On January 23rd, 2020, N3XT Sports became the Official Innovation Partner of Lega Pro, the third division of Italian professional football. In this capacity, N3XT Sports will work closely with Lega Pro leadership and contribute to identifying the most relevant innovation platforms, technologies, and trends in the football industry. As part of the collaboration, it was agreed that academic institutions would support an effort to produce research reports on innovation-related topics.
The George Washington University (GWU), based in Washington, DC, USA, has agreed to become the first academic institution to join the partnership between N3XT Sports and Lega Pro. The MS in Sport Management Program is ranked the 5th best global postgraduate sports business course according to SportBusiness, bringing strong academic credentials to the collaboration.
A student-led research team will be supervised by faculty adviser Dr. Lisa Delpy Neirotti, the Director of the MS in Sport Management Program at The George Washington University. The team will conduct a 3-month research project in collaboration with N3XT Sports, focusing on Lega Pro’s capacity to act as a central conduit providing a suite of technology and innovation services to league members. The research group will study the application of this model as it exists today both in and out of sport, and how lessons from elsewhere could apply to Lega Pro’s operational context.
Dr. Delpy Neirotti highlighted: “It is an honor to work with Lega Pro and N3XT Sports on an exciting project looking at innovative ways to enhance football clubs and leagues. This not only benefits Lega Pro, but allows our students to implement theory into practice. There are hundreds of new technologies and innovative business approaches available, but finding the right mix for maximizing efficiency and effectiveness in sport given the context of the interested party is key to success. We look forward to providing an academic perspective to support Italian football as a whole.”
Paolo Carito, Director of Strategic Development at Lega Pro shared his thoughts: “The students of the MS of The George Washington University, the 5th best post-graduate sports management master in the world, will focus their efforts on developing an ad hoc report for Lega Pro: for us, it is an honor and one more reason to be increasingly attractive to the market. The collaboration with The George Washington University, in addition to enhancing our work with N3XT Sports, allows us to take a fundamental step in our innovation process: we will understand how to effectively create and deliver a hub of services and technologies within the context of Lega Pro for the benefit of our clubs. We look forward to sharing this path of study and new ideas with the research team¨.
N3XT Sports and Lega Pro are encouraged by the participation of this top-class university in their collaboration, and will continue to announce more partnerships as they commence over the course of the year.
¨We are thrilled to include the world class profile of The George Washington University into our Football Innovation Foresight Program. We look forward to collaborating with the faculty and students who will provide a unique perspective of the highest order in researching how Lega Pro can act as a central conduit to provide a suite of technology and innovation services to league members¨, shared Mounir Zok, CEO of N3XT Sports
About The George Washington University: GW’s School of Business is an international leader in education and research, which prides itself on training future leaders to be global problem solvers and socially responsible managers. As one of the first to develop specialized curriculum in sport management, GW offers a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees with concentrations in Sport Management, as well as a Master of Science in Sport Management (MSSM) and a Sport Philanthropy Executive Certificate. Since 1991, GW has produced more than 500 alumni working in sports, including teams, leagues, agencies, media, collegiate, and Olympic sports organizations. https://business.gwu.edu/ms-sport-management
About N3XT Sports: N3XT Sports is a strategic consulting firm specialized in end-to-end innovation, digital, technology, data, and investment strategy. N3XT Sports works with international sporting organizations in football, basketball, and the Olympics, among others, to identify and address their most critical challenges, enabling them to achieve sustainable competitive advantage within the rapidly changing sports landscape. The company was born in the world’s epicenter of innovation in Silicon Valley and is headquartered in Barcelona.
About Lega Pro: Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico was born as the third professional division of Italian football on 13 July, 1959. The structure and name of the league have changed several times over the course of its existence, establishing its present format as of the 2014-2015 season with the name “Lega Pro”. The league includes 60 teams distributed across all areas of the national territory, representing a strong social network for the continued development of the country. The league has a reach to 17 million fans, with the 60 teams competing in 1,140 regular season matches and 41 playoff matches, making Lega Pro one of the biggest sports leagues in the world.