Football has always been a massive industry, and in recent years, the focus has shifted to enhancing the fan experience while maximizing revenue streams.
Marketing has become a crucial component of a football club's commercial department, and advancements in technology and knowledge are making it more effective than ever before. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing and zero-party data have been instrumental in achieving this.
We help clubs develop strategies to enhance their value to sponsors while delivering a deeper fan experience . We believe that more clubs need to take a DTC approach to their data, which involves unlocking fan data and using it to make better informed marketing decisions. By doing so, clubs can gain valuable insights into their customers' preferences, behaviors and needs, enabling them to provide a better overall experience (either via digital channels or live on match day).
There is still a propensity for clubs to use basic data metrics when approaching potential sponsors. Continually providing the number of social media followers or general broadcast viewership figures is not helpful to sponsors who are looking to engage in direct conversations with fans. By taking a different approach to data collection and management, clubs could easily achieve a 10-20% increase in sponsorship value if they could show sponsors that they control a database of contact information on which they can jointly activate.
Despite the potential benefits, the biggest issue we see is that clubs are not investing in their commercial data infrastructure. While they have invested heavily in performance analytics, they have neglected fan data and have not given the business side of commercial performance the attention and investment it deserves.
To take advantage of the opportunities afforded by data collection and management, clubs need to set up the technical infrastructure required, such as a data lake or a CRM system and marketing automation systems. Cognizant can provide the entire technical data infrastructure, activate that data as well as developing strategies to monetize it.
This approach would enable clubs to proactively approach sponsors who had the most interest in their first-party data. By analyzing their fan data, they could determine, for example, that airline partners were a better fit to fan behavior than mobile providers. This would represent a real step change in the monetization strategy for these clubs.
Football clubs must focus on enhancing the fan experience while maximizing revenue streams. By taking a DTC approach to their data, clubs can gain valuable insights into their customers' preferences, behaviors, and needs. By investing in their commercial data infrastructure, they can increase their value to sponsors by a significant margin. With Cognizant's help, football clubs can stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive in an ever-evolving, fast-moving environment.
