When in Barcelona

Barcelona, home of the Johan Cruyff Institute and November study trip for the Master in Sport Management students from JCI Amsterdam. An opportunity to enjoy a hedonistic mix of history, gastronomy and sporting passion. In four days, students encountered professionals from the field of sport, entertainment and education to share their pearls of wisdom.

For the majority, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is a 4.7km race track that hosts the Barcelona Grand Prix since 1991. For Joan Fontserè, General Manager of the property, it is a 320 day per year operation with 14 different motorsport categories, including F1 and MotoGP and 55 days of competition that collectively attract 552.061 spectators per year.  The keys to success is developing a personalized proposition that combines track racing with testing, driving courses, corporates, filming and product launches supported by data driven in-house digital marketing tools. Since introducing a new e-commerce strategy in 2017, ticket sales have increased 50%.

A little closer to the city, Antonio Alegre, Director of Sponsoring, Hospitality & New Business at RCD Espanyol de Barcelona is blessed with a new ‘premier league’ styled 38.000 all seater stadium since 2009. An improved LaLiga broadcast deal from €24 million to €55 million three years ago has increased the annual club revenue to €75 million. With a Chinese owner for the first time in the club’s history, Alegre and his commercial team are building bridges with new partners. Copying their city neighbours, FCB, with global expansion is not an option. There are more opportunities in markets like Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico where football is big business and RCD Espanyol can help companies become more consistent and successful. It is a brave new world, especially when the number of season ticket holders has dropped from 35.000 at its peak to 25.000 today. With season ticket prices ranging from €100 (for kids) to €1.000 for 25 matches and 375.000 single match tickets to be sold, it feels like there are as many opportunities at home as abroad.

At the NBA Café on the Ramblas, Patrick Lowe, Global Partnership Sales Manager at La Liga paints a rosy picture of an organization that is only three years old. Or, this is the time LaLiga has taken to re-brand and re-position the organization under the leadership of President Javier Tebas. The new slogan ‘It’s not football. It’s LaLiga’ is a reflection of their focus in competing with all sports and entertainment from football leagues to Netflix. To fuel this strategy, LaLiga has grown from 35 to 550 employees with 44 delegates across the world to deliver a ‘glocal’ partnership. From 15.000 applications a total of 60 were invited to Madrid for a 10 week induction course from which 44 became delegates and 6 are working with clubs and the audiovisual team. A mighty investment in people to innovate and reach a global audience of some 3 billion. And, if that was not enough, the fans and followers should be able to identify and associate any content to LaLiga within 3 seconds!

If there is a sport that could challenge football on a global scale, you might consider basketball. Rayde Luis Baez, a former economist turned sport marketing professional revealed the challenges and creative solutions to growing the EuroLeague business through partnerships. Having secured Turkish Airlines as a new main partner in 2009, EuroLeague experienced a common issue of media networks not carrying the partners name. One solution was to contract a network, ESPN, who understood the value of storytelling to engage with the fans and activate with partners. ‘Basketball Capitals’ was born featuring four European cities with a strong basketball culture and naturally destinations served by Turkish Airlines. The campaign was supported by the 11 clubs and players as they are the owners of EuroLeague which secures automatic buy-in of key assets, unlike some sporting competitions. Branding is good but according to Baez, if there is no conversion metric, it is not realistic to attract and develop long-term partnerships.

Feeding off experience and inspiration of seasoned professionals in sport is central to the educational program at the Johan Cruyff Institute. Learning from those in a different sector is equally valuable. Co-Founder, COO of Learnlight and serial entrepreneur Rupert Hillier revealed 10 life lessons based on his failures and successes of building a company in the education technology space. Start with the ‘why’ and create an MTP (Massively Transformational Purpose) that taps into injustice, solves the pain of millions without drinking too much of your own cool aid whilst considering Pareto’s principle and building a culture of enthusiasm, initiative and commitment were brought to life in a fascinating interactive session. And, if it was not clear enough, Hillier reminded us ‘an entrepreneur who gives up after his first failure is not an entrepreneur’. Somehow, I think that quote would sit comfortably with our founder, Johan Cruyff, and captures the spirit of educating the next generation of leaders in sport management at the institute.