The first part has been somewhat lazy. Some interned by the band, a couple of shots on goal and a single clear chance of scoring. The clock has exceeded forty minutes of play, a known emptiness stung your stomach and the dry gaznate asks for a very cold beer. The mobile vibrates in your pocket when the rival side truncates a dangerous race from the end of your team. You take it out and see a notification from the club app: exclusive offer, beer plus hot dog at half price if you buy it before the break.
What a coincidence !, you think, just when you started to be hungry and thirsty. However, this timely offer has not appeared on your mobile as a result of chance, but Big Data . Throughout the season the application of the club, through which you have paid each purchase in the bar of the stadium, has registered that your drinks are concentrated from the 35th to 45th minute of the first part and, thanks to that information, the tools of relational marketing The club has made you a personalized offer.
This hypothetical situation has not yet occurred in any LaLiga stadium, but it will soon be a reality. “Many teams are investing in the Big Data of their stadiums for three or four years, because in the end those facilities are a brutal data generator. You can know how many people come in, where they sit, if they go to more shows besides football, ”explains José Guerra, LaLiga’s corporate general manager, to Xataka.
Among the professional football teams of Spain -First and Second Division-, Sevilla FC has been among the first to announce such initiatives. The Hispanic team is working on the start-up of a Business Intelligence Center where they will collect data on all their fans’ interactions with the stadium – from shop purchases to drinks during meetings – and the club’s digital tools – applications, website or online store – to set up personalized offers for them.
“It is about uniting all the contact points of the fan with the club in a single database, refined and enriched daily, with the aim of being able to automate, in a second phase, relational marketing campaigns with users. And we will reach a very high level of detail, such as knowing when you usually consume a drink in the course of a match, ”says Ramón Loarte, director of Marketing, Commercial and Retail of Sevilla FC
A similar initiative is being carried out by the Royal Society, which last July announced the launch of a smart scarf to improve interaction with its fans. This garment served as an excuse for users to download the application of the Donostiarra set -Realzale-, register in the app and scan the label to start receiving notifications with discounts and exclusive draws.
“The smart scarf offered us different ways to interact with our followers and unite the worlds off and online, ” explained Juan Iraola, head of the digital area of the Royal Society, in the press release that the San Sebastian spread to announce this initiative.
The ultimate goal of txuri-urdines is for their fans to familiarize themselves with the application, which will be one of the pillars of the club’s digitalization and with which members can now access the stadium without a card or give up their seats . The latter is not exclusive to Real Sociedad, since there are several LaLiga clubs that have apps with these same functions.
But Big Data in stadiums will not be used for commercial purposes only. From LaLiga, the body in charge of centrally controlling access and security – the latter together with the State Security Forces and Corps – in the 42 professional stages of Spain, explain that new software is being implemented to better manage the entrance to the stadiums and that, in the future, they would like this to be possible without turnstiles .
“We considered how it would be more comfortable to access the stadiums , and we thought that the ideal would be not to find any barrier between the door and the interior. That is not possible now because there are a number of security needs, but if we were able to implement a system in which the person is identified by their mobile, or that detects unidentified devices, we would not have to do that filter, ”says Guerra.
