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Watch: WFS Live Day 2 – Takeaways and Highlights
Watch: WFS Live Day 2 – Takeaways and Highlights 598 335 WFS Live

Day 2 of our second edition of WFS Live saw leaders from across the industry discuss how sport’s properties need to rethink both competitions and business models in order to adapt to new technology and consumer’s changing habits.

In the day’s closing panel, the Chairman and Founder of Aser Ventures, Andrea Radrizzani, and the CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, Scott O’Neil, agreed that the current distribution model is not matching the demand and the opportunity that technology gives to reach community, to reach niche, to reach a bigger audience, to reach people at different prices and different power consumptions.

 

“SOCIAL MEDIA IS GOOD, BUT ACTIONS ARE MORE IMPORTANT”
Lisa Zimouche – Freestyle footballer

“Authenticity is important, being genuine. If you support something, if you want to speak about a social issue, it has to be authentic because people will feel it. And action is very important. Being on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook is important, having a platform to speak is important, but action to me means more than just words. Social media is good, but action is even more important.”

“THERE IS A HUGE OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE THE MONEY FANS SPEND ON MATCH-DAY”
Maheta Molango – Principal, 3MS Consulting

“I think there is a huge opportunity in Europe in terms of increasing the amount of money fans spend on match-day. There is a huge gap between what fans spend here in Europe and what they do in the US. For me, the starting point is that if I want them to spend more money, I need to know much more about them. The digital, today, allows you to know who they are, the preferences they have, how they behave.”

“FC BARCELONA GENERATES MORE THAN 120 TERAS OF ESSENTIAL VIDEO CONTENT EVERY YEAR”
Imanol Eguskiza – Innovation Manager, FC Barcelona

“FC Barcelona is generating more than 120 Teras of essential video data every year. For the last four years, Pixellot has been supplying us with top level technology enabling us not only to centralize and manage all the video content, avoiding any loss of such a huge amount of data, but also automatically triggering 16 unattended recording camera systems that we have deployed in all our fields. These systems are capturing every day all the games from the first football team to the youngest academy teams and the various sport sections.”

“NEARLY 40% OF GEN Z’S SAY THEY ARE INFLUENCED BY SOCIAL MEDIA IN THEIR PURCHASES”
Justin Toman – Head of Sports Marketing, PepsiCo

“Nearly 40% of Gen Z’s are influenced by social media in their purchases, that’s what’s truly driving the decisions and the eyeballs of these consumers. We are pivoting all our marketing initiatives to make sure we are accounting for that and really making that a focal point. Any campaign or any platform we do we start planning them by saying ‘how is this going to be consumed digitally? How can we bring consumers and fans closer to this great event that not everybody can come to, but how can we reach millions of people by giving them digital content?”

“SPONSORS ARE ASKING FOR VALUES”
Ramón Alarcón – CBO, Real Betis

“You can buy advertising wherever you want, but in an institution like Real Betis, with a lot of engagement and a lot of loyalty, we have to generate engagement with some values that create a link between us and the community… Some years ago, sponsors were asking for digital assets, but now they are asking for values, to create a story.”

“THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING WILL BE FUELED BY LIVE GAMBLING”
Juan Carlos Rodríguez – President of Sports, Univision

“Data will be the core engine of growth in the future. If you take into account the capability to personalize the broadcast, plus the zero-latency of the 5G, plus the data generated by companies like Driblab and by the audience, you can create a new business that is live gambling during the games. The future of the growth broadcasting and the value of rights and players will be fueled by this new revenue stream.”

“INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL IS THE REAL WEAKNESS OF THE CURRENT CALENDAR”
Peter Hutton – Director, Sports Partnerships, Facebook

“One of the things that I find really frustrating with the football calendar at the moment is the interruption of the leagues’ season for the international weekend, which doesn’t feel meaningful… Putting all the International football together in the summer, as the World Cup does perfectly, is a great way of building a story, of having something that sponsors and broadcasters can get behind. The current model where you drop in a couple of games is the real weakness of the current calendar. I love international football, but it’s got to have context and a story, and it doesn’t feel like it has on international weekends.”

“WOMEN’S FOOTBALL WILL BE ONE OF THE BIGGEST SPORTS THAT THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN”
Luis Vicente – Group CEO, Eleven Sports

“Today you have a massive amount of young girls choosing football as their preferred sport, and one of the things they like is that it has a much more open environment than the men’s version of the game. That’s definitely a massive opportunity. Commercial partners, broadcasters, all the big weaponry that made the men’s game what it is, is very interested in supporting women’s football. If we have the right strategy, this will be one of the biggest sports that the world has ever seen in the years to come.”

“DATA AND CONTENT WILL LEAD US INTO THE NEXT DECADE”
Scott O’Neil – CEO, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment

“As we think about how we build for the future, we need to focus on data and content. Those are the two keys that will lead us into the next decade or so. You can add on a third leg of that stool, which is what we call ‘data seen direct-to-consumer’ and the capability to actually find new consumers. We as a sports industry, in particular the team space, we need to get a lot better, a lot quicker.”

“WE NEED TO REALLY DISRUPT THE DISTRIBUTION MODEL”
Andrea Radrizzani – Founder and Chairman, Aser Ventures

“I strongly believe that, on the sports side, distribution, at the moment with the traditional pay TV, is not matching the demand and the opportunity that technology gives to reach community, to reach niche, to reach a bigger audience, to reach people at different prices and different power consumptions. We need to redesign the distribution model that has been active and been around for 20 years, because now I think we are missing opportunities to create more various rights holders”.

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Watch: WFS Live Day 1 – Takeaways and highlights
Watch: WFS Live Day 1 – Takeaways and highlights 573 314 WFS Live

WFS LIVE kicked off today with six insightful panel discussions that saw leaders from across the global sports industry reflect on how the different stakeholders can contribute to making football a more purpose driven sport and business. As Common Goal Founder Jürgen Griesbeck pointed out, the industry will necessarily need to shift “from a charity and giving back perspective on contribution to a DNA  perspective” in order to engage with modern fans, who according to different experts “vote with their values.”

“If you misalign with their values, whether it’s all the safety values for athletes that you’re not looking at or it’s social injustice that you’re not addressing or it’s gender inequality, there’s a whole list of things,” former olympic champion and CEO of Sports Innovation Lab Angela Ruggiero said, “there’s a misalignment and these fluid and more fickle fans may not buy your tickets or watch your content.”

“LET’S FACE IT: FOOTBALL DOESN’T HAVE A GOOD IMAGE”
Jacques-Henri Eyraud – CEO, Olympique Marseille

“Let’s face it: football doesn’t have a good image. Football is the universal sport, the number 1 source of entertainment across the world, but I don’t think we have a great image. We certainly need to improve it and that should be very high on the agenda, on our list of priorities and even more so after the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“IT’S NOT HARSH TO SAY FOOTBALL HAS BEEN LIVING IN A BUBBLE”
Jürgen Griesbeck – Co-Founder, Common Goal

“It’s not too harsh to say that football has been living in a bubble, where it didn’t have to question itself too much because despite the financial crisis or the crisis in reputation of some of its institutions, it just has continued to grow year over year. Maybe now it’s the time for football to accept that it can play a leading role, and not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it is the smart thing to do, and move from a charity and giving back perspective on contribution to more of a DNA  perspective.”

“WOMEN ARE DRIVING SUCCES IN SPORTS”
Lisa Baird – Commissioner, NWSL

“I do think that legislation and quotas can play a role for countries that need to come a little quicker, but I also think that we should be equally talking about how women are driving success in sports. That’s happening now, we don’t have to say: ‘put us there because we are women’, but ‘put us there because we are successful’. That’s a new part of the conversation that I think we should all be incredibly proud of.”

“WOMEN’S FOOTBALL REPRESENTS ALL THE VALUES THAT FOOTBALL WAS INITIALLY MEANT TO BE” 
Ebrü Koksal – Chair, Women in Football

“Women’s football is like a blank white page. On one hand, men’s football can be extremely crowded in terms of the sponsor’s ability to activate the sponsorship rights and the message that they are giving, but women’s football still represents predominantly all the values that football was initially meant to be. It’s more about family values, more about competition and technical abilities on the pitch. That’s why brands like Barclays, Visa, Nike or Budweiser, who saw this significant opportunity, are benefiting from the first-comers advantage.”

“AS A PERSON WITH INTELECTUAL DISABILITY, I’VE BEEN ISOLATED ALL MY LIFE”
Loretta Claiborne – Chief Inspiration Officer; Vice Chair, Board of Directors, Special Olympics

“I was always told to shut up, we don’t want to hear from you. They used the “r” word, which is “retard”. We don’t use that anymore, we use intelectual disability because first of all we are people first. When I look back at my life and I think about today, this whole thing with Covid-19, being a person with intelectual disability, we’ve been isolated all our lives.”

“ATHLETES DON’T HAVE THE OBLIGATION TO SPEAK UP”
Arianna Criscione – Player, Paris Saint-Germain

“I don’t think any athlete has the obligation to speak up if that’s not what they believe or that’s not their platform or if they don’t know where their voice comes from. As an athlete, your obligation is to play your sport or to perform the way you want. Any person, if you have a platform that you want to use in order for social change because it’s something you truly believe in, then I think you should step up and speak, but I don’t think that just because you are an athlete you should step up.”

“CSR CAN NO LONGER BE A TICK BOX EXERCISE ON AN ANNUAL REPORT”
Charlotte Kirby – Vice President Global Strategic Relations, Sales Force

“CSR can no longer be a tick box exercise on an annual report. I’ve heard so many people say things like ‘you can’t just paint fences and call that giving back’, ‘you can’t just put your name on a football shirt and say that that is part of your philanthropic giving’. Society has moved on from that.”

“IF YOU MISALIGN WITH THE VALUES OF FLUID FANS, THEY MAY NOT BUY YOUR TICKETS”
Angela Ruggiero – CEO of Sports Innovation Lab

“One key component of a fluid fan is that they vote with their values. If you misalign with their values, whether it’s all the safety values for athletes that you’re not looking at or it’s social injustice that you’re not addressing or it’s gender inequality, there’s a whole list of things. There’s a misalignment and these fluid and more fickle fans may not buy your tickets or watch your content.”

“WE NEED TO CHANGE THE IMAGE THAT ATHLETES ARE JUST ROBOTS”
Johan Djourou – Footballer, FC Nordsjælland

“This image that athletes are just robots and that they are there to win the points or the league but they don’t have feelings. That’s totally wrong because at the end of the day we play with our emotions. When we are on the pitch, we play with what we have in our guts and in our hearts, we give everything to try to win and to make the people that follow us happy, so we definitely have hearts and feelings.”

“COMMON GOAL GIVES ME A DEEPER MEANING OF WHAT BEING A FOOTBALL PLAYER IS”
Juan Mata – Footballer, Manchester United / Co-Founder, Common Goal

“I have been lucky enough to play for a number of years as a professional football player and win trophies and live incredible experiences thanks to football. But to be able to be a part of a movement which is trying to use the power of football as a social tool for change, I feel that it’s creating a legacy, that after we stop playing football we will feel proud that we started a way in which people can actually help. It gives me an incredible sense of pride, of hope and of passion for what I do on the pitch, but specially off the pitch.”

“PURPOSE MARKETING HAS THE POWER TO INSPIRE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION”
Dan Burrows – Senior Director, EMEA | Social & Community Impact, Nike

“It’s important that we recognise the role that purpose marketing or messaging has to inspire people to take actions. I think there is a really genuine role that purpose marketing can lead. I think that has to go hand in hand, as it goes at Nike, with direct investment into communities and it really being focused on impact and really looking to measure that impact as well.”

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Day 4 highlights: Simon Oliveira, Al Guido, Joe de Sena, the WFS StartCup and more
Day 4 highlights: Simon Oliveira, Al Guido, Joe de Sena, the WFS StartCup and more 1097 521 WFS Live

Day 4 of WFS Live powered by R9 saw leading social media experts discuss why athletes are becoming powerful influencers and why this trend is only just starting. Successful entrepreneurs like Alejandro Agag (Extreme E) or Joe de Sena (Spartan Race) exchanged views on what football can learn from other sports, whilst Barça’s Marta Plana and Pixellot CEO Alon Werber addressed the crucial role of technology in the “New Normal”. Plus, we had the semi-finals of the WFS StartCup by GSIC.

Simon Oliveira (KIN Partners) on who can become the LeBron James of football:
“If you look at the audiences of Messi, Ronaldo or Neymar I think they have the power of a Ferrari in their hands but they’re still learning to drive. They have enormous potential, some individually have more than the combined audience of The New York Times, The Washington Post and the LA Times put together. However, I think where LeBron was very clever was he very much identified what the content slate would be from his perspective. It was built around American black culture and things that he was passionate about. I think any footballer going to this are needs to be very clear as to what their identity is and what the content stream and platform should be for.”

Al Guido (49ers) on the need to embrace user-generated content
“We have 20 people on our content team capturing 49ers and other sports every single day. However, we have 10 million fans all over the world capturing 49ers content, so you have to embrace it. User-generated content is just another form of our 49ers Studio team. Last year, Live Nation and Ticketmaster had more reaction for tickets going on sale for the NFL season based on user-generated 30-second advertisements versus studio-recorded production quality, because people want to be in the action, they want to see what happens there.”
Alon Werber (Pixellot) on how automation and AI can save clubs post-Covid
“A lot of clubs in the world live on venue tickets and are going to lack revenue streams in the coming season, in which there are going to be severe restrictions on stadium attendance. Bringing quick and low cost production to allow them to continue connecting with their fans via a subscription model or through sponsorship deals can be almost a matter of life or death for these clubs in the coming season. At Pixellot we’ve been engaging AI and computer vision to film, produce and stream completely automatic games for 4 years and today we are installed in around 8,000 fields of 16 different sports. Last January we were producing live 100,000 hours of life events.”
Ricardo Dias (Ambev) on bringing content to people’s homes
“It’s time to stay at home. We are taking the opportunity to create new occasions for consumption. We are investing in e-commerce, lives and bringing them to people’s homes. It was not part of the plan, but it will certainly add a lot of value in the future.”
Diogo Kotscho (Orlando City SC) on creating and engaging digital communities

“At Orlando City, what worked was creating and engaging an entire community. As a result, today it is easier to see Orlando City flags, shirts and stickers around than Orlando Magic, the traditional NBA team and more related to tourism. We brought Kaká in the first year, which was important to start our journey with the fans.”

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Day 2 Highlights: Asian football, investments, gaming, data and more!
Day 2 Highlights: Asian football, investments, gaming, data and more! 1239 567 WFS Live

Day 2 of WFS Live powered by R9 saw international leading experts engage in fruitful discussions around a wide variety of topics spanning from Asia’s journey te become a global football powerhouse to how Covid-19 will impact investment flows and reshape sponsoring strategies, the need for all sports to have a gaming strategy or the increasingly crucial role of data in all areas of the industry. Here are some of the main highlights:

Assia Grazioli-Venier (Muse Capital and Juventus), on clubs realising they truly are lifestyle brands:
“I think teams need to realise that they truly are a lifestyle brand. Ten years ago, or longer than that, if you said that teams were selling merchandise and selling mugs and pins then you would have said that was crazy. Now, it’s full speed ahead. It’s a strong source of revenue. So, there are still a lot of new opportunities that we can explore.”

George Pyne (Bruin Capital) on why sports will continue to be a great investment:
“Over the long run, sports is going to be a great investment. Long term, there’s nothing like sports. Sports represent who you are and what you stand for and your values. So, there’s nothing like it. Sports brings people together during difficult times for positive outcomes. So, that’s an incredible outcome in a world that is going to be more fragmented from a media standpoint. Sports is one of the few things that you can invest behind that gets you big and passionate audiences.”

The

Eelco van der Noll (AB InBev), on sponsors demanding more access to content:
“The whole media rights is going to be reset, not only because of new players coming on the scene, like streaming platforms or social media platforms, but also because sponsors like us are demaning more access to content that historically has been reserved or protected by broadcasters. When we work with the likes of LaLiga or the Premier League, as sponsors we expect more access to content. I think that was already in process, but it is being accelerated by this pandemic.”

Ralf Reichert (ESL Gaming), on why every sport needs a gaming strategy:
“All sports need a gaming strategy. It needs to be very varied from the center of what they’re doing. It could be archery, it could be golf, it could be football, but every sport needs a game. Everyone who went to this (the Covid-19 lockdown) prepared had a good outcome. Most of the racing stuff went to online competitions pretty fast… Gaming was the big winner of this and eSports is kind of the logical follower.”

Ashraf Adam (Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium) on the inefficient nature of stadiums:
“Stadiums in nature are inefficient because they cost a lot of money to build maintain and operate. We need to offer activities around them and we’re looking at renewables. What was seen as radical before is now possible.”

Esteban Granero (Olocip), on the crucial role of data in football:
“I think data is part of the daily life of football clubs. I also think that we still have a long path ahead, specially in terms of education. I think that, from a conceptual perspective, it’s important that clubs have professionals capable of understanding the potential of data. Not only to know what sort of data is available, but also how to process it in order for the team to benefit the most.”

Monica Esperidião (Women Experience Sports) on the need to think of women’s football as a business:
“We have to think about women’s football as a business. And we need more people with an interest in women’s football in organizations, clubs, everywhere.”

Mauro Silva (Paulista Football Federation) on the need to promote clubs in foreign markets: 
“As we do not sell our international TV rights, it is difficult to promote our clubs in the entire world. We are stuck, without visibility. This process took place in Spain, it transformed all Spanish football and can also transform Brazilian football.”
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