Real Madrid partnered with Microsoft Cloud on a digital transformation project in 2018/19 to bring the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium closer to 450 million fans around the world globe.
The football club worked with Microsoft to directly engage its 450 million supporters (97 per cent of whom live outside Spain and the largest single market is Indonesia with 11 per cent of the total fan base) via a multi-channel technology solution based on the Microsoft Cloud platform which connected the club more closely to its supporters wherever they are in the world, enhance their experience of and support their passion for Real Madrid and analyse these interactions to customize marketing campaigns and boost revenues.
Territory: Global
Agency: In-House
Objectives
Real Madrid’s primary brief to Microsoft was to connect the club more closely to its fans, particularly to its non-Madrid based supporters around the world, through two-way, personalised interactions across multiple platforms which enabled the club’s employees to better understand the supporters and to learn from them.
The aim for this improved and customized fan relationships was to maintain and expand support, increase fan related revenue and thus reinforce the club’s leadership position in the worldwide sports industry.
“We wanted to connect with all the people who support Real Madrid in the world: whether they’re in Spain, the US, or Asia,” says Real Madrid CEO José Ángel Sánchez.
“It is critical for us to understand and learn from them, because, in the end, the club belongs to them. It’s impossible to change football club loyalty. Fans never change clubs.”
Activation
The Spanish club boasts more than 450 million fans across the globe and it had identified a need to connect more closely with them in more personal ways through customized marketing initiatives that would increase revenue and reinforce the club’s leadership position in the worldwide sports industry.
So it briefed technology partner Microsoft’s ‘Services’ team on a digital transformation initiative to achieve these goals.
The project began with Microsoft Services gathering the club’s principal stakeholders together in Redmond, Washington, for a ‘no holds barred’ brainstorming to discuss needs and to clarify their vision for ‘enriching fan interactions’.
“We invested the better part of our time in this meeting discussing the potential business value of raising our engagement levels with fans and then the different ways we could do that,” Sánchez recalled.
“Although Microsoft Services consists of technology experts, they put the articulation and prioritization of our business goals first, not only to understand those goals themselves but also to ensure that, as their client, all of us were all on the same page about those goals.”
The next step saw the Microsoft Services team define a strategic project framework to guide the development of the Real Madrid digital sports platform.
A 50-strong Microsoft Services group formed the core team and a further 150 Microsoft professionals contributed to the a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution based on a range of Microsoft Cloud services (including Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365, Power BI, .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2013).
The new technology solution provided a cohesive structure to support various different fan engagement digital services and to enable the club to collect, filter and analyze fan data.
The solution spanned a new ‘Fan Engagement Platform’, an extended ‘Video Platform’ and a ‘Mobile App’ all of which needed to provide telemetry and data analysis.
The new ‘Fan Engagement Platform’ is a marketing back-office engine: a platform that captures, stores and segments every Real Madrid related digital fan interaction from club-owned properties such as mobile check-ins at the stadium, online fan profile updates on the club’s official website, online merchandise purchases and gaming interactions, video views and livestreaming activity to independent platforms such as club mentions on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
The refreshed, searchable ‘Video Platform’ hosts old and new club video content such as player interviews and Real Madrid matches, plus multiple camera angles and historical highlights.
The interactive ‘Mobile App’, designed for iOS, Android, and Windows and accessible across smartphones, tablets and wearable devices aims to offer fans a real Madrid experience wherever they are and includes news, highlights, current and past player information, game details and virtual stadium access.
All three platforms offer two-way communication and this provide fan/user ‘Telemetry and Data Analysis’ enabling the club’s marketing and sales teams the ability to analyse individual and collective supporter engagement from usage data to personal preferences and creating detailed fan/user profiles to when and where they ‘check in’ in at specific places.
Using this information the club can respond through automated, low latency marketing campaigns ranging from loyalty rewards, offers and codes, personalised messaging and products
Through the course of the partnership Real Madrid and Microsoft teamed up to produce a series of films, posted on both club and partner social channels, to bring the evolving new tech solution platform to life for fans and for potential Microsoft B2B customers.
“We can create a one-to-one relationship with fans around the planet with the Microsoft solution, connecting this huge community of people and making the experience of being a supporter of Real Madrid much better,” added Sánchez.
“Our goal is to profile all our supporters, to understand who they are, and to give them what they want from us, such as exclusive content, and bring them closer to the club. We can now find out if they want products or content, as well as whether they want to have an influence in decisions.”
The 2018-19 project expanded on Real Madrid’s existing official technology partnership with Microsoft which dates back to 2014 when the Real Madrid Foundation and Microsoft began working together on social projects for Latin American youth.
This marked the start of the partnership strategy committed to putting fans at the centre of the club’s engagement approach.
As well as ‘Fan Engagement’, the partnership has also focused on other areas such as created a ‘Smart Stadium’ (including immersive experiences, fan socializing, accessing match content and player stats and fan venue services such as retail, food and beverage, cashless payments, digital ticketing, access validation, 360 video) and ‘Athlete and Team Performance’ (which sees the consolidation team and individual player data in the Microsoft Cloud enable Real Madrid coaches to use customisable dashboards to get a 360 view of athletes and generate data-driven insights to help improve performance, health issues and prevent injury through programmes such as training management and smart gym experiences).
While Microsoft also leverages its Real Madrid partnership to put the club and its players at the core of many of its own B2C and B2B marketing campaigns around the world.
Outcome / Results
Real Madrid club officials report digital revenue growth of 30 per cent.
“Now we can target a communication strategy, tailor-made for every single fan, no matter who or where they are,” said Sanchez.
“Our digital sports platform capabilities are impacting every single function and activity, including our digital revenues, which are growing 30 percent a year compared to what our previous digital platforms were delivering. Our payback on this investment has been huge, and we’re now well positioned for a bright future.”
Looking ahead, Real Madrid are also now using the multi-functional tech platform suite not just to improve fan engagement, learn and offer customised services to drive revenue, but also to apply elements of the platform to other areas of the club such as using Azure Machine Learning to work with coaches and players to improve performance and also to predict the price of seats during the season.
Real Madrid / Microsoft Cloud – 24/7 365 Fan Engagement Platform
The project also saw Real Madrid’s digital team grow from five to 30.
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