'All About' LaLiga Tech
On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, LaLiga announced a new venture named LaLiga Tech. It is a major step for the Spanish league as they will share years of research and development of technological solutions they built. This is quite unprecedented as it will be the first professional football league to set up a technology company based on its own resources.
In an official statement, Miguel Ángel Leal, CEO of LaLiga Tech said: “Sports and entertainment has an enormous opportunity to build on its emotional connection with fans by taking a data-led approach to understand fan behaviors and design modern, engaging, and profitable experiences. Our products have been specifically created for the sector and are supported by the human resources that have turned LaLiga into a digital leader over recent years”
Press release: LaLiga Tech Announcement
The Premises
Even though it should probably have taken a lot of time to create this new entity, we first heard about it at the end of 2020. To date, the Spanish league explained that they had a plan to move all their resources working on digital projects into the new company and already had an agreement with 70 leagues and federations to sell digital products and systems.
At this time, LaLiga president Javier Tebas explained: “We are going to transfer all this digitization to a commercial company with assets valued at €450 million. We have invested €200 million in these years, but we calculate that with the value generated it is worth €450 million.”
Inside World Football: LaLiga takes its digital business to market with €450m valuation
What is exactly LaLiga Tech?
In short, LaLiga decided to create a new venture based on its existing expertise and business units to further commercialize the (digital) products they have built thanks to their in-house expertise and live matches delivery.
The official statement described LaLiga Tech as: “the world’s first company to combine the experience of an international sporting organization with deep technical expertise. Through a team of over 140 specialists that have designed solutions for LaLiga over the past seven years, it is now offering these solutions commercially to help accelerate the digital transformation of the industry.”
Nick Meacham - Managing Director at SportPro Media
On this assumption, LaLiga Tech will provide, to any sports organization aiming to digitally transform its business, solutions under three pillars: Fan Engagement - Content Enhancement - Competition management.
Fan engagement, content enhancement, and competition management
LaLiga Tech will provide its partners with solutions that can be interconnected and integrated into existing environments. By doing so, it will enable them to reach out to a wide range of organisations in the sports ecosystem and create a sustainable economic situation.
Zoé Scott, from the Ministry of Sports, commented: “LaLiga Tech solutions are used to create new direct-to-customer channels, enhance content with real-time data and digitize key management processes as all solutions are interconnected under a single data-based ecosystem delivering insights that can be used to enhance growth across the organization. LaLiga Tech will offer solutions under three key principles areas of fan engagement, content enhancement, and competition management.”
Ministry of Sport: LaLiga Tech Introduces New League Of Technology
LaLiga's aim in covering these areas is to provide solutions to help sports organisations adapt to new digital trends and behavior as well as to bring data and analytics to the heart of each organization.
In that regard, Asli Pelit wrote: “LaLiga Tech’s fan engagement tools include building OTT streaming platforms and software to analyze viewing patterns; creating competition apps, such as fantasy gaming; and enabling fans digital in-venue experiences. For teams and leagues, the company’s Mediacoach software will provide a real-time match data platform. Their software also tracks the world’s major betting markets in real-time and analyzes patterns around global sporting events, detecting any irregularities.Regarding content protection, LaLiga Tech offers a global monitoring software and analysis to instantly detect and remove illegal content, such as audiovisual piracy or brand counterfeiting.”
Yahoo!Sports: LaLiga Tech Unveils New Fan-Engagement Tools, Anti-Piracy Deal
Who are LaLiga Tech’s clients?
World Padel Tour
Before its existence, LaLiga Tech used to serve its own company LaLiga. Through the internal use of LaLiga Tech for LaLiga's purposes, they gained strategic insights into new technologies and markets, customization, pricing, and time-to-market advantages. Now that they are providing solutions to other leagues, the approach has changed, as they have to implement these solutions in a different ecosystem. Who can become their client?
LaLiga is already working with several organizations such as Moto GP, the Jupiler Pro League, Sky Mexico, and the Royal Belgian Football Association. But the partnership with the World Padel Tour will see LaLiga Tech become the official technology partner of the international entity.
World Padel Tour CEO, Mario Herando, said: “This agreement allows us to take the next step in building a dedicated global following for Padel, which has already shown strong audience growth in recent years.” Indeed, padel is considered the fastest growing sport in the world, it is present in Europe and Latin America, but it is also reaching the sports markets in places like the Middle East.
He added: “LaLiga Tech shows a completeness of vision when it comes to building and activating fanbases using technology platforms and data, with the added benefit of having demonstrated its success within La Liga.”
SportsPro Media: LaLiga Tech goes live with new World Padel Tour deal
LaLiga Tech will enable the WPT to introduce a series of technology platforms for fans, including an OTT service, using the many technologies developed in recent years. The WPT, aware of its fans behaviour, will be aligned with their sport consumptions thanks to the new agreement, as comments Enriques Marques, WPT director of communications: “We are trying to follow and learn from the big leagues. We want to get closer to our fans – to know what they think and what they like and what they don’t like and to fulfill their needs. To gather that information, we need the tech. The tech that LaLiga is providing will be key for us to provide a solid structure.”
SVG Europe: World Padel Tour among first customers as LaLiga Tech launches digital services for leagues and federations
LaLiga Tech CEO Miguel Angel Leal - SVG Europe
Millicom - Tigo Sports
Among the other agreements, Millicom - the global telecommunications company operating in Latin America with the Tigo Sports will benefit from the Content Protection services provided by LaLiga Tech. Under the deal, Costa Rica’s Liga de Fútbol de Primera División broadcasted by Tigo Sport aims to fight against illegal content beyond the league's control. All illegal content will be removed from online platforms as a result of the combination of Content Protection's software and its team of analytics experts.
As mentioned in the announcement: “Global communications company Millicom, meanwhile, has signed an anti-piracy agreement that will see matches in Costa Rica’s Liga de Fútbol de Primera División (Liga FDP) monitored through the Content Protection solution, with illegal content being removed from online platforms through a combination of Content Protection’s advanced software and expert analysis team. This will assist Millicom in protecting the value of rights to Liga FDP matches, which it holds in Costa Rica through its Latin American operating arm, Tigo Sports.”
Tigo Sports director, Julio Sosa, said: “The commitment of Tigo Sports in the fight against piracy, the protection of consumer rights and the well-being of the clubs is absolute and is reflected in the signing of this contract.” “With the support of LaLiga Content Protection and our team we are at the same professional level as the largest global sports companies,”
A Direct To Consumer Approach
In the past, professional sports leagues' business model relied exclusively on a one-way relationship between their partners, should it be agencies, broadcasters or sponsors. In this model, rights holders did not know much about their community and their core fans as it was mainly their partners which kept the main relationship with them.
Today the situation has changed: with the rise of digital solutions and new technologies, leagues are trying to engage directly with their fans to know them better. By doing so, they are slowly but surely better structuring their organization: they are all going through a digital transformation process, they are developing tools and products, some are even starting to internalise resources and knowledge, all this with one goal in mind: meet their fan’s expectations and create a direct line with them.
In this model, data is key. It is the raw material that enables them to analyse, iterate and improve their services. And it is even more important as leagues try to diversify their revenue streams from the classic ones that have existed for decades.
In this situation, an innovation like the venture LaLiga Tech is completely on point as it ticks all the boxes while remaining on top of the trends and needs at their own levels to best serve their fans. LaLiga can benefit from their brand, expertise and weekly sport event delivery to prove other sports organisations that what they have built in-house can be replicated for the purposes of other sports organisations which face the same needs. Until the sport industry may not be sufficient to LaLiga Tech’s expansion, and they also decide to deploy its products to other markets and industries such as entertainment (music, video games, etc where needs are quite similar) and beyond.
If it is a significant change, LaLiga and its own venture LaLiga Tech are not an isolated case as many other sports organisations are working to get things moving in this direction.
DFL For Equity and Sportec Solutions
The DFL has been working since 2006 to improve the entire media value chain for German professional football, from the production of the basic signal for media partners to the recording and preparation of match data and the commercialization of broadcast rights.
In 2018, the DFL introduced the new initiative, DFL For Equity, that is similar in many ways to LaLiga Tech. As LaLiga has developed solutions alongside startups to meet their needs, the DFL invests in startups to test their solutions internally and to offer them to other sports organizations. In that way, DFL For Equity alongside all the DFL ventures allows DFL to fully own the delivery capacities of their competitions/events.
As stated in their official press release: “With this strategic approach to equity investments, the DFL wants to be the first football league to create a portfolio of investments in innovative and promising companies in the media, technology and sports industries. It will acquire shares in companies primarily through intangible assets, but also through collaborations with further partners.”
Christian Seifert, CEO of the DFL: “In the interests of both the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs, we want to draw much greater benefit in the future from the positive growth of companies that are closely allied with DFL.”
DFL: “DFL for Equity”: DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga builds portfolio of equity investments
On top of this, the DFL has also created ventures on the same areas of focus than the ones of LaLiga Tech and we can quote the collaboration between Deltatre and DFL Group, headquartered in Munich, named Sportec Solutions.
This joint venture aims at developing next-generation solutions in the fields of match data and sports technology. Founded in 2016, it has primarily been conceived as an innovation-focussed internal lab, tasked with improving data deployment in German football.
The NBA Launchpad Initiative
On the other side of the Atlantic, one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world, the NBA, adopted a different approach than the one implemented by the German and Spanish leagues. Initially, the NBA invested in startups based on the needs of its own business units in a decentralized way. In 2019, it has invested in an AI startup offering interactive training in order to track future stars.
Jeff Beer commented in Fast Company: “The NBA has announced a new partnership with HomeCourt that uses the app’s technology to develop and train players at all skill levels, making it an integral part of the league’s youth basketball development initiatives around the world.”
“This is just a bull’s-eye for us in terms of a product that will allow us to grow the game of basketball globally,” says NBA chief innovation officer Amy Brooks. “We’re excited about the advanced technology and AI, and our ability to reach players of all levels, both elite and casual, and engage with them.”
If the NBA model has allowed them to establish many partnerships with start-ups to directly address core business needs, it seems that they now want to undertake a more global initiative that will allow the NBA to work more closely with early stage start-ups and not only mature ones. In addition, this may help them to also fully integrate products into the league ecosystem or to shape them better to their needs at a stage where the product is not yet final.
In early June, the NBA announced: “NBA Launchpad is the league's latest initiative to source, evaluate, and pilot emerging technologies that advance the NBA's top basketball priorities across all levels of the game. [...] companies and entrepreneurs can apply to NBA Launchpad by submitting innovations that address one of four priority areas: Elevating Health and Wellness in Youth Basketball, Enhancing Elite Youth Player Performance, Innovating Ankle Injury Prevention and Recovery, and Advancing Referee Training and Development.”
"With NBA Launchpad, we can identify and support the next generation of innovative sports technology, continuing to advance our top basketball priorities and elevate our global game" said Evan Wasch, Executive Vice President, Basketball Strategy & Analytics.
Press release: NBA Launchpad
SportTechie: NBA Forms Launchpad Program to Test New Technologies
US Today Sports: NBA Launchpad initiative seeks to improve basketball through emerging technologies
Ministry of Sport: NBA Crowdsource Tech Solutions With Launchpad Initiative
What is next?
LaLiga Tech's announcement remains unique in the sports industry, as it is one of the first European leagues to create a company based on technological solutions that they built in-house. LaLiga Tech's ambitions are huge as illustrated by its CEO Miguel Angel Leal “I see LaLiga Tech leading the digital transformation of sport”. Even more so as it aims to provide its services to all the stakeholders of the sports industry as its recent partnerships confirm, World Padel Tour and Millicom.
Agencia EFE: Leal: "I see LaLiga Tech leading the digital transformation of sport"
We can observe that other leagues are building the same strategy as LaLiga did a few years ago in investing in new solutions that can fulfill a league's needs, to test and shape solutions, and finally offer them to the industry. Such initiatives enable leagues to diversify their revenue streams through viable solutions ranging from fans to the structure of their organisations. However, none had really pushed the boundaries to develop its own venture from within its organisation - This is what makes LaLiga Tech unique today. Let’s watch this space and how this redefines the role of agencies within the sports ecosystem because clearly we have newcomers, the League themselves with high credibility, extensive network and a certain brand reputation.