Sports Marketing and Innovation Panel

This afternoon's panel is on the topic of sports innovation. You're very lucky here. We've got some real leading experts here. So let me introduce first Martin Hoffer, who you may have heard speak across there somewhere. He's the head of marketing of the KNVB in Holland, responsible for not only the marketing of the national team here in Holland, grassroots, brand, and a very innovative CRO program. We have Luis Vicente. Luis started his career as a football agent. He worked with some of the big names, Figo, Brazilian Ronaldo, Shevchenko, and then moved on to work with some of the biggest clubs in the world. So played some very senior roles at Manchester City and more recently Valencia, where he was renowned for really pushing the business forward, pushing innovation, and transforming those businesses. A little bit about my background. My name is Peter Clare. I work for a company called Seven League. My background is in marketing, so I started work at PlayStation, Adidas in Australia, and I moved into digital at the English Football Association. I was kind of given someone to look after the website about 10 years ago, and before I knew it, I was the digital guy. More recently, I was head of digital Bacardi. I now work for a company called Seven League. Now we work with many football clubs, lucky enough to work with both Barcelona, Juventus, Leicester, our new favourite club, who have guest-ordered in Champions. It was nothing to do with that, so I'll be honest. Some of the logos on the slide are some of the clients we work with on innovation. So at Man City, we worked a lot on things like membership or season ticket cards, which we've all mentioned reality on. We worked on new content formats. We could be sponsored. With UFC, those who don't know, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is a hugely growing sport at the moment. They have a very innovative approach. Their athletes, their fighters, are contracted to do social media. It's not like you have to ask them, they have to do it, and they're very good at it. They do that to grow their sport. I'm lucky enough to have just got back from the Champions League final with UEFA, where I'm looking at how can they make the final more digital next year. With Arsenal, we've worked on a Wi-Fi project, which we like to call Connected Fan, not Connected Stadium, because we think it's more important that you think about the fan being connected, not necessarily the technology. With O2, who's a UK telecoms company, we've created what we call the Rose Army, which is a hundred rugby fans. O2 sponsored the England Rugby team. Instead of the brand creating the content, we thought about it, why not get your passionate fans to create the content back the other way, so we have a hundred of them we manage. They create the content that goes back to the brand, so it's a different way of thinking about it. So, at Seven League, when we think about innovation, we've come up with the seven I's of innovation. So insight is vital. Understanding something about the player, something about the fan, to base your innovation on, their needs, their behaviours. We then often try to be inspired, so inspiration from other sectors, from other sports, from other countries. Then we look at, should we just imitate? So should we just look what our competitors are doing and do what they do? Maybe do it a bit better? Maybe do it in our style? Or should we iterate, which means you make what you're doing a little bit better, a little bit better, and you get better and better. Often improvising comes from a position of crisis often. So something goes wrong, we need to come up with a solution very quickly. That is often where the best improvisation comes from. Not always the position you want to be in, but often it's a position where you come up with some really good ideas. Now we move on to innovation. When I talk about innovation, I mean things that are really new, stuff that you can say that we've done this and no one else has done before. We talk a lot more about that. And then invention is the last one. That's when you have literally invented something that you can patent and you own the product and therefore you can then sell and make money from this product. So in sport we see different kinds of ends of the scale. So this graph here on the left is effort. So you've got high effort, low effort, low value, high value. And then you can be on the path. So imitating. So if you look to the Premier League, the way they, content output, the way they cover their matches is quite similar, to be honest. They imitate each other, they find who's best, and they get a little bit better. Now the better ones will start to iterate and they move up that line. They make some small changes, they get better each year. Right at the top of the scale is invent. Now in sport there's not as much of that. A good example out of America is the LA Dodgers accelerator program. This is a program where the Dodgers have gone out to the LA community, to all the startups, and said, right, come and pitch us your ideas. It has to be sport related. It doesn't have to be baseball related, it has to be sport related. They then pick the best six. They were in partnership with RGNA, a really big digital agency in America. They picked about five and they've invested money in it and they own a share of it. So they own say, they put in say $100,000 and they own 10% of it. So they will, if those products succeed, and now some will and some won't, they then own a part of that product and therefore will get their money back in theory. So sport is, most sports in the imitane, now some you do see people iterating and being innovative and moving up that line. And I think that's where we're going to start the discussion is, and I apologize for this slide, I've just realized we've had a panelist pull out. Unfortunately I believe Victor had to be on a plane to China today. So there's three of the four of us anyway. So the first question to the panel is, should sport imitate or innovate? Martin. Well if you look at the sports players, if you want to compete, if you want to be the best in the world, you have to keep innovating yourself, your training schedule, everything surrounding it. So I'd say if sportsmen should do something like that, why wouldn't the sports clubs, the sports competitions, the sports federations do the same thing? Only innovation is, part of innovation is imitating, a lot of imitating there. So it kind of depends how you look at it, at what it means. But we should do a lot of innovation, yeah. And I think the interesting thing, and I think everyone in this room probably has some interest about sports or is fun about sports, right? And I think when you look at football mostly, so everybody has this idea that everything works really well, everyone is super professional, you see multi-billion organizations. But actually the truth is everything is still not very much sophisticated, right? So it's easy to innovate, and actually it's important to innovate all the time, right? Because that's the only way we can guarantee that sports are going to keep evolving, that sports are going to be delivering a far better result. Because there is an interesting trend in sports, I've been in sports now for 23 years, right? And it's not just a trend you see in football, you see this in America, you see this in Asia, you see this in multiple regions, and you also see this in multiple sports categories. These people are afraid of trying, right? And I think the principle of innovation and I think being able to understand what other industries are doing is that you should not be afraid to fail, right? And I think if you look at any sports organization, and that fear is the biggest blocker of all, right? So because everybody is afraid of failing, everyone is afraid of losing on the pitch, everyone is still thinking a lot about what happens on the pitch rather than what happens on their business. Everyone is looking much more at their own interests and sometimes the interests of the fans. And so you have a lot of different problems that basically in a lot of times get your vision a little foggy, right? So you don't have a clear vision on things. But I think clearly you need to innovate, you should not be afraid, and you should also not be afraid of actually looking at other industries. Compare yourself with what other guys are doing, trying to inspire yourself, because the truth is it's so difficult nowadays to find something that no one has ever seen or no one has ever done, right? But the truth is you can reinterpret and re-imagine an idea 10,000 times, right? So that's, I think, the beauty of it. And I think there is still a huge potential for sports in general. And you know, and football, which is a sport we are, Postmian Martin particularly connected to, I think it's a massive opportunity. And that's the reason why some clubs that you probably have not heard so many years ago, like the Manchester City and even now Leicester City, that fighting with a lot less weapons than the others and having less money and having less people and having a lot more difficulties actually managed to achieve quite a lot. And so that's, I think, is quite exciting. And if I can add to that about the failing part, I mean, it's really important to fail as fast as possible. And it's something that every company should try to get to. And it is in football. I mean, I myself have been working in football for 10 or 11 years, so not as long as you, but we see that football is a long way. Call me old now. Yeah, I do. I do. And football is a long way from some other sports. And especially when you're looking at US sports and also pretty, you know, US situations where teams are based in great environments, you know, some Golden State Warriors basketball team in San Francisco. The owner is an investor, a tech investor for the last 20 years. I mean, he's got a great tech team around him. So you have to really innovate and try to imitate some of that stuff also. By the way, please think of some questions. After I've gone through my questions, you guys will get the opportunity to ask questions. So do our men at the end, but if you want to do... Are you sure? Okay, okay. So the second question is about, should footballers or maybe a club, should they follow what the fans are doing? So if the fans are going on a new platform or should the sport lead? Well, I think that's actually a very interesting question because the truth about a lot of sports organizations, if you compare it again with normal businesses, we tend to know a lot less information than any business does. So again, we're sitting in this hotel. So it's one of you, I'm sure, has at least one mobile device in your hand or in your pocket. I'm pretty sure that your carrier, whatever you're using, knows everything about you. So it knows when you wake up, what time you spend enjoying things you like to do, sports, music, entertainment. They know how many friends you talk to. They know actually everything you're doing since you wake up until you go to bed. So in football, in sports overall, you have that growing ambition of knowing more about your fans. And you have an advantage because at the end of the day, sports by nature have something that any CEO of any Fortune 500 company will die for. So you have fans, so people that love you, people that love your brand. And I think it will be very interesting, our next panel with Sachin and Sachi because it's an area where they excel in terms of understanding those relationships. You have a love beyond reason. So you have a feeling that is so intense by that brand that it becomes the most important part of your day. And that feeling, everyone is now trying to convert into a customer relationship. Now, it's exactly the opposite of any business that tries to convert customers into loyal fans of that brand in terms of the daily usage of their services and products. So I think it's fascinating the level of evolution so that sports organizations still have, because there's a lot of work to do. And I think organizations tend still to take decisions based on intuition and based on following what others have done or following even their personal feelings, if the wind is going left or the wind is going right. So sometimes that decision is, process is blurred. But I think more and more everyone is trying to take decisions based on data. And I think data is one, again, it's changing the world. And we've been listening to many versions of it is important, data is a new oil, data is the engine of civilization. The interesting thing of course as well about data, if you look at how much data has been captured, if you look at all the world's data, 90% of it was generated over the last two years. That's a massive change. And when you look at a football organization, still the level of awareness and knowledge that they have about their fan base is very small. You look at the nature of a soccer match, you have a 90-minute show where a club will tend to know a lot about these 30,000, 40,000 people that are on their stadium, depending on the sophistication of their tools. Then you probably will have, I'll say for instance if you look at Real Madrid Barcelona, you'll have four to five million people that during the game are interacting with the club, social media platforms, both clubs or the rights holders. You'll have probably then 100, 120 million on live TV, which you absolutely don't know anything about them. And probably you'll have as well 300, 400 million of people that in any shape of the game or any moment of the game came to see who scored a goal, if something nice happened or something bad or some emotional moment. So I don't think there is any business on the road today that has that untapped potential still to be achieved. And I think that's something that will come from more sophistication, from more tools, from more data analytics capabilities, in order that clubs can take the best decisions. I think definitely you need to understand your fans to be able to command and dictate what you're going to offer them, because that's the interesting part of the relationship. And then from a, we're calling it here fan engagement. And some of you may have heard of already in the presentation I gave, fan engagement is really one of the key drivers of fan engagement is actually participation, playing the sport yourself. And I don't think very, I don't think many clubs, many professional clubs are working on getting their fans to play the game, play the game of football, play the game of sports, whichever sport it is. And the impact is massive. I mean, we're working with UEFA on a Grow 2020 domain. And if you see the numbers and also the numbers we see in our federation, the lifetime value of a customer or a football player who has been playing themselves, who plays themselves also, it's just a massive difference. And it's about twice as much or sometimes even more than that. So you could get fan engagement and involvement also in a different way. Maybe it even starts with participation instead of being a fan only. And do you spend a lot of effort collecting the data of your players? Absolutely, yeah. The data from the players, because of all of our local clubs, we have a centralized administration. We know all the players in the Netherlands, at least when they're a member of a club. But we tend to connect them to all the different data sets we have from a fan, from ticketing shops, from merchandising shops. So we know quite some stuff about it, yeah. What do you think you could do with that data in the future if you had all the money and the resources? A lot. But I mean, I would start, data is really interesting and you can do a lot with it. But you also want to use it for the right purpose, right? So you want to use it also for the people themselves. So if you have all this data, why not start with increasing the experience for the player, increasing the experience for the fan, and build on a long-term engagement and long-term involvement. And then, I mean, it's an investment and you have to, every club, every federation, there needs to be some money attached to it, but it will come in the long term. Do you think sponsors care about innovation? Do they just think, well, it's a nice word and very good, but I want my perimeter boards? Is it important? Is it valuable? I think it's very, very valuable. And unfortunately, I don't want to always look like negative, but it's the truth. Sponsors, with very few exceptions, are still not taking innovation as they should. They are, for them, it's much more easy to sometimes go on a very traditional package, guarantee some signage, guaranteeing some premium tickets to premium events, guaranteeing as well that their CEO is particularly happy, because as well probably the process of decision also needs to be disrupted, right? So if you still talk today with a multinational company and they want to grab their attention as a partner, and again, I've been having a lot of those speeches around the world. I don't know how many or thousands of speeches I've done during all my life. And I always try to go very different, right, because that's my weapon. I think if you work for a smaller organization or for an organization that has the prestige of the number one organization on that industry, you need to come with a different case. You need to come with something that attracts people's attention. And you need to tell your very strong storytelling and a very strong journey. But the truth is, if I look at the number of people that at the end of the day, on one side, sometimes understand what you're trying to do, second really as an interest, and third really as the courage to do it, so it's very small, right, because it's much more easy to invest on Champions League or invest in Ferrari, because it's Ferrari and the Champions League, right? And this, I think, is something that traditionally is changing. You see today, for instance, big brands, again, one of them is here in the Netherlands, Aynikens, who is doing an amazing job in terms of activating their sponsorship and their partnership with Champions League in a much more innovative way by aggregating content, by aggregating gamification, by aggregating really unbelievable experiences for their fans. So I think that's the trend to go, but unfortunately still there is a lot of work to do, because I think in a way commercial partners need to take over more. So, again, they are having these challenges and these fights on their day-to-day business. They know they are losing customers, they know they are losing attraction. All of them are trying to do digital, all of them are trying to engage on data journeys with their customers. But they need to use sports differently, and I think it's changing, but still moving parts on that. Yeah, and if you look at our federation, there are a few of our, actually many of our sponsors are really trying to be innovative and try to do things that really help the fans or the players and be innovative in that way. But it's so difficult if you're a company with your ROI and you need to do certain stuff, this is, sometimes it's a gamble to do things like this. For a federation, you want to feel fast and you want to do it as soon as possible, but for a sponsor you like to have some success in your sponsorship and your partnership. So I can imagine there's also the safe road in there, but I think we see it at least many of our sponsors are trying to be innovative and are being innovative also, and actually sometimes are waking us up as well. It depends on the country, but in our country it's going in the right direction, I think. Do you think the sponsors will start insisting or start saying, some of my money needs to be spent on you being innovative or you using new sports technology or tracking the players or that kind of thing? Well, I think exactly that's where we're going. So if you look, mostly in the US, the shifting in terms of traditional sponsorship and in terms of what I call innovative sponsorship is happening already big time. So more and more companies want to be engaged with branded content, they want to cross the access to players to create fantastic experiential platforms. They're trying to connect as well with new technologies. Of course, rights holders are still very blind. Again, it's one of the most interesting questions for me. It's why football, for instance, is so adverse to technology. I just don't understand it, but technology sometimes looks like the Antichrist. So in a way you see how many years it took to do a very simple decision based on goal line technology. So if you see what technology could do nowadays in terms of support of amplifying really the capability of understanding what is happening, for instance, on the pitch during a football game, or understanding what is happening during really a tennis match or a cycling match, that you can really be part of that journey of the athlete. Like, okay, the guy, very interesting example, for instance, Cristiano Ronaldo, I know that in the Netherlands talking about national team competitions is not the moment right now, I'm sorry for that. I'm not responding. Cristiano Ronaldo, so Brazil 2014, he was at a big injury, and he barely could run, and he played the entire World Cup in Brazil. There was all this drama to say, okay, this guy that is one of the best players in the world, why is he not playing at the level? And everybody always expecting, okay, now he's going to score a goal and he's going to do all these tricks, and it's just not going to happen because the guy is injured. Of course, if you can share that data during the game, that biometric data, and you understand that the guy is probably 40, 50% of their real capability. A traditional football guy will say, oh no, no, I don't want to give that because the other team is going to understand the difficulties. For God's sake, they already know. They know he's not running, they know he's not capable of doing what he does. They are going to put one of these big guys just to make sure that he kicks him all the entire game just to make him feel more pain exactly on the spot where he knows he's injured. So that's already happening. But for the fans, and mostly for the fans that are not in the stadium, because the truth also about sports is, for instance, NBA, only 2% of their fans will actually ever see a game on a venue. In football, this is probably only 5%. So you have this universal spectrum that will never get close to your stadium, will never get close to your arena, and the idea they make actually what happens on the pitch is necessarily distance. So basically, I think new ways of activating sponsorships will help a lot on increase that engagement, that 24-7, 365 engagement that everyone is looking for. Yeah, and that's it, because each sponsor wants branded content, wants content, wants good content, and technology in every different facet can help a lot there, be it from in-game analytics or training analytics, or be it from all the social great activations that you could do. So it's not really a matter of wanting to be innovative, but they want great content, and you need innovations nowadays for it. Could you see a time when the Dutch national team's training data, or some of it, is used in the public? So the sports science data that comes from the players, the heart rate, the speed, can you see a time when any of that is shared away outside of the management? You have to say yes to that. We have been having some conversations. With the national team about it. And it's a sensitive subject, and of course it is, because it's a period of change. But absolutely, it's going to happen sometime, and it's going to happen for a lot of sports in one moment or another. And we are actually with the KMVB, with the Dutch Federation, we are in the middle of building a KMVB campus right now. It's actually going to be finished in two months, and our training pitch will have all these technologies to measure it all. But when it comes to being open to the public, that's probably another time. Okay, okay, okay. Sometimes we. So talking of the future, what technology do you see on the horizon that will bring innovation to sports? Yeah, well, there's a few. I think in sports, I'm one of the biggest believers on the power of transformation of technology, and the aggregation capability of bringing content, data, analytics, the big generational transition, right? Because when you look now at what's going to happen in the world of sports and in the world, you have a very interesting generation called Generation Z, which is the 12, 13, 14, 9, 10-year-old kids, which are basically not only just a digital generation from their childhood, but also they were by far the first generation that have access to technology from a very early age. So, for instance, a 14-year-old daughter, so again, for her, their mobile device is an extension of her body, right? She uses four devices in simultaneous time. They all have a very small attention span. So again, for them, looking at a 90-minutes game, like I like to watch, it's probably asking too much because that's how much the world is changing. And that's just that small technology enablement that they don't see why they should go into a stadium and they don't have a full, connected arena during the 90 minutes of the game. They don't understand why they are not producing specific content just for them. So that's all the things that are happening. But I think one of the big transformations that technology is going to bring is one that is going to be caused by, on one side, by connectivity because, again, I also, and again, I don't want to be too much radical more than I am already, but the truth is, okay, you talk about smart arenas and the truth is there is not a smart arena nowadays, right? It's something that you can say is a finished product. So you have arenas based still a lot on Wi-Fi, which because people's consumption behavior is still not the dangerous one, which means that you have the full stadium trying to connect at the same time and engaging with video, so the technology is still handling it. But the day that you have 50 or 60% of your stadium made of Generation Z audience, so basically you're starting to have a massive problem. Connectivity is definitely an area that's going to evolve and is evolving and is changing fast. The other one that I think is fascinating is VR and AR. And I think the two need to go together. So I think a lot of people are talking about the potential virtual reality. Nobody is really talking in detail what they can do. But I think VR and AR will bring something to the table that, for instance, myself and other people in football are looking for many years. How can you create really experience that from an emotional point of view is as intense as the one that you have in the stadium? So of course you cannot still replicate 70,000 or 80,000 people that are there sharing that emotional moment, but actually probably can replicate that into a million people within your virtual community sharing the same moment. And I think the power of VR and AR together is massive. And I think it's going really to bring an experience outside the stadium that is powerful and as well is unique because you can create your own virtual reality experience over the real experience. That's the only grail of the entire thing because if you really are a 15, 16-year-old kid today, how much will you give to be playing side by side with Messi in that game and interfere with the real result? If you take a look, it's already what they are doing when they play FIFA now it's FIFA 16, I think, or 17 because for instance, an interesting piece of data as well on that recent Real Madrid Barcelona game, so you had 130 million live viewers on TV. On EA, at the same time, there were more than 200 million people playing that same game on a virtual, very small still virtual reality scenario. It's happening already, but sometimes you just don't want to see it. But I would say that's the two main areas for me besides many. And I absolutely agree on that one. There's actually nothing to add on that subject from a fan perspective, from a participation perspective. I would say there's a lot to add there because seeing what happened in running, seeing what happened in cycling with all the great Nike+, with all the great run keepers, Stravas, apps that are used to track your own performances, that's something that can be a really game changer for a lot of sports being played on the pitches or wherever it's played. And also for football. So if we can manage to get, and there are some good examples already, but I think we're looking for the great examples, if we can get all this data, if we can get player tracking data, if we can get great video content of amateur pitches, amateur matches, and you combine it together. And as a player, you can compare yourself to other players. You can watch yourself, see how you played. You can, as a coach, look at what the players did. As a fan, you can see from everywhere in the country what your child, how your child scored or something else. And if you can add that into one big content pool for sports players, for participants in all these different sports, then that will be a great addition to sports. Absolutely. And that's really interesting to hear from both the participation, people getting their own data about themselves versus the virtual reality of watching Ronaldo or whoever. Very powerful. Question time. Everyone got some questions ready? The man in the back. Sorry. You were telling Luis about Leicester City and their success. Would you say it was just luck this season, or did it something marketing wise or whatever that made this success happen? Well, I think, I'm going to give you my honest opinion. They were with Seven League. Sorry? They were with Seven League. I already said that wasn't part of their success. It was the data analytics we did. I can say some things that Peter cannot say. I'll give you my honest opinion. My vision of what happened this year, first of all, they didn't win. It's like the favourites lose. If you see the amount of points that Manchester City lost, Manchester United, Arsenal, I think the most fascinating for me was Arsenal because I think they have this golden opportunity to win again and they lost it. But if you consider that you have that win of opportunity and you go for it, so that's amazing. They were at their own scale, so they had a great leader, which I know personally is a guy with a lot of experience, a guy that is very simple. He doesn't talk to the players in a funny way. He doesn't talk to the players in a very complex way. They respect him. Ranieri is basically a genius on the end of those players. Of course, they've been using innovation at their own scale with their resources. They invest a lot on player performance technology. They invest a lot as well on creating the best environment possible for the players. But more than anything is the belief because the interesting thing about collective sports is how you bring these 11 guys to become one. This is what they manage to do. As much as you go in the season and you see they always play the same system, they always play almost the same times with the same players, and they always manage to win because they believe in it. The belief is what makes the difference. But I think it will be probably very difficult to replicate because there is the magnitude of the numbers. Again, they are competing with a smaller budget. They will never have the same team. But I'm sure that if they keep that core, if they keep that belief, if they keep the same coach, they are always going to be a threat and they are always going to be the guys that can create a surprise. So marketing is not involved? I think, at the moment again, it's very in sync. For instance, I can tell you they were not still very organized on that, but I think they learned. But I can give you an example. For instance, in Valencia, this is actually an in sync story because it proves also what is important of data and mixing data knowledge and the football knowledge as well. So I think when I took that job and the club was in a very difficult position because we had absolutely no money, we had a big debt, we had lost total attraction with the fans, the team was not competing at a good level. Basically, it created a psychological effect. So we made people believe again that we could make it happen. So we had the oldest stadium in La Liga, which is a 93-year-old stadium, which was falling apart. The one has built. Yes, we are the only team that has 1.7 stadiums in the world, so we work. But basically, we managed to do a refresh on that stadium. So we intensified points. For instance, one of the things that were very successful in helping the team winning, because marketing can actually help the team winning and social media can help the team winning, was creating all these four hours pre-show where people actually were coming to the stadium and creating a fan zone. We were giving beer and food and put music and DJs and entertainment, creating a segmented offer to all the fans. So we started to have 70,000, 80,000 people that were coming before the game. So when our team was arriving, and again you can see the video, so I'm not telling you a nice story, we had 35,000, 40,000 people just waiting on the team bus. When the opponent team arrived, they were already scared. They said, come on, what is this? So then, of course, into the whole journey into the locker room. The interesting thing about the locker room, you can make it really nice or you can make it really bad. So traditionally, the opponents, they get a really bad locker room. But of course, what we did in our locker room, we recreate actually all our fans looking at them, watching at them face to face. Whatever you're trying to do when you're seated there, unless you're always like that, you just could not avoid it. Then also we created a very powerful tunnel experience. That's the advantage of working with the whole stadium where everything is very narrow. But basically what we did, we created as well our team, a recreation of our team, staring at them right on their faces like if they were Gullivers, exactly when they were leaving the door of their changing room. So already very disturbing. I think that the last touch was on the stairs going to the stadium. And then you're talking about the stadium that is known to be one of the warmest stadiums in Spain. So again, we made it on purpose, the exit of the tunnel, really, really short and small and narrow. So again, you almost could not breathe. This created an interesting psychological effect because the guys were just thinking, okay, now as soon as I can breathe, I'm outside, it's fine. But actually we have the fans about 40 centimeters over your head. So again, when the guys were coming out, it was just a bulldozer by our fans. So actually it proves because we have some interesting stats that all our games on the 14-15 season, the last 20 minutes, or the first 20 minutes, we were always scoring minimum two goals. Because we had that effect which worked really well. And of course fans as well created a lot of user-generated content about it. So we created quite an instinct and the truth is we did not lost a single game at home. It was unbelievable. And we beat Real Madrid, we beat Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, all in our stadium. So again, it's just proven again. There's an interesting stadium as well, Premier League, which is Stoke City. They do something very similar. So you can really create that atmosphere. So marketing is still of good usage for that. And even if it's not the marketing department, I mean coach Ranieri, he's a great marketeer. He sold his story to his team and he did it brilliantly. And I think all the great coaches, they sell their story to the team. I mean if you look at from other sports in the NBA, Doug Rivers sold Ubuntu to the Boston Celtics, Phil Jackson sold visualization to his Jordan Bulls. And these are the great coaches. They're marketing their game. And as a marketeer, you should really try to get into that feeling. If you can get that, what the coach is trying to tell his team, and if you can get that feeling across to the pitch, to the fans, then it's a magical combination. Thank you. Better answers than mine. Any more questions? Let's go at the front here first. Yeah. I've got a six-year-old daughter who loves football. But she says that she doesn't like watching boys football because they're such crybabies. With that in mind, if I'm putting it in a high-five view, how do you guys get away with ignoring 50% of the population and 95% of the time? And what's your strategy for changing that? If I can answer first? Because we are not ignoring them. I mean women's football is the single biggest growth factor in the Netherlands for football. Not only from a participation perspective, and it's huge. I mean if I use the numbers of the last couple of years, we are growing our women's football department from age, it's called in the Netherlands the F-pupilla, which is age group 7 and 8, is growing 17% each year over the last two or three years. Up to the age of 12, it's growing about 10% per year. And we're really investing a lot into it. So it's good for the participation number. It's the growth factor for Dutch football. But it's much bigger than that because women's football, if you see the clubs and the local clubs who are having a good women's football department there, you see the differences, you see the changes in the canteens, you see the changes on the pitch. So it's not only about women's football, it's also about women in football. And we are emphasizing a lot on it and working on it and hoping to get more women to be a president of a local club, more women coaches, more women playing football. And I think it's something that maybe some federations or some clubs are still ignoring, but absolutely not every federation. And I will add as well, so again, I think that's one unbelievable theme. It's something that I believe a lot and I've been pushing a lot that develop within world football because I think on one side all the gender equality, I think it's more and more an issue that you need to observe. And actually, if you look at football as a global sport, and when you look actually at the presence of women in football in so many countries, again, I'll give you some staggering numbers, but if you look at the Philippines, 95% of the fans attending a game are female. If you look at the US, more than 50% are female. So there is unbelievable opportunity, not just from a participation point of view, but from a commercial point of view. And even one of the things that I've always been defending is, for instance, as you know, many clubs have tried an international strategy that is, okay, I bring an Asian player, and theoretically, because you have to know how to do it, it's not just bring the player, it's how you activate it. I bring this Japanese player, this Chinese player, and I'm going to be massive in China or in Japan. So actually, it's much more easy for you to have a very good women's team that actually has the best player from Brazil and the best player from China and the best player from Japan. And actually, I'm pretty sure that you're going to get a far better result of your investment and a lot of engagement, right? So for instance, Valencia, we were pushing that very, very big time. Again, we were the only football club that still has a global relationship with UN women. So we are also the only club in Spanish league and one of the very few in the world that has a woman president, CEO. So I think that that team was very important to us, and also we've been building over the years what is now one of the strongest women's teams in Europe, and our academy also, we have about 17 women's teams. So it's something that I think is unbelievable. It's just sad that a lot of the sports organizations, football organizations, are not really taking the right attention to it. Thank you. Go in the middle. I wonder if there are any investments done in the area of live streaming football matches in 3D format? Because as you mentioned, only 80,000 people can watch live in the stadium, the Champions League final. But me personally with my friends, I would love to go to the cinema and watch the game live in 3D, and I would pay for it, which is in my opinion is a good product for the market. But in this case, we need to improve the live streaming of the football matches. So is the broadcast team companies are working on this front or not? Yeah, well, that's again, we might have a two day session. That as well is a great team nowadays, right? Because I think basically what's going to happen probably a lot sooner than what people might think is a big disruption in sports, and mostly a big disruption of the media rights, right? Because you're still blocked a lot by traditional media rights holders, right? So again, it's easy to be seated in your desk, and you're just scared, you know, your league actually to do the business for you, right? And they go and they negotiate, you know, and that mostly in UK they have a lot of luck to be there because they have two guys competing all the time paying stupid money for the rights. And basically that's easy life, right? So now the interesting thing is the world has changed so much, right? And in any business you take a look now, and again, the interesting thing, one of the most interesting things that happened to me over the last 20 years is how the biggest businesses in the world were almost non-existing 20 years ago, right? So you build businesses based on data and on content, and those become multivillion businesses. And the interesting thing, for instance, in football, you look at, you know, any club, and they love to be in Facebook, they love to be in Twitter, but you know, 90% of the presidents or owners are not understanding that actually you're making a business to those guys, right? So you see shifting on from a traditional broadcasting model with theoretical eyeballs to actually a real metric consumption model, right? So based on traffic and based on live engagement. So I think that's associated with the fact that you're moving into what I called venues everywhere, right? So because the interesting thing about when you add all these things, the transformation in content, transformation in content distribution and engagement, and the advance of technologies, that any part of the world can be a venue, right? So you can be in your beach, you can be in a bar, you can be here, and you can create an unbelievable experience watching sports content, right? Interacting with it, gamifying with it, you know, be part of it, right? So I think you're not too long until you can fulfill your dream. So I think some sports are already doing, and in football it's just a question of time, which probably is between three to four years away. Yeah, and I wanted to say the same thing, some sports are already doing it, and there's one sport, and we can all learn a lot from it, and that's the NBA, or one sports league, that's the NBA, because they're really far advanced in this regard, and they've made a decision ten years ago to split their content and get it away from the traditional broadcasters and get it into the social system, and they're doing a great job there. They're also one of the best ones, I think, with 3D reality replaced mostly, because live 3D is still pretty difficult, but they're doing a great job there, and it's something we can all learn from, and if you, I don't know the exact numbers, I just read the article yesterday, and if you look at some of the numbers from last season, the Golden State Warriors were playing against Oklahoma City in the regular season, I don't know if you know anything about the NBA, but Stephen Curry made a game-winning basket, it was a three-pointer from, you know, just 30 meters or something. It was watched on live television within the United States or within the world by 200 million, I think. In the same day, a day later, only the fragment of the shot, I think it was watched about 400 or 500 million times, and they got it right, and they got it right, and we should learn from it. I agree, I agree. Okay, so we've got two more questions. The lady over there, the game of Cation next. I suppose following on from there, have you done any successful second-screen strategies that involve players and engaging your audience directly? No, not too successful, no. Unfortunately, we did some, and we used to do it with a broadcaster a few years ago, but we haven't been successful with it. Why not? Why was it not successful, or why did it not work? It might have been a little bit too early, because it was a few years ago, but I think we were aiming back then, and it's before my time, so I'm not into all the details, but we were aiming back then for a second-screen opportunity, which was a sole advice or sole device solution. It wasn't integrated or wasn't integrated well enough with social media back then, so we wanted to get people, folks, to come to our second screen, which is not the best tactic if there is a lot of good Twitter, Facebook, and stuff, accounts going on there. I think there is already a lot of different success in different sports on second screen. I think the biggest problem on a lot of the unsuccessful situations, because there is more success than success, because you need to try, you need to try different things. That's exactly what I was saying in the beginning, you should not be afraid of trying and doing things, is basically the quality of the content. I can have all fantastic technology in the world, I can have fantastic devices in my hand, but if the quality of the content is not actually segmented to what I want, and is not segmented to my device, and is not segmented really to that experience I imagine in my mind, so I can have a problem. I think a lot of the success has been exactly because of that, is lack of knowledge of the sophistication you need to have when you look at the different content pieces that you need to have. The experience you need to insert and the experience you need to create. I think the US as well as everyone, and as well on that area, I think NBA is doing a great job, NFL is doing an amazing job. Whatever you are thinking about the second screen experience in the stadium or at home, I think it's evolving. I think in Europe it's very interesting, one of the best second screen applications nowadays is actually the music industry, and now they are as well launching new videos and new video content all the time, actually interacting with multiple screens at the same time. Every screen is a part of the story, it's part of the full storytelling, you can interact also with your TV screen, and so it's quite cool. I don't think there is a problem there that cannot be solved, it's just an ongoing process. My thought is will the television become the second screen, or the mobile the first? Anyway, one more question. Last question for the day. This can just be a yes or no question, because I think by now we are doing quite a bit. One of the things that I think sports and football in particular benefit from as opposed to any other industry is a visceral tie between the end consumer and the activity itself. There is a sense of ownership that I would have as a sports follower that most products don't really enjoy in today's world. What I'm curious is to what extent does that shape your marketing strategy, and to what extent are there efforts in innovation towards both measuring the emotional tide that consumers have with your teams, or enhancing or leveraging them, is what I'm curious to see if there is development in. Well, I think as well, a very interesting question. I think you need to split. One of the responses we still have in the industry is, and I'm saying this with total respect, is a lot of sports organizations let fans take over, and take over emotionally, that club. I know a lot of people, for instance, they are the greatest presidents or managers in their business, and sometimes multinational businesses. They become president of a football club, they become like a child. Because at the end of the day, if you look at this business point of view, you have your HR director that comes to you every time, that is the coach, and says, look, I need to spend 30 million on this guy, he's a great player, he's going to solve our problems. Six months after, that same guy will come to you, yeah, the wind, he's feeling cold, his wife doesn't like here, and so we need to spend another 30 million. And that president, that in his company, will take decisions based on data and behavior and professional analysis, will just go with the flow. Now, the other angle as well to this is, clubs need to think as a global business, right? And on one side, you need to always be very respectful of your home fans, right? These guys are with you, they spend sometimes all the money they have to be with you. So, as much sophistication you want to put, you always need to build your strategy, your market strategy, based on what are the core values and the DNA of that club, right? Because each club will be different, right? But you need to really find immediately, you know, from scratch, what is the connector with these guys, and how can you be respectful to them, how can you help them still come into the games, right? And how can you make sure that, you know, they are with you in the good times and the bad times, right? So that's the essential of this business. Now, the other piece is, the truth is, okay, you as a business, you need to think outside as well those fans, right? So you need as well to think, okay, this potential interest that I have in China, what kind of connection I'm going to create to these guys, because it's a totally different thing, right? The emotions are different, you know, they are far away, they are not in your stadium, they communicate with you on a distance level, right? So it's a very different exercise. And I think that's also one of the most complex issues that football faces nowadays is, you know, the reality of the numbers, because you look at clubs that will say there is one particular in North of England that plays red, and you know, where the Dutch coach until very recently that claims that there are 670 million fans around the world, right? Which is a piece of data that is just not real, right? But, you know, the world believes on it because it's Manchester United. So but the truth is, you know, if you really look or they will say, okay, I have 100 million fans on my social media that are in contact with me, you know, on a daily basis. Wrong. They are not, right? So again, the level of engagement is 1.52%. So this is the things that you need to think, you know, as a business is 1.1, you know, how I'm going to really get a 365, 24-7 connection with my local fans, and how can I expand that same feeling, you know, into all these, you know, millions and millions of people that want to interact with me, and I need to create something very different with them. So but it's kind of a complex piece, but it's one of the most exciting ones for me. And tapping into these emotions is just a way of great activation and great marketing, if you could do it in the right way. One example in the Netherlands, some of you might have heard from it, it's at Feyenoord Rotterdam. They taped or they measured actually the collective heartbeat of the Feyenoord audience on live television on one of the most important matches of Feyenoord from the season. And that did something huge for them and also for the audience because it tapped really into the emotion from the team versus the fans. So be creative, activate and see to what, you know, border you can go. Okay. Thank you both. Thank you for your questions. And we'll pass over to the next speaker. Thank you, everyone.