How to Design Digital Transformation – Tim Mayer

 By Tim Mayer, Pivot sport

Digital transformation is undoubtedly a complex and challenging journey for any company that wasn’t born 100% digital. For most of the major football clubs across Europe, their international expansion and growth has been achieved by working as integrated systems. Each element (the stadium, the boutique, the bars & restaurants, the partnerships, etc.) has been designed as a unique element that connects seamlessly with other unique elements to create scale. Just like the players on the field, the way in which the visible and the invisible elements (such as behaviours) were designed to connect have determined too much extent the growth and success of these clubs.

In today’s ultra-connected world, clubs cannot any longer focus exclusively on the fans attending the games in the stadium to drive game-day revenue. The digital fan has suddenly become a target within direct reach of the clubs, 365 days a year. On given days, this means that the consumer base with which football clubs have an opportunity to engage, interact and do business with has shifted from 60 or 70 thousand to maybe 60 or 70 million people. Well beyond what television coverage has brought to the sport, digitalization has already and will continue to provide incredible scale. More importantly, digitalization entails the new component of active engagement. Just think about how much more you engage with content coming from your computer or your smartphone than with content you passively look at on your TV.

This brings me to the simple question of why clubs are going digital? What is the underlying purpose? As Butler rightly noted, “most companies focus on what they design. Companies that get the full value out of design start with why they design and then shape how they design – their process – around their purpose”. Be it a new App, a new social media channel, a new ticketing system or a connected stadium, all these digital tools have the same basic purpose: enhance the fan experience and create engagement…as often as possible.

So now how should clubs design their digital transformation in order to generate these precious interactions and emotions with their valued digital fans? In my opinion, the answer is through content and data. The only way to know more about who your fans (i.e. customers) really are is through data. And, unless you know precisely who they are, what they like and how they function, you will loose a lot of time and money developing the wrong content. As a result, marginal interactions, random emotions and insignificant business. You just missed the whole purpose!I still frequently observe how so many clubs frantically develop numerous digital tools in parallel without previously aligning on the purpose of all these initiatives and, most importantly, how to integrate the data analytics component that will make them successful. Clubs are obviously gathering as much data as possible, all the time, on all platforms. The problem rather lies in the fact that clubs are still lacking the tools and the expertise to engage in proper data analysis, digesting the mass of information, filtering it and formatting it in a way that is meaningful and valuable for the club’s different departments, for the content developers and for the club sponsors.

I still frequently observe how so many clubs frantically develop numerous digital tools in parallel without previously aligning on the purpose of all these initiatives and, most importantly, how to integrate the data analytics component that will make them successful. Clubs are obviously gathering as much data as possible, all the time, on all platforms. The problem rather lies in the fact that clubs are still lacking the tools and the expertise to engage in proper data analysis, digesting the mass of information, filtering it and formatting it in a way that is meaningful and valuable for the club’s different departments, for the content developers and for the club sponsors.

Digital transformation is predictably unpredictable. It is driven by the consumer, just like innovation in general. Since clubs do not know how fast trends, behaviours and technologies will evolve, they fundamentally need to rethink the way they operate and design. Their processes need to be much agiler and reactive to stay tuned to a constantly evolving ecosystem. In order to know more about their fan’s behaviours and preferences, they should test their ideas, assumptions and different types of content with these virtual, but real consumers. The key is then to properly analyse their responses and to pivot if it’s not working. In other words, clubs will only be able to extract the much-desired growth from digital transformation if they operate as modular systems, whereby fixed elements connect with other, flexible and interchangeable elements, just like Legos.

Yes, the potential for monetizing digital transformation is huge. But clubs need to embrace this change with agility, speed and a disruptive spirit. They need to have the capacity to fail (and learn) fast and proper data analysis is the sole and only tool that will avoid them falling asleep as the world is turning.