Key Takeaways:
-The execution gap is real: Most clubs collect fan data but lack the infrastructure to activate it – treating engagement like "teenage sex" where "everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it."
-Sponsors want partnerships, not placements: Modern sponsors demand tech integration, qualified user data, and measurable adoption – not just jersey logos and stadium visibility.
-Content + data + automation = scalable monetization: Clubs that intertwine automated content delivery with fan intelligence can personalize experiences at scale without becoming tech companies.
Sports organizations are swimming in content and attention. But when it comes to the thing that will get them through the next era of fandom, most are still thirsty.
That thing is fan data. And not in the abstract, dashboard sense, but as a living asset that powers every meaningful fan relationship a rights holder can build. And at the WSC Sports Madrid Huddle to close 2025, the message from FC Barcelona and RCD Mallorca was clear: sports organizations must move on from chasing “more signals” to turning signals into value. The kind of value fans can feel, and businesses can measure.
But first, someone had to say the quiet part out loud.
Everyone’s doing it (except they’re not)
"I think fan data is like teenage sex," said Tomer Coreanu, Director of Product at WSC Sports, borrowing a line from psychologist Dan Ariely. "Everyone talks about it. Nobody really knows how to do it. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it. So, everyone claims they are doing it."
It got a laugh. But the reason it landed is because it's true.
If that sounds harsh, it's because the stakes have flipped quietly. Reach used to be the game. Now the upside is still reach — but at the cost of ownership. Every fan you "engage" on a rented platform leaves behind data you don't control, and a relationship you can't deepen without paying again. The untapped audience isn't just the people who haven't found you yet. It's also the people who have — but who you still don't really know.
Watch the full discussion:
The scale myth: you don’t need Barcelona’s budget, you need their discipline
One of the most useful parts of the session was how cleanly it cut through scale myths. Not every club can build a Barcelona-sized data engine. But every club needs one.
RCD Mallorca framed it bluntly. They're a first-division club on an island paradise with rising demand, but not Barcelona budgets. As Roger Forns, their Technology & Innovation Director, put it: "Of course our financials cannot be compared to Barça's ones. It's obvious. So we are looking for different revenue streams and one of them is data." (someone said “Billy Beane”?)
That line matters because it reframes data from "marketing nice-to-have" to strategic necessity. When rights holders talk about growth, they usually mean three things: grow attention beyond match day, convert that attention into repeat behavior, and turn repeat behavior into commercial value.
Data is what connects those three dots. Not because data itself is monetizable in isolation, but because it lets you serve different fans differently, at scale, without guessing. You know, these truths that traditional B2C/DTC brands have adopted years ago.
For Mallorca, though, that meant starting from zero. "A year and a half ago, we were in very different place, with scattered information that was heterogeneous. So for us it was starting from very basic," Forns explained.
Their roadmap was unglamorous but essential: single sign-on, a new identity platform, a CDP (customer data platform), and new digital touchpoints like a business club app and a loyalty program launching within months. They're even integrating offline retail stores into the ecosystem.
The takeaway? You don't need to be Barcelona. You need to know who your fans are, what they do, and how to talk to them like individuals instead of a crowd.
From archive to asset: Barcelona’s content playbook
Barcelona offered a different kind of lesson — one about latent value hiding in plain sight.
Jordi Mompart, Director of Barça Vision, described it simply: "We have 1 million images and videos in our archive. Three years ago, we decided to start extracting value from this archive. It started with an auction in Sotheby's, New York, with an NFT that was sold for $700,000."
But the bigger move wasn't the NFT. It was what came after: treating digital content like fan data, because they function the same way. Both are archives of potential value until you activate them.
Barcelona launched a digital trading card game — similar to Pokémon – that turns club moments into collectible experiences for fans worldwide. "Why worldwide and why digital?" Mompart asked. "Because we have fans in Singapore, in Nigeria, in South America. They don't have the chance to buy, let's say, physical cards."
The lesson isn't "everyone should launch cards." It's that once you understand who a fan is, what they care about, and when they show intent, your content stops being output and starts being inventory. You can package it, personalize it, and sell it in ways that fit different segments — superfans, casuals, international followers, even lapsed supporters.
And critically, you can do that on your own terms, in your own environment.
The sponsor shift: from visibility buyers to tech partners
Here's where the business case gets sharper.
Traditionally, sponsors paid for brand association and visibility — logos on jerseys, LEDs in stadiums, that sort of thing. But as Mompart explained, "Nowadays, sponsors are looking for much more than visibility. They are looking for tech integration. They're looking for adoption of the products. They are looking for joint projects and we, the clubs, should be prepared for this."
This isn't just theory. When Spotify became Barcelona's main sponsor, the conversation wasn't just about reach. It was about second-party data sharing, market expansion, and co-developed products.
For Mallorca, the shift is already visible. "Sponsors are already approaching us requesting to have a minimum number of registered users," Forns noted. "But we know that it's only the first step. Afterwards they will want to have qualified users."
In other words, it’s the transformation of sponsors to partners. And clubs that can't deliver data-driven engagement, personalized reach, and measurable outcomes are being priced out of the conversation entirely.
Owned platforms aren’t vanity – they’re leverage
The session kept circling back to the same strategic axis: owned and operated platforms are where data becomes durable.
Mompart pointed to a telling example. "My sons are on Discord hours every day. E-gamers, people looking for information, there are many reasons to spend a lot of time in channels that are different from the traditional ones, and we should pay attention to that. They create content and there is a lot of behavioral data there to pay attention."
That tension is the modern job: be where fans are, but don't disappear inside those platforms.
This is why personalization and automated delivery came up so often in the discussion. Segmentation without execution is just a spreadsheet. Execution without automation caps out fast. The practical playbook clubs described was simple in logic, complex in operations:
-Identify meaningful segments (from demographics to intent and affinity) -Map content types and journeys to each segment -Automate distribution across owned surfaces to keep the fan loop alive -Measure value in business terms, not vanity ones
Barcelona has already consolidated isolated data lakes into a single platform, ready for AI on top. Mallorca is integrating more than a dozen digital assets into one ecosystem. Both are racing to turn fragmented signals into unified intelligence.
The 50% you’re ignoring
Perhaps the most striking moment came when Mompart made a point he says he makes at "every single conference."
"When we check our data we see that, let's say, only 20–25% of our fans are women. This environment is too male dominant. And I'm not saying this for an individual or a corporate responsibility. I'm saying this because it's a market to grow. There is such a huge opportunity when we analyze data and start creating products that appeal to new audiences."
This isn't sentiment. It's arithmetic. Barcelona's women's team has won three European championships in the last five years. Women in Catalonia are buying jerseys "like crazy" and are more involved than ever. In Barcelona's e-commerce data, women are active buyers.
The untapped audience isn't always overseas. Sometimes it's the half of your local market you've been ignoring.
You can just automate it
The reason this was a panel on an event by WSC Sports – an industry-leading content-automation company – is because, as Coreanu put it, the industry has spent years solving content creation – but data is still "like oil that is buried under the ground and needs to be extracted somehow. And it's very hard to find those streams."
That is, until you drill right into your content.
The realization for WSC came from talking to partners like Barcelona and Mallorca. "We understood that intertwining the content, the experiences, and the data, is something that can create a 1 + 1 + 1 equal 10," Coreanu explained. "And we are the only ones that are able to do it because we have the data, we have the content, we have the connection with the fans, and we have the opportunity then to create a really strong infrastructure that will enable the entire ecosystem to really lean into this era."
The challenge to be solved here is that of an execution gap – to give clubs, leagues, and broadcasters the same content-driven data activation and monetization capabilities that the major consumer platforms have built over the last decade, without forcing them to "just give it away."
As Coreanu put it in his closing thought, looking into 2026: enable every organization, no matter the size, "to have the monetization capabilities that major platforms have, and it starts by really owning their data."
The real game
Mompart had one more thing to add before the session ended – something that reframed the entire conversation.
"We are a sports club, so our main goal is to score goals," he said, with a laugh. "So we have no idea – let me exaggerate a little – about how to make money with data. We have a lot of data. Maybe we have a strategy for that, but we need companies to come to us and say, 'We'll make money for you,' because our goal is scoring goals, not the rest of the things."
That's the real insight. Clubs shouldn't have to become tech companies to capture the value of their fan relationships. They should be able to focus on what they do best – creating moments worth caring about – while platforms and partners handle the infrastructure that turns attention into ownership.
Fragmentation isn't slowing down. Competition isn’t getting kinder. So the only sustainable edge left is ownership of the relationship. Data is how you earn it. Owned experiences are where you keep it. And automation is what makes it scalable.
The untapped audience is waiting. The question is whether you'll meet them with a guess, or with intelligence.
Actionable Insights
-Start building qualified audiences, not just bigger ones: Push one step deeper than “views” by adding email capture, SSO prompts, or light registration moments around high-intent content. The goal is turning unknown fans into known users so future engagement stops relying on guesswork.
-Map your content to actual fan segments: Don’t treat your entire audience like a single persona. Identify 3–5 meaningful segments — new fans, superfans, locals, international followers, commercial partners — and assign content journeys to each. Even basic segmentation unlocks higher retention and more dependable behavior patterns.
-Automate the repetitive links between content and data: Use automation to turn every highlight, moment, or clip into a data signal. Trigger personalized recommendations, surface related moments on owned platforms, and keep loops alive without manual effort. This closes the execution gap and frees teams to focus on strategy rather than daily production.
