It’s no secret that the UEFA Champions League (UCL) is among the most-watched sporting events on the planet. European football’s continental club competitions are vehicles for growing the men’s and women’s games and offer platforms to introduce digital innovations that benefit the wider football ecosystem and can be tailored to the sports industry at large.
The UEFA Innovation Hub, launched in 2018, actively pursues new technology partnerships that are capable of enhancing its competitions delivery, direct-to-consumer (D2C) media production, and stakeholder engagement. Speaking to N3XT Sports, the manager of the UEFA Innovation Hub, Charles Frémont, touched on the role of strategic development to maximize the potential of the football market to innovate at a national level.
“When it comes to innovation, [organizations] need to keep in mind that it is not only about adapting and implementing new technologies, but about working on the culture as well,” Frémont says. “Innovation starts with people who have the right mindset. Football organizations need to focus on adopting an innovation culture and identifying new ways of collaborating.”
Inside football’s digitalization, among the organizations setting benchmarks are the clubs themselves. Speaking to fcbusiness, N3XT Sports Chief Executive (CEO), Mounir Zok, explains how fan data is supporting football on its own digital transformation journey and why a data-led approach “should focus on the organization’s unique requirements”.
“When developing a digital transformation strategy, you must first establish and understand your corporate objectives,” Zok expands. “Only then can you establish where the company can improve operationally from a digital perspective.”
Football’s digital transformation has set the benchmark for the industry. To celebrate football’s continued modernization, our consulting team has taken the time to assess some of the biggest clubs in Europe, including the past three men’s UCL winners, highlighting how sports properties can take different digital approaches and drive fan engagement in innovative ways
BAYERN MUNICH | 2020 CHAMPIONS
Among the German football giant’s digital partnerships, Adobe helps create personalized experiences for Bayern Munich fans while also providing support on the club’s internal processes. With the adoption of Adobe’s cloud-based services and customer data platform (CDP), the six-times UCL winner develops fan profiles to determine how its subscribers interact with the Bayern brand and tailor their interactions with the club online and inside its Allianz Arena home stadium.
As part of a sophisticated fan engagement strategy, the Bavarian outfit enables fans to access the club’s digital product portfolio via a single sign-on (SSO), including FC Bayern.tv, the club’s ticketing and merchandise platforms, as well as the dedicated FC Bayern and Allianz Arena mobile apps. The latter includes a built-in “switch” which allows users to swap between matchday and non-matchday modes, as well as a personalized user wallet, interactive stadium map, digital parking, plus individual subscription settings for push notifications.
CHELSEA | 2021 CHAMPIONS
One thing that all the top teams in Europe share is their focus on fan engagement. It is no different for Chelsea, having entered a seven-year partnership in April with technology sports and entertainment firm, Tempus Ex Machina, to develop innovative ways to engage the club’s fan base. Celebrating the collaboration, Chelsea co-owner and Chairman, Todd Boehly, says that “our fans deserve the best technology” and there would be more to share “in the coming months”.
The club has proven to be an innovator over the years, having previously launched several freemium health and fitness mobile apps, prior to Boehly’s takeover in May 2022. Among its digital product portfolio, the club continues to update and add features to The 5th Stand app, Chelsea’s official mobile platform, which provides live matchday news, updates, and commentary via its Match Centre, exclusive box-sets featuring Chelsea’s greatest moments, and live streams featuring press conferences and post-match reactions.
REAL MADRID | 2022 CHAMPIONS
Real Madrid is revered as much for its digital capabilities at the club’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium as its success on the hallowed ground. The LaLiga powerhouse signed a partnership with Microsoft in November 2014 to accelerate the organization’s digital transformation. At the time, the club’s President, Florentio Pérez, outlined the need to “keep pace with the new times”. In 2023, the 14-times UCL champions continue to look to the future of their stadium and business.
According to the club’s Chief Transformation Officer (CTO), Michael Sutherland, digital transformation “is really about the ability to continually adapt to the changes that are happening all around us”, adding: “We have a comprehensive data platform, and one of the challenges is to ensure we’re using that data in a way that brings more value to our fans. Connecting that infrastructure into the business area is one of the biggest challenges for transformation.”
The club’s evolution will see the transformation of the Bernabéu into a entertainment district as part of the club’s ongoing stadium redevelopment. The upgrade will see Real Madrid’s technology partner Cisco deploy what has been described as the largest Wi-Fi 6 stadium network in Europe, expanding the club’s data-collection and fan engagement capabilities. Among its digital assets, the club caters a wide range of user platforms, including the Real Madrid Next innovation hub, Real Madrid TV streaming channel, and dedicated mobile app.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Owning a diverse digital inventory provides a variety of touchpoints with which a sports organization is able to connect with the fan and collect their user data. As with all privately-owned entities, the digital maturity of elite football clubs varies greatly, and is distinguished as much by the entity’s capability to personalize the user experience across multiple platforms as the diversity of its digital products portfolio.
As demonstrated by many of European football’s digitally sophisticated clubs, either by providing access to multiple digital touchpoints via a SSO or integrating fan experiences via a centralized platform that requires a unique user login, fan-data collection is a fundamental tool within a sports property’s digital infrastructure, and one that serves the management of first-party fan data.
Further afield, outside European football’s elite, the industry is faced with barriers when exploring its own digital transformation for growing and retaining audiences. As a result, while we’re seeing sections of the industry begin to hone their first-party data collection, the industry must continue to educate itself on the importance of data governance, and simplifying one’s data framework, in order to optimize data capture across their digital platforms without inheriting data silos.
Our mission at N3XT Sports is to accompany organizations on their digital transformation journey,” Zok explains. “We are witnessing sports properties adopting a more hands-on and comprehensive approach to enhance the user experience. This involves proactively embracing a digital product portfolio that not only increases revenue through fan engagement but also cuts operational costs.”
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement digital strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To learn more about how digital transformation can support the growth of your organization, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.