UEFA: Why better experiences create better data - The New Economics of Fandom Ep. 2

0:06Nick Meacham:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone. I'm the community lead. On today's episode, we're looking at part two of our mini podcast series, The New Economics of Fandom, that we're doing in partnership with Genius Sports. In episode one, we were joined exclusively by Genius Sports CEO Mark Locke. Mark took us through the relationships that have developed over the last couple of decades in the sports ecosystem, where teams and leagues have largely allowed broadcasters to monetize fans, and they've really failed to take advantage of the opportunity to build a direct relationship with fans and looking at what the future of that means for sports organizations as they look to derive more value from their fans.

0:41Nick Meacham:On this episode, we're joined by Roman Putsch, who's the chief marketing and digital officer at UEFA. He talks specifically about the role that data plays in this relationship with fans, talking about how UEFA over the years have built up particular tech stacks, strategies on how they go about extracting value from data. One of the important quotes that I took from this, and it's littered throughout the entire episode, is build the right experiences and you'll get the data right. So often from Roman's perspective, a lot of the conversation is around collecting data, but what isn't necessarily talked about is how you build experiences that fans are willing to give their data to you so that you can then make value from that, either from your own relationships or how you use that directly with your commercial partners, from broadcast partners to sponsorship partners.

1:25Nick Meacham:It's a really great conversation talking about the role that data plays when it comes to getting more value from your fans in this new economics of fandom. So from here, I will hand things over for the interview that Nick and I had with Roman.

1:43Nick Meacham:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the second episode of the mini-series that we're running here at SportsPro on the new economics of fandom. On this episode, we're joined by Roman Push, who is the Chief Marketing and Chief Digital Officer at UEFA. I'm also joined by my Streamtime Sports co-host, Nick Meacham. So, Roman, we appreciate you coming in here today, but busy time. You know, people talk about the offseason, but what people might not be aware of is UEFA is already in full swing with Champions League. So how have things kicked off to start the season? Well, thank you, Chris. I think we're just minutes away from getting to know who's going to be kicking off against whom in the league phases of the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League.

2:21Minutes away, well, let's say days away, but obviously we're moving into the draw week. but having said that there's been weeks of qualifications going on already where every country in Europe has seen Champions League and European action already and obviously that then goes into the main phase of the condition we're really excited about that to kick off and obviously the first trophy had been handed over only very recently too with the PSG also winning the Super Cup in Salzburg very recently so season is in full swing club football ready to kick off national team football to follow shortly later.

2:55So it's an exciting time as it is every time at the kickoff of the season.

2:59Nick Meacham:Absolutely. No shortage of football at the moment. It seems to be everywhere. And just to kind of catch people up, this, like I mentioned, is the second episode of the mini series that we're doing on the new economics of fandom. And episode one, we had the CEO of Genius Sports, Mark Locke on. Nick, you got to be able to do that podcast. And I think, Nick, feel free to correct me if I misspeak here at any point. But the real, I think, purpose of that episode or a lot of what Mark focused on was the changing dynamics of the economics around fandom where so long historically sports has been focused around the media rights deals whereas now there seems to be a changing need evolution to build more relationships directly with fans as well as the infrastructure in place to take advantage of that relationship for so long broadcasters had owned that relationship with the fans and sports organizations hadn't necessarily develop that direct-to-consumer relationship with people, whereas now there feels to be sort of a changing of that, particularly, Nick, some of the things we've covered on the Streamtime podcast about stagnating media rights, just the urgency or necessity for sports organizations to no longer be wholly reliant on that broadcast revenue and starting to focus more around the actual relationship with the fans.

4:08Nick Meacham:So, Nick, does that feel like I've summarized that quite all right?

4:11Chris Stone:Yeah, pretty well. I mean, in short, it's basically the industry's moving away from being solely built around those third-party relationships where you sign over your rights to someone, whether it be licensing rights, media rights, sponsorship rights, whatever it may be, taking that revenue and then come back to that relationship a few years later to try and see if there can be another deal done to also taking a bit more control of that relationship with consumers and fans and also unlocking new revenue streams. And it's been one of these areas of focus for the industry for many, many years. And it really feels like we have a bit of a tipping point with regards to what those opportunities look like and what we can do with that better intelligence and insight and data around the fan and what they want, what they consume and what they're interested in.

4:55Chris Stone:So yeah, really excited to be able to have that conversation with Mark a few weeks back now. And I think continue to talk to people like Roman about how they're approaching what is, it's really quite a transformation for the industry because it means that you go back where we were 10 to 20 years ago, most of these sports organizations didn't need to have people like Roman in those types of roles. Well, now they're absolutely essential to have people driving that connectivity with fans through all the different touch points. So lots to talk about today, I'm sure.

5:22Nick Meacham:Absolutely. And today for this episode, we're going to be focusing more around the data side of things. Obviously, in that initial kickoff, Mark talked about owning data and how the ownership of data can help power things like AI and other tools that we're talking about quite a bit. But Roman, just to kind of kick things off on a more general level, talking about data, You and I had a little bit of a prep call before this. And one of the statements you made is, you know, quite often, you know, data is referred to as data is gold, but you feel it's more akin to crude oil. So maybe just talking a little bit of data from that level, sort of what you mean by that.

5:56Nick Meacham:And sometimes maybe perhaps people are a little bit excited about data, or maybe there's misconceptions about the value of data in a raw form. Yeah, I believe we are excited about data, but we need to take a step back before and also to the level of transformation that we've seen. And obviously, I often feel that we are talking very much, okay, we used to have the traditional model in the past. Now it's all about direct-to-consumer and data. And when we take a step back, actually, what are we really trying to do? The first step to create value is to make your competitions or your property, your club, your league as valuable as possible to the fan.

6:31That means it needs to have the right level of visibility, it needs to have the right stories, the right format, the right stories about the participants, the players, and obviously the right level of drama, etc. And what we've seen is that fans can get closer and closer to that. So in the past also, it was only seen on TV, or in the stadium, or in any other venue. But now obviously, the touch points are much greater. So the first effort we need to put in is to develop and deliver the right service to the fan to keep that interest up and growing. And that interest then can translate into a certain behavior that can then drive data that then can drive further value.

7:12And that, having said that, it means that the quote unquote odd model is anything but dead. It still exists. I think probably at the top end of the properties, it's even a bit more classic. And where the media rights are not as lucrative in more of a long tail of sports, it's a different challenge. I acknowledge that. But clearly, it's not an either or, it's an end. So if you want to drive greater visibility, it's about driving the right level of service to the fan. And obviously having insights of what fans are like, what they enjoy, what not, allows you to create a much better service in the first place.

7:47And that same level of data paired with what you see in behavioral data, etc, then also allows you to create more commercial value. But that is based on a value exchange, because I can only get that data if the fan agrees to it. And why would I if I'm not getting the right level of service for it? So I'm coming back to the analogy now. So if you then drive the visibility, you drive commercial value because you can translate data and visibility in combination into a commercial product or even a direct-to-consumer product, then, of course, you can really, really grow the value equation. Now, when we speak about crude oil or gold, I mean, obviously, if you take gold out of the ground, you get a nugget and you're really happy.

8:30Done. Job done. This is go to the bank and get a lot of cash for it. It doesn't work with data. If you look at data in itself, first of all, it is very, very basic. You need to start refining it. And once you refined it, you can actually use it to fuel a machine. Now, the great thing about data is that you can do that with very little data. You refine it, it grows the machine a little bit. And then once you've reached the scale, it will actually grow the machine quite a bit. But data in itself, without the machine and without the refining process is not going to drive the value in isolation. And I believe that's what I'm often missing in the conversation, because we're obviously speaking about data first, we lack definition, and then we're not talking about the verticals that that may actually fuel in order to make it credible how it drives value.

9:15Chris Stone:Roman, I'm curious, so that data as a term can kind of does mean a lot of things, and you've implied some of that just now and how you've described it. Some people are really focused on first party data. I need to have direct connection with the fan. That is everything in this new world or new era we're working in. Others go the other direction. Others say, you know what, first party data is great, but all I'm really focused on is building audience and engagement and having the macro data points of how our content's performing through the various third party channels that exist for us and monetizing those through the various means that can be done around digital advertising and sponsorship.

9:57Chris Stone:Just how do you see that dynamic? Is it simply a bit of both is needed? Are you relentless on the focus of building more first party data? Or is it just having as much as you can of everything to try and get that full picture of the marketplace and the audience you're trying to serve? Well, I guess we can take it again from two angles. One is the visibility of your competitions and the engagement with the competitions. So of course, we need the eyeballs. And that's why we need also a far and wide region distribution, both in the digital, but also in the media space, for everyone to have the opportunity to see and for the property to stay top of mind.

10:33Now, the second question then comes down to first party data and the value it drives and also the value drives through differentiation.

10:41Chris Stone:Now, imagine what the sports industry has been absolutely fantastic in doing, particularly for commercial partners, sponsors, etc. Which is to get your product, your story of your brand in front of many, many eyeballs. That is still a strength. That strength remains. Now, what happens after? So now you've gotten everyone to see your brand, but how is it going to drive the tangible business? And if I was on the brand side, I'd ask the property, how do you help me achieve my business objectives that also go far beyond just brand recognition? It is then also about how do I drive tangible incremental revenues for myself.

11:18How can I speak to your audiences? How can I contact them for transactional purposes? Which is a very fancy way of saying, hey, if I want to sell a fitness expect to somebody, I don't have my own distribution. You're not allowing me to send traffic to my third party retailer because you are afraid of association. How do I do that? So then it comes down to applying first party data to it and translating that into a commercial product because I can speak to hands, I can create certain segments, and I can obviously translate that into an audience product that then a partner can activate anywhere in digital, not just in my properties.

11:51And like that, I can drive the tangible benefit. That holds for commercial partners as sponsors, but likewise, it drives subscription for broadcasters in certain territories. And that level of thinking obviously needs to be applied on the property side because the top of the funnel, so to speak, we get a lot of people paying attention to you. That's all fair and square. But how is that actually then also driving tangible business outcomes? And that's where if I just look at the indirect part of the business, obviously where there's a significant value already and the demand that is there today, then we may want to take the conversation also to the direct level of our business, which in our case is less developed but if you look at if you look at clubs if you look at other properties where it's about selling tickets selling individual subscriptions or merchandise or even stadium tours and of course that data also plays a big role so for me it's not one or the other but the conjunction of the two which drive a full funded product for your own property and as a marketing solution for your commercial partners.

12:58Chris Stone:Sure just a quick follow-up to that you talked a bit about the broadcast partners and then obviously the brand partners and uef is really strong on both sides of that uh that framework um do you see that one side is more demanding of the first party insights than the other i'm i'm curious as to how that dynamic works or doesn't work with the broadcasters is it mainly the brand partners that are looking for that more first party level insight into uef's audiences i would clearly say that the uh that the majority of the activation and the demand comes from the sponsor partners at this point. I also believe that the potential on the broadcast side is equally strong, just not as developed yet, and also technically slightly more complicated.

13:42So if you think about the case of a broadcaster, it is a territory-by-territory approach on the one hand, and it is also more sophisticated in terms of data collaborations that you need to apply, and that's as simple as that. I mean, you may have a subscription, and if I run a subscription campaign, and you already have a subscription, you don't want to get a special offer that you can send to you, right? So it's also about combining data sets of broadcasters or commercial partners in that sense and actually make our data work together. And that obviously takes a little bit more sophistication, but it's anything but rocket science and we are increasingly investing and operating in this space.

14:18Nick Meacham:I want to come back to something you mentioned in your very first answer, talking about the thing that is missing when you talk to people in the industry. Is it your feeling that the industry has become more focused on collecting data as opposed to building businesses around the data? And if that's the case, is that because collecting data is easier to do than the actual analytics side? Is that because of the technology that's available or maybe just a misplacement and prioritization? But just you kind of referenced earlier that there seems to be something missing when you have those conversations.

14:47Nick Meacham:So how much of that do you think is due to either just how they prioritize their efforts around data or the ease with which doing it? It's easier to collect. so we'll just keep collecting if we can't do anything with it. Just sort of your thought around that piece that's missing. Yeah, I think we're having the conversation often the wrong way around because we speak about everything you've just said. But what if we asked if one day I would like to have a direct-to-consumer live TV product? What would be the kind of audience I need to develop for that in order to launch it in territory XYZ? What if I wanted to have a full funnel marketing solution to my sponsor partners ready to go in five years?

15:26What is the data requirement to actually deliver that? Or what if I want to have a completely personalized experience on a Tuesday night where you have the right level of ticker, the right level of game data and the right level of near-life clips in your Champions League app, what would that take? So I'm a big fan of having that discussion and then working back in terms of what does that mean from a data perspective and what does that mean from an infrastructure? What does that mean from a consent approach? And what does that mean for a collection approach? And what does it mean in terms of scale I need?

15:57And if I then go back to the data story, of course, we can collect data. But then again, we should have a purpose and a value exchange. So if you just look at the funnel, what data could be, it could start with something relatively impersonal, like a cookie. So that is addressable in some sort of form, reactivatable. Then it can be an account. the account may provide me some insight but it may not make it activatable without the right level of consent obviously the same holds for the cookie now that's great but that consent is valid over a certain period of time so without the right level of re-engagement strategy whatever data i have is just costing me money because i have to store it somewhere but i can't activate it because it's no longer compliant so that comes down to the fact if i have so and so many accounts how many of those are actually active people coming back and again and again and again and you can't force people to come back so it comes back to the value exchange so you need to give them the right level of experience so in that sense if you get the experience right you will get the data right and then that data will have to have the verticals ready for them to actually fuel them and that's obviously it takes a little bit of a long-term format so to speak to speak about that um but sometimes of course it is it is also much easier just to say look there's tons of data available or you're collecting data to be future proof and both is probably correct the one the you know the big numbers game or the data collection part, it's probably not capturing the nuances of the why we're actually doing this and how it's going to drive value.

17:24And once I think you combine the two, the discussion becomes a whole lot more fruitful.

17:29Chris Stone:Roman, I'm curious, you've been now at UF, I think over eight years now, if I think I saw that previously, how would you describe what the data looked like of audiences back when you first started to where you're at today? How much of, What's changed? What have you been able to had to implement to basically get things into a place that you're happy with? Well, I believe we started with a notion of importance already. So when I joined, OK, there is something here. We probably need to look at this. And, you know, that's eight years ago, which, you know, is two euros or two. One or three cycles of the Champions League.

18:03So depending on how you look at it, it's an eternity or just a couple of days. but that notion of importance was there already email marketing is still important we haven't touched on it that was also something very important back then it provides a direct access with the technology available at the time so that's what we started with and now we've taken it to a very stabilized and mature technology where we can offer these services where we can offer bespoke audiences we can offer programmatic tools We can offer analytics tools to our partners. We can do data collaborations. We can work multiple data collaborations via clean rooms, etc.

18:45So on the marketing tool, we really moved from visibility only and some level of direct to still superb visibility, but much more direct data and targeting products that can actually drive business outcomes much more. That's on the commercial side. But likewise, if I look at our digital fan offerings, it is a very similar story. So obviously social was important, still is important. Our own environment these days is much more sophisticated. We look at how fans are actually following different competitions rather than looking at one competition and another competition. We all know that football is played in various forms.

19:23A player that plays in the Champions League today plays in its domestic competition, but then again in the national team competition. So how do you drive those journeys? So on both ends, I believe it has become much more focused on value. The value has been better understood. And also those verticals have always been at the forefront of the discussion. So we've always been building towards that. And I think that's coming to our benefit at this point.

19:46Nick Meacham:And speaking about value, thinking it from the lens of UEFA and the scale of what you guys are as an international organization and not just in Europe, because obviously there's many South American players that are also playing in, you know, UEFA competitions, you know, Champions League, Europa League, Conference Championship, all that. When you're thinking about all the data that you're getting from all your different sources, how do you guys go through the process of filtering through what is interesting versus what is commercially useful? Because I think when you're collecting that much data, it could be very easy to get lost within that.

20:18Nick Meacham:So how do you guys pretty quickly filter through everything you have at scale to figure out sort of, like I said, what's the difference between something that's interesting information versus this is something that's commercially viable for us? Well, anything that can become commercially viable is based on what is actually delivered to the firm. And I'll come back to that point. If we want to define value, it is about the repeat visits, about the repeat engagement, for all the reasons I've just mentioned, but also to the fact that the more you engage with the competition the better that is so we have seen a couple of things where sometimes the engagement can be very much product-led so a fantasy gamer is a very different segment or a different it shows a very different behavior than many other visitors it's very much i'm very much about fantasy i need more information about this fantasy stuff i really would like to get my team right i want to get the maximum points so it is a superb product ultimately but it doesn't mix much with the others.

21:15So if you ask me what's the commercial value of it, I can be very clear cut about where those people are, when those people engage, based on what triggers they engage. So obviously, the 1st of September usually is a strong one when deadline day comes around, when the draws come around, when the matchups come, etc. So it's something that drives the experience on the one hand, but also with our commercial partners, we can use that according to one example. The other point is something quite simple. What happens on a Tuesday or on Wednesday, one of our busiest pages is TuneIn. So obviously, that's a very simple thing to drive people to where they can watch,

21:51Chris Stone:depending on where they are in their territory, drives direct value to our partners. So those are two examples. But you were talking about the geography. And what we do see is how people engage with our properties, depending on in which time zone they are and depending on what happens. So if you are in South America, then obviously Chemezic happens not under floodlight, but under daylight, so to speak. The game obviously happens here under floodlight, but then you have a daylight match there. So that's while you're working on your desk, etc. So the digital companion becomes super important. When you're in Asia, the matches happen overnight, highlights become super important.

22:31So just quick catch up, etc. on how that works. That, of course, including with the buildup and the benta that happens after, provides some classic behavior that is often much beyond national borders. It's more in terms of how engaged they are with the competition, etc. So take that time zone times players times clubs, who they are, where their heart is a bit more, then that drives a lot of insights and that actually drives a lot of the activatability of our data more from a fan service point. And then obviously we translate that into activation moments, contextual, then of course with the right segments and data targeting products to make it happen.

23:15Nick Meacham:And in terms of metrics, are there any that particularly stand out to you? I know kind of one of the things that we were talking about with Mark is just kind of the metrics that are changing. It feels like we've quite frequently looked at more maybe vanity led metrics, whether that's engagements or views. And Marcus started talking about intent and participation and basically looking for triggers that would identify actual monetizable or commercial value, whereas an engagement or alike doesn't necessarily mean that someone is going to take that next step. It might just be someone's a fan of the athlete or they might just have found the content amusing.

23:51Nick Meacham:There's a difference between those two things. Are there sort of metrics that you see when you, you know, you know, there was, we won't get into it, but there's sometimes big sporting events that will post these metrics about how many views they had or things like this. Are there metrics for you, you think are slightly overrated or overvalued when you see some of these announcements? Are there particular metrics that you guys are looking for across your different channels, platforms, and the way you're going about your data strategy? Well, I do believe that both metrics and some of the visibility metrics are still relevant.