How can we build and boost an engaged (digital) fan community, while providing fans a personal experience?
Background
Being a football fan goes beyond watching the game. It is not only about those 90 minutes of match time, and we want to elevate these football experiences to maximum heights, creating the ultimate WOW-moments for our fans. Sport enthusiasts are part of a (international) fan community that follows theirteam in the league or big tournaments where they express and share their passions. Our aim is to bring the digital individual and shared fan experience to a higher level for allgenerations, including our younger fans (GenZ). Besides connecting sport enthusiasts in any way possible, we want to enrich digital fan environments and/or television broadcast. In this challenge, we are in particular looking for solutions that are an extension to (and not directly linked to) a match visit, although they could potentially also be activated during a match. It is about solutions that connect our fans, always and anywhere.
We challenge the world of start-ups, scale-ups and established organizations to step up with solutions that provide fans a personal experience, to connect them digitally, to build and boost an engaged fan community, and to enrich the experience. Our goal is to connect fans anytime, anywhere to each other andtheir favorite professional club, during grassroot competitions as well as during world tournaments.
What we are looking for
We are looking for solutions that enrich fan engagement and experience. This entails finding new ways to connect sport enthusiasts and explore digital environments with great potential or could be ways to enrich traditional linear TV broadcast. This could be through digital tools, online (social media)platforms, virtual reality, augmented reality, metaverse space, innovative applications, esports competitions, etc. We are eager to connect all generations, young and old. Solutions could focus on professional football clubs and sport fanatics, but also on the occasional football audience and grassroot players, or on fan clubs to manage members and organize events.
We are looking for a broad range of innovative solutions that could simplify, replace or improve existing services, for instanceby enriching content of linear TV broadcasting or vertical streaming, and/or by creatingenew digital environments. We are looking for solutions that are ready to be implemented, for example in collaboration with local partners or commercial sponsors.
Issues to consider
-Solutions must be tangible and create measurable value for fans
-Time-to-implement is preferably short-to-medium term
-Solutions must be possible to integrate within existing web-and mobile applications
-Cost efficiency (regarding set-up costs as well as ongoing costs) is key to enable implementation of the solution for a broader range of (professional) clubs and leagues
-All solutions must be compliant with GDPR
What we are not looking for
-Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
-Simple gamification (e.g. trivia, quiz tools)
-Solutions that require active involvement from (professional) players
-Solutions that require (more) staffing
-Solutions that are unrelated to a team/club
-Solutions looking to provide or improve match analytics and performance insights
-No broadcast overlays replacing sound
