haka in front of the lens. The player's stunned expression went viral worldwide, and the magazine Panenka honored that clip with its post of the year award for 2022.

Many analysts were outraged. Romero didn't pretend to be solemn or ask permission from the gatekeepers of news convention.

And the gamble paid off.

In January 2023, former soccer player Gerard Piqué recruited him as president of one of the founding clubs of the Kings League. That tournament turned soccer into a fast-paced spectacle with secret cards and a giant die. So Romero took on the role of the villain, protesting every play to the referee with theatrical outbursts. In 2024, he co-wrote the book Kings League: La guía oficial with other creators to document the inner workings of that mass phenomenon.

The assault on traditional broadcasting

Every vertical-video showman eventually eyes the old living room set. In 2024, the public platform 3Cat tapped him to host the game show On és la pasta, and two years later the regional television network gave him the prime-time Thursday slot.

TV3 premiered its nightly format Fanzone in January 2026, recorded live from the stage of the Teatro Victoria on Barcelona's Paral·lel strip. The show tried to bring the frenzy of chat and disco synthesizers to an audience used to laid-back irony. Critics were merciless toward the concept, and the premiere episode drew a modest 7.8% audience share in a time slot meant to lead the night.

The set cost thousands of euros, but viewers preferred to change the channel.