FC Barcelona have launched a new digital strategy which uses data to better understand their global fans, changing consumer habits, and improve the offers of tailored products and services.

The club’s website reported the news that a presentation of the new digital plan was held at SALA IDEAL – Centre d’Arts Digital in Barcelona, at an event called ‘Barca Digital Vision: Position, Strategy and Digital Projects’.

The main objective of the new strategy is to help the club get closer to their fans to offer products and services that are more adapted to their wants and needs.

Josep Maria Bartomeu (President of FC Barcelona), Dídac Lee (Board Member and Head of the club’s Digital Area), Guillem Graell (CMO-Director of the Brand Area) and Enric Llopart (Director of the Digital Area) all attended the event.

The new digital strategy will see an evolution of the club’s revenue streams, making digital business one of the main sources of income in the coming years.

In order to make this new strategy successful, Barcelona have said they’re “committed to developing and launching various owned platforms to reach fans directly”.

The club will work internally towards building integrated systems of club products, services and content in order to offer the best fan experience possible.

Barca’s ‘Fan-Centric Model’ will contain three core areas, starting with attracting global audiences. Social network and better content will be the main strategy used for improvement in this area. Barca eSports will also be used to attract younger audiences.

The second core area is entertainment and data, which is based around the creation of entertainment content which will be be incorporated through projects being developed as part of this new strategy. Barca have said “these two cross-cutting areas will be structured around Barça Studios, the company set up to create all of the entertainment content that will be fed into the different Barça digital products.” The FRM (Fan Relationship Management) platform will also be used to better collect data from their own content to help them understand the fanbase.

Courtesy of https://www.fcbarcelona.com

The third core area involves the creation of an ecosystem of Barça digital products. They will develop the club’s OTT platform, their global membership programme ‘Culers’, and their own e-commerce and innovative solutions for ticket sales. With the implementation of the new Espai Barça project, the Nou Camp’s digital experience will undergo major transformations in a bid to “integrate the digital and physical realms into one.”

In 2019, Barcelona were the leading club in the world of digital, and generated 1.4 billion interactions with their fans, more than any other club.

Statement by Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of FC Barcelona

Courtesy of fcbarcelona.com

“A few months ago, while analysing our position and the options available in the digital world, we called on the Digital and Brand Area to design a new digital strategy based on two premises, our absolute conviction in the extraordinary margin for growth that still lies ahead for the Barça brand and the confirmation that our competitive environment has changed. Our opponents are not just in sports. We are competing with the entertainment industry as well.

“We can now use digital technology to find out who our fans are and what they want. That is why we are developing in-house platforms that can use data analysis methods to offer our fans a wide range of content, products and services that are adapted to their needs.

“This new model involves a new evolution in terms of our revenue streams. The new income from the digital business will allow us to continue with our ownership structure, which is in the hands of our 140,000 members.”