The Football Industry Podcast

Over the last few weeks, LaLiga has made a huge effort to keep its fans engaged and to promote its partners worldwide, with a FIFA20 competition involving real LaLiga players representing their clubs, an online festival that brought football and music stars together to raise more than €600,000 to fight coronavirus and three new TV programmes that allowed the league’s global audience to peak into how players were dealing with the lockdown. While clubs prepare to resume training ahead of a potential restart of the competition, we talk to its Managing Director in South East Asia, Iván Codina, about the lessons learned while filling the void left by the COVID-19 lockdown and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for both the sport and the industry.

Speaking from his Vermont farm, Spartan founder and CEO Joe de Sena tells Paco Roche how the company were ready to pivot to digital almost immediately, with De Sena creating his own daily news channel kicking off Spartan Race's 24-hour digital cycle that also includes workouts, advice and a 24-hour Zoom channel.De Sena also explains the impact coronavirus has had on Spartan as a company, which has had to furlough 75 per cent of its staff. Despite the adverse effect of the virus, however, De Sena believes there is real opportunity for company's to still make an impact and even grow, predicting a bounce-back effect once people are able to resume their lives.

Paco Roche chats with Socios.com CEO Alexandre Dreyfus about how the company uses blockchain technology to engage fans all over the world thanks to their work in partnership with major clubs such as Barcelona, Paris Saint Germain, Juventus and AS Roma.Dreyfus also explains how he and his company see the role of blockchain technology evolving within football and how the industry will be reshaped after the coronavirus crisis has finally passed.

Paco Roche talks with marketing, technology and fan-engagement expert Michael Broughton about how sport properties are facing the challenge of keeping the conversation with their fans flowing while there is no live action.The pair end up asking whether this crisis will change fan engagement in sports for good, as well as what the changing face of communication looks like now and will look like once we come out the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic.

AZ Alkmaar are known for the success of the Dutch club's youth academy and Marijn Beuker, the Head of Performance & Development at the club, spoke about their youth development practices at WFS in Madrid in 2019. In this episode, host Euan McTear analyses several clips of Beuker's talk with football coach Alex Clapham, with SoccerLAB CCO Koen Beyen and with Michael Statham of the Football Oranje website.

World Football Summit's first event in Africa is to take place on March 17th and March 18th in Durban, South Africa. In this episode, host Euan McTear speaks to WFS director Jan Alessie and WFS content director Kabir Nagpal about the unique African flavour of this event and about the speakers and attendees. There's also a preview of the kind of speakers and topics that will be discussed in Durban, with Carol Tshabalala, Michael Makaab and Desiree Ellis featuring.