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Followers of Mexican Twitch streamer Samy “Rivers” Rivera are no strangers to the unfortunate events that seem to happen wherever she goes. One of her biggest powers, according to Twitch lore, is the ability to make the soccer team she’s cheering for lose their games. It therefore came as no shock last Sunday when Rivera announced on social media that she had missed her train from Valencia to Barcelona because she went to the wrong station. What was surprising, however, was that hundreds of miles away, I missed my train to Barcelona, as well.
I was traveling to Barcelona from Madrid for a chance to interview Rivera about her upcoming fight in La Velada del Año III, or “The Night of the Year III.” Organized by megapopular Spanish streamer Ibai Llanos, the event is a streamer vs. streamer boxing match and was the most-viewed event on Twitch last year. On the morning of my trip, something was apparently going on in Spain’s capital city—a frequent venue for races and demonstrations, among other events—which closed many of the streets around the train station. The closures forced my taxi driver to essentially drive in circles, and I didn’t make it to the station in time.
I ended up getting on the next train out. In spite of the drawback, a small part of me thought it was kind of funny. I felt like Rivera’s bad luck even extended to those who were going to see her.
“I’m a magnet for misfortune,” Rivera said on Twitter on Sunday when asked why these kinds of things always happen to her. “That’s the way God made me.”
Where she is not unfortunate, though, is online. With more than four million Twitch followers, the 24-year-old from Monterrey, Nuevo León is one of Mexico’s biggest streaming stars and is known by fans as “la patrona,” which means “the boss” in Spanish. Rivera streams herself doing a variety of activities, from playing video games like Rust and making crafts to cooking and watching soccer.
According to Streams Charts, she is currently the most popular female Twitch streamer in any language by hours watched this year, with 8.88 million hours notched as of May, and is the second-most popular female streamer on any platform. There aren’t many streamers who’ve achieved the kind of success Rivera has so quickly, Streams Charts told Gizmodo, which makes her Twitch story even more remarkable.
Rivera has managed to shoot to the top of the streaming charts in just two and a half years—she started to stream during the pandemic—and her growth shows no signs of stopping. Besides fighting against Spanish TikToker Marina Rivers (La Rivers) in La Velada del Año, she also leads two soccer teams in Gerard Piqué’s Kings League and Queens League, a pair of videogame-style indoor soccer competitions tailor-made for streaming on Twitch.
Rivera, a passionate soccer fan, enthusiastically cheers on her male and female teams every weekend, both of which are named “PIO FC,” and inevitably gets blamed by fans for jinxing them when they lose. Fun fact: The team name itself is a nod to her community, which she affectionately calls her “baby chicks.” In Spanish, the word “pío” is used to describe the sounds birds make when they chirp.
Even though I was traveling to Barcelona to talk to her, it wasn’t guaranteed that I would get an interview. Rivera was scheduled to stream one of PIO FC’s games live at the Cupra Arena, the small stadium where Piqué’s tournament is held, and would be shooting her first penalty kick during the game. When I got there, Kings League officials weren’t even sure she was going to make it because she had missed the train to Barcelona and was heading there by car. I had faith, though. After traveling thousands of miles from Mexico to Spain, there was little chance the streamer would miss the chance to watch PIO FC.
Part of my faith came from the fact that I’m a fan of Rivera’s work, so I think I can say that means I know her a bit. I grew up in Brownsville, Texas, a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, and watching her streams makes feels like I’m back there, listening to my mom’s wacky friends scream profanities like “chingada madre!” or call each other “pendeja.” When you watch Rivera’s streams, it feels like she puts her heart into everything she does, especially when it involves her community. Given that PIO FC is one of the biggest things she shares with her fans—her weekend game streams regularly bring in tens of thousands of viewers—I knew that Rivera would do everything possible to come watch her team play in person.
I was right to believe. Rivera made it to the Cupra Arena with just enough time to chat with her team and put her soccer cleats on. I approached her right before she went into the stadium, telling her I was a reporter who had traveled to Madrid to interview her about her upcoming Velada fight. She said thank you and, as she hurried toward her streaming booth, told me we would chat after her team played.
Over the next hour and a half, Rivera’s team won, although she missed her penalty kick (she would redeem herself on Monday in the Queens League). PIO FC celebrated, and one player threw her over his shoulder and carried her on the field in celebration. Once the sun started to go down and I got kicked out of the stadium with the rest of the day’s spectators, I started to get nervous. What if she said it was too late to do an interview?
As I crossed and uncrossed my fingers, Rivera popped out the stadium’s front door, flanked by her boxing trainer and her videographer. It briefly looked like someone in her entourage would pull her away and lead her somewhere else, but then I heard her say, “I have to do an interview.” She looked out into the small crowd nearby, where I was waiting, and waved when she saw me. After she took pictures with fans and members of her team, she came over to chat.
Speaking in the dark with only a bit of light from some nearby lamp posts, we talked about why she decided to participate in the Velada, what makes the event unique, and what role her Twitch community has played throughout the process. Rivera was open and friendly, clearly excited about getting in the ring in a few days and putting on a show for her loved ones and her community. On a personal level, she told me she was proud of how far someone like her, a self-described person “who sits in their room all day and eats junk food,” had come.
“I’ve proven to myself that if I put my mind to something, I can do it,” Rivera told me. “I can be disciplined, and I can do things the way they’re meant to be done, even if at first I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to.”
Rivers vs. La Rivers is the second scheduled fight in La Velada del Año III on Saturday. The event is free to watch on Llanos’ Twitch channel, and the livestream will begin at 11 a.m. ET.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Gizmodo: What motivated you to sign up for the Velada and how did you react when they accepted you as a participant?
Rivera: I think it was two things. First, I felt like I needed to do some exercise and be more disciplined because I’ve always had unhealthy eating habits. I hadn’t exercised in a long time, and I thought, “If they don’t make me do it, I’m not going to do it.” It was that, and my friends in general. Ari [Gameplays], who participated last year, told me it was an incredible experience and that I should live it.
So, it was a mix of those two things. I wanted to be disciplined and consistent in something, and my friends supported me and told me it was really cool. I also wanted to do it. When they invited me, the truth is that at first, I said, “Will I be able to do it? Will I really be able to commit to training and eating well for three or four months?” I doubted for a bit. But then after thinking about for a while I told myself, “How could I not be able to do it? I have to be able to do it. I’m just going to be doing this for a while, and that’s that.”
Gizmodo: Before watching Ari fight and participating yourself, were you familiar with the Velada? Had you seen it before?
Rivera: No, I didn’t watch the first Velada [in 2021]. I hadn’t entered the world of Twitch yet and I didn’t exist on social media. I learned about it during the second Velada, which is the one Ari participated in.
Gizmodo: When Ari participated and you learned about the Velada for the first time, what was your impression?
Rivera: I actually came to Spain to watch the Velada in person. I think it was the first streamer-run event I saw with an audience, and it made an impression on me, to tell you the truth. I was blown away because there were so many people inside the event, outside, everywhere. The public was chanting the streamers’ names. There were people who were very into the streaming world, and I hadn’t ever seen an event like that in person. It was very impressive and very cool.
Gizmodo: For a lot of online communities, the Velada is super important because they love to see their streamers train and prepare themselves for the event. Did you consider how your community would react when you decided to participate?
Rivera: Yeah, in fact, a big part of why I decided to participate, which I forgot to mention earlier, was my community. I wanted to give them something different, show them this process, and show them that someone who sits in their room all day and eats junk food can get up, do exercise, follow a diet, and be disciplined. I thought a lot about their reaction. I knew they would be divided and that some would say, “Wow, that’s so cool,” while others woul Source: Gizmodo