30 October 2020

Technology's role in football discussed in roundtable

Contributors from the VCF Business club talked about how they are using technology on the sporting and business side of the game

The 'Innovation in Sports' roundtable, part of the e-Workshop organised by the Valencia CF Business Club, was attended by representatives of Bcoach, Atribus, Solver Intelligent Analytics and Blinkfire Analytics and moderated by Franco Segarra, Valencia CF’s Director of Digital Innovation.

The talk on Friday revolved around the ‘VCF Innovation Hub’ project and the use of technology to better  understand and improve the fan experience, as well as to improve coaching techniques and generate new revenue streams.

Franco Segarra,  Valencia CF Director of Digital Innovation:

“Among other objectives, we want to predict the attendance of season ticket holders. If you predict with a certain degree of confidence that a person is going to come, and in the end they don’t, it will help us to know why and be at their service when the fans can attend Mestalla again. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay and is applicable to any sector.”

“Fans consume a lot of football through Instagram or Facebook; and not only during games, there may be goals in training or stories that occur during the week that can generate even more attention than that. There is a tendency to think that football is something traditional and very passionate, but that does not mean that we can’t use innovations for the benefit of everybody. The world of football is not as up to date as other industries, and there is a long way to go.”

“In the society we are in and with the amount of entertainment that exists, football clubs struggle to attract people's attention. Why would a person want to watch a game instead of a Netflix series or going somewhere for dinner? Football clubs are no longer necessarily fighting against other clubs, but rather against other sports and even with aspects other than sports, such as Netflix, HBO and Amazon.”

 

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Roberto Paredes, Solver IA CTO:

"Sports clubs are a mine for fan, ticketing, event and sporting data, These techniques can make us the distillery for this crude oil, and be able to extract gasoline and gold.

There are many fields in which Artificial Intelligence can help football, which a very dynamic sector. Aspects such as the price of tickets to the action on the pitch, both in footballers’ performance and scouting work. Artificial Intelligence allows you to order, fix and offer predictions in real time.”

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Dani Roca, Blinkfire Analytics:

 “Digital allows you to target your fans and followers. You will no longer just generate a digital asset that is standard, such as lineups, but you will be able to publish the lineup with different sponsors at different points, on different networks -and for different audiences.

The market is going to open up even more. Whilst now we see large sponsors, the trend is going to be to have a group of many smaller, even regional sponsors targeting certain clients. At digital level, it will allow us to target publications to a specific age range or country specific to a brand. Even if they are smaller, they will be much more effective campaigns.”

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Miguel Ángel Cintas, Atribus Marketing Director:

"What we have to do is be able to distinguish between 'good' noise and 'bad' noise, for simplicity’s sake. Atribus allows you to eliminate this type of negative noise, which does not contribute anything to the development of the club and the brand, and analyse the positive parts that contribute to development, that contribute knowledge and add to the visibility of the team.

There are people who would not care about the club's situation, be it good or bad, who are always generating negative noise because it is in their DNA. I see it as more important to separate the positive and the negative, and with that information build relationships that help with where the club has to go.”

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Rubén Mora, Bcoach CEO:

“The players are the ones who aregoing to give you success. We all have the capacity, but knowing how to plan and manage your group, whether you get it right or wrong, is important. We have to be able to transmit that information. I believe that Bcoach makes that job easier for the coach "

Innovation is also part of the company's DNA, with our internal commitment to introduce regular improvements that make the coach's job easier. In order to innovate we have to listen to our clients. They evolve day by day, and in order to innovate we have to respond and provide the solution in advance to the requirement that the coach is going to create.”

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