Insights from Charles Frémont
Among European football’s flagship events, the men’s 2024 UEFA Champions League Final (UCLF) not only saw Real Madrid overcome Borussia Dortmund at Wembley Stadium to secure the club’s record 15th European title but offered a unique milestone for the city of London, too, and some of the UK’s most innovative technology startups.
In the build-up to the occasion, Charles Frémont and his team within UEFA Innovation Hub (UIH) went about delivering the governing body’s inaugural UEFA Champions Innovate program, with the support of N3XT Sports; a groundbreaking initiative designed to champion entrepreneurs tasked with improving the UCLF’s social and environmental impact, as well as to leave a positive legacy within the host city.
Speaking with N3XT Sports on the UEFA Champions Innovate program, among UEFA’s unique opportunities to connect its commercial and events stakeholders, Charles explains UEFA’s role in delivering ESG efforts beyond the 90 minutes of football and its benchmarks for generating sustainable and equitable growth across the sports industry through the power of innovation.
1. What are the key goals behind the UEFA Champions Innovate program? And why is it important to bring your host-city partners on this journey?
The Innovation Hub at UEFA acts as an enabler for the organization, European football stakeholders, and stakeholders outside of football whom we interact with on a regular basis. When it comes to UEFA Champions Innovate, we saw a clear opportunity to engage with the cities which host the UCLF and, through innovation, create more value for the city, our commercial partners, and society as a whole.
With the support of UEFA’s commercial partners, and having highlighted key ESG goals important to the city of London, the program delivered three successful campaigns, led by: (1) MyEmissions, a platform which measures the environmental impact of food consumption around the event (in-stadia and in the fan zones), in partnership with Just Eat Takeaway.com; (2) Pavegen, which trialled its unique flooring technology to turn fan footsteps into electrical energy at the UCLF fan zone, in partnership with PepsiCo: and (3) Pledgeball, a platform which encourages fans to make sustainable changes to their own football experiences, in partnership with Mastercard.
We feel that our role as an enabler is to act as the “glue” between these stakeholders; helping them define a concrete challenge they want to solve, finding the parties who could contribute to or create a solution that addresses that challenge, before going to experiment with that solution, and then showcasing its results.
I think that this is perfectly aligned with the new UEFA strategy released last year – United For Success – whereby our goal is to unite communities around football. We often refer to football as a vehicle for transforming society in the best sense. Champions Innovate is one part of that and highlights the opportunities to bring together parties from across our stakeholder ecosystem who would have otherwise not have collaborated without UEFA.
2. What can we expect from UEFA Champions Innovate in 2025 and the UEFA Champions League final in Munich?
The main takeaways from the UCLF 2024 in London were very positive but, in innovation, you cannot guarantee you will achieve the same value year in year out. The fact that the program’s three startups came from the UK last year, including two from London, was not something we expected upfront. Following the successful delivery in London, the initiative has seen other London stadia and landmarks adopt the technologies on show, and will make its return for the 2025 UCLF at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena, in partnership with the City of Munich.
In Munich, this year, we have two startup projects this time round, both of which are not based in Germany. However, the startup solutions will benefit from all the exposure that the UCLF brings them and an opportunity for the City of Munich to also engage with them closely. The event will see: (1) Mastercard partner with FC Urban, a digital platform designed to make community football more accessible; and (2) adidas team up with Equip Sport, a digital solution that provides unlimited access to sports gear through sustainable and modern equipment stations.
UEFA’s promise here is to bring each stakeholder value beyond only the 90 minutes of a football match and that’s why we’re bringing our whole ecosystem, including actors from the innovation world, to add value in Munich in an area that is of great importance to the city, which is to stimulate the practice of physical activity and the adoption of an active lifestyle for its citizens.
3. How can football more broadly offer a platform for innovation? And what appetite are you seeing among UEFA’s commercial partners in this effort?
Historically, our commercial partners have looked at their relationship with UEFA to obtain visibility for their brand, whereas nowadays – with our modern commercial partnerships – they want to work more closely as an influential partner which can have a positive impact both on specific agendas within football and wider society. For example, we can tell from UEFA Champions Innovate that the brands we work with are there to create solutions that can be scalable and are not only focused on solely marketing campaigns linked to the UCLF.
Thereafter, through the UEFA Champions Innovate methods and processes, we accompany them on that journey by partnering with a startup through the cooperation of the host city. This is the area where we feel that the importance of UEFA competitions can have in society allows us to gain access to other resources, connections, or data that we wouldn’t be at ease of obtaining if it wasn’t for our positioning at the center of these various parties.
For example, this year, we’re liaising with the regional Bavarian Football Association around its grassroots development programs. We’re also engaging with them to gain a better understanding of the state of grassroots football in Bavaria, through our connection with the German Football Association (DFB). That’s another opportunity through our brand alignment with adidas to help them to find and foster relationships with local actors that they would not have been able to without UEFA.
4. Why was it important to partner N3XT Sports on the UEFA Champions Innovate program?
N3XT Sports is instrumental to making UEFA Champions Innovate a success, especially as we needed that external party to help us challenge our assumptions when we were putting the program together. When you work in an organization like ours, it’s vital to bring in alternative viewpoints and expertise to help with the strategic development of our projects.
UEFA Champions Innovate is a big ship to navigate. There are lots of different stakeholders to manage and requires a lot of reporting to stakeholders and meetings. Our team is growing within UEFA but it is nevertheless important for us to work with N3XT Sports to help drive the UEFA Champions Innovate program in the right direction. N3XT Sports is the perfect partner in helping UEFA on this journey.