Real Madrid CTO outlines football club’s digital transformation goals

Fundamentally, one of the biggest ways the football industry is changing is that clubs are having to become technology companies.

“Nowadays, if you came to one of our scrum meetings, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were standing inside a tech company,” explains Real Madrid chief transformation officer Michael Sutherland as part of a keynote presentation at Web Summit in Portugal.

Beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch, football clubs have been honing in on using technology to their benefit, casting a key focus on global fanbases.

Surprisingly, despite football teams having large audiences, “football clubs have historically been B2B businesses”, said Sutherland.

Whilst “most revenue streams have been predominantly driven by business to business”, he notes, “we’ve seen the evolution of consumer expectations change where people want to engage more directly with brands.”

“We’re seeing this far beyond what the football industry is. Major brands have moved much more to a direct-to-consumer approach and they want to have a relationship with the audience.” This goes beyond sport, as seen with companies such as beer producer Heineken.

Kicking off technology

At Spanish champions Real Madrid, “innovation is at the core and DNA of the club”.

For former HP executive Sutherland, innovation does not just mean using the latest technology, but “what really drives true value is when you start to think of innovation that can have a long-term significant business impact”.

As the football club plots its digital strategy, it looks at what can have a lasting impact on both the business and fans, and it has been doing so for a while. There are many things that “people won’t even know”, says Sutherland.

Technological innovations include becoming the first club to move to blockchain for ticketing, which it announced last year following a number of pilot schemes

Real Madrid also hosted one of the first remote broadcasts. “We took one of the UEFA matches that we were playing in, and with a number of different partnerships that we brought together we did one of the first, entirely cloud-based, broadcasts where just the video feed came directly from the cameras into the cloud.”

Then, the entire broadcast was mixed, produced, and distributed entirely in the cloud, which has both financial and sustainability benefits.

“The impact of that is enormous once you start to multiply that across multiple venues across all of Europe,” he said. Consider “the carbon impact on the reduction in the number of trucks and teams that need to be shipped around Europe”.

Engaging with fans through technology

“I would say the club has been, from the early days, a digital leader,” Sutherland endorsed. “It’s always been trying to move the ball forward in the digital space. Going far, far back before I joined the club.”

When Sutherland joined the club in 2019, he and his team chose to take a step back and evaluate where the club stood, and how it can move forward.

Digitally, “the ambition has always been there, but the marketing environment has changed a lot in recent years”.

Now, marketing for a football club goes beyond the pitch. Clubs are integrating more with fans and allowing them to identify with the Real Madrid brand on an even deeper level.

“In particular, with a big focus, particularly nowadays, on how we can engage in a deeper, more meaningful, and a more emotional way with our many fans around the world.”

However, with a fanbase as global as Real Madrid’s, the “audience is very different to a local fan base, and the characteristics and the way that most fans engage in the club is very different,” says Sutherland.

“We’re a community with more than 600 million fans around the world – the reach that the club has and the impact that it has on people’s lives is enormous.”

One way in which Real Madrid is using technology and data to engage fans is its recently launched data-informed loyalty programme ‘Madridistas’.

“What we’ve done is taken what is a classic loyalty programme and we really rethought it in a digital global economy,” Sutherland says.

So what does it mean to create a global community?

From a consumer perspective, when a fan chooses to adorn Real Madrid’s football shirt, they have also chosen to identify themselves with the football club brand. This means, “it’s actually affecting your reputation amongst your peer group when we lose, and you feel like your reputation is on the line.”

“So what we think about now is how we can create these deep meaningful human connections and hopefully create these moments,” through the app.

To drive this, Real Madrid rearchitected its entire software architecture, and focussed it on the “principle of real-time data, for real-time interaction”.

So, for example, at Madrid’s home – the Bernebeau stadium – “we know that you scanned your ticket, we know that you’re 40 minutes early, so we’re going to give you two for one drinks discount in the bar.”

“For us, it drives business value, and for a fan, it drives experience, and we can deliver that directly to your digital wallet.”

Once a fan has paid at the bar through Apple Pay on their phone, the app will recognise and then reward them for their purchase.

This also goes for discounts on merchandise online, and towards tickets for future matches.

“This is rich emotional experiences both offline in the stadium or even offline with our peers and our watch parties all around the world, we’re bridging that offline to online connection.”