The digital transformation of Spanish football was given a significant boost in December 2021 when LaLiga agreed a €1.994 billion investment deal with private equity firm CVC Capital to help modernize its professional club ecosystem. With the exception of Athletic Club, FC Barcelona, and Real Madrid, who opted out of the venture, the cash injection was allocated to help with player signings, debt reduction, and infrastructure upgrades for the agreement’s LaLiga Impulso member clubs, including support across their respective digital transformation journeys.
LaLiga, the organizer of Spanish football’s top two divisions, has in recent years established itself as a bona fide digital and technology solutions provider, having invested heavily in its own digital infrastructure while helping to raise digital literacy levels among its stakeholder clubs. Whereas Spanish football giant Real Madrid is ranked the highest for its data maturity and FC Barcelona is known for its diverse digital product offering (see the LaLiga Digital Transformation League Table below), each of the league’s clubs has room to grow its digital and data capabilities, according to proprietary N3XT Sports research, including the consolidation of their respective first-party fan data.
For example, fewer than half (35 percent) of LaLiga top-flight clubs score highly for their digital product portfolios (80 percent or higher), whereas Real Madrid is the only club to score 90 percent for its data-collection capability. This is primarily due to the club’s universal Madrista web login, which enables fans to access every single one of the club’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) touchpoints, including the dedicated Real Madrid mobile app, ecommerce and ticketing, as well as the RM Play over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform.
By comparison, while FC Barcelona is the only club to collect data via all of these verticals too, including the Barça One streaming service, the Catalan club doesn’t offer access to its data via a single sign-on (SSO), across every one of their data touchpoints, which does not yet feature its official club quiz or another fantasy-gaming product. Elsewhere, Atletico Madrid and Valencia are the only two other clubs to score 70 percent or more for their first-party data collection, alongside Real Madrid (90 percent), whereas seven in ten LaLiga clubs score below the league’s average data-collection score.
N3XT Sports research is carried out with the sole purpose of highlighting the benchmarks and opportunities for sports properties to digitalize and follows a unique methodology focused on the breadth of each entity’s digital portfolio, their ability to collect first-party fan data, and social media presence. Each category offers a maximum of ten available points (see graphic below), while the organization’s overall score represents an average of its three category scores converted into percentages. Download our latest industry and market reports to gain more insight into how we assess sports organizations via these three pillars.
DIGITAL ASSESSMENT | LALIGA CLUB FAN-DATA COLLECTION MATURITY WEAKER THAN EUROPEAN COUNTERPARTS
Albeit every LaLiga top-flight club collects first-party fan data, with all or the majority doing so via a website (100 percent), dedicated mobile app (95 percent), ecommerce (85 percent), and ticketing (85 percent), the clubs assessed score a lower overall average for their digital and data maturity levels compared to clubs in the Premier League and Serie A. According to our research, this is due to the fact that far fewer LaLiga clubs own an OTT streaming offering (35 percent) and fantasy-gaming product (10 percent), while even fewer collect first-party fan data via these platforms.
Meanwhile, the findings show that only 20 percent of LaLiga clubs collect first-party fan data via an SSO, compared to 75 percent in the Premier League and 35 percent in Serie A. This is pertinent since the majority of clubs have integrated a web login (80 percent), though they have yet to consolidate their data collection across every single touchpoint. Considering that the majority of LaLiga clubs already own a diverse D2C portfolio and the infrastructure to centralize fan data, this presents an opportunity for the league and its clubs to heighten their digital and data maturity levels without necessarily making major changes to their technological infrastructure.
Furthermore, LaLiga’s club ecosystem is primed to augment its data-collection capability via video and gaming, while its clubs are also well-placed to centralize the fan experience via web and mobile by introducing a truly universal login for its D2C experiences. To demonstrate the league’s popularity, 90 percent of LaLiga top-fight clubs have accrued more than 3 million cross-channel social media followers, with Real Madrid and FC Barcelona each respectively attracting more than 400 million and 350 million social fans, highlighting a strong appetite for digital content among Spanish football’s online following and setting a benchmark for European club football wholesale.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Whereas each club implements its own digital strategy, there are no digital transformation processes that are ever exactly the same. However, as our research highlights, there are opportunities for Spanish club football to maximize its audience acquisition by streamlining the fan journey and consolidating the collection of fan data. This approach would aim to optimize dataflow and management inside each club’s data lake, while laying the foundations for further audience acquisition and subscriber growth, key components for commercialization within sports.
Rest assured, digital and data disparities exist across every league, including LaLiga, as well as the potential for rights holders and sports organizations to expand their D2C offerings within an omnichannel experience. Our clients are exploring ways to do this within their own digital ecosystems so as to help convert subscribers into customers. By carrying out an initial assessment of their digital capabilities and how they are used to collect fan data, N3XT Sports provides its clients with an end-to-end digital transformation service, including strategy and operational support in addition to the development and implementation of each client’s digital roadmap.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve 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.