ES | Sevilla FC Más: el Ecosistema Digital de un Club de Fútbol | MERGE Madrid 2025

Hello, good afternoon everyone. Let us introduce ourselves, here is my colleague Jara Cisnero, who is the digital director of Sevilla Football Club. I, Álvaro Ramírez, am also the director of communication and content for Sevilla Football Club. I think we all know, more or less, I hope, about Seguida Football Club. If anyone doesn't know us, they should take a look back at last weekend, because we're the ones who beat Barça four times.

By the way, we're very much in the news. And we've come to present to you, beyond what Sevilla FC represents as a football club, how we approach our supporters, our fans, how we try to connect with them, how we interact with them. And within all that strategy and within all that plan, we 've launched a new platform—it's still in its infancy, it was launched in June—that brings together many of these things I've mentioned. We've come to present it to you a little bit, and so you can see how this whole strategy of partnership with the fan, with the supporter, has crystallized in Sevilla FC Má, which is our platform and our new digital ecosystem because it's much more than an OTT service. Well, first of all, and beyond the fact that we beat Barça four times last Sunday, we did want to make a brief introduction so that we know what we are talking about when we refer to Sevilla, beyond the football club and what happens on the field.

Sevilla, beyond sporting cycles, having had a very brilliant, very glorious 21st century, with many titles, many finals, and the last two years of, well, more sporting hardships, to call it something. It has remained stable and continuous for many years. The fourth club in Spain in terms of social media followers. There are the three big ones, but Sevilla is established not only in Spain, but also in many aspects of the Iberian Peninsula, considering that there are great teams in Portugal with a long history. Uh, these are dates, these are September numbers.

As of September 30, Sevilla has 28 million followers on social media, 3 million more than the fifth-ranked club, and a potential of 48 million followers in the short term. We also have the established brand of the fourth club in Spain in that sense, so we can get a sense of where Sevilla stands. Like I said, regardless of whether we beat Barça four times or lose to any other team in the league on any given Sunday, right? And I'll also show you a bit of context, even though it's a black and white photo that reminds us of something old, but I think it has a lot of value because Sevilla Football Club is currently the oldest club of all the professional clubs in the first and second divisions . Its origins date back to 1890, and I think this says a lot about what we're going to explain later, even though it may look or sound more like a black and white photo, more analog, so to speak.

We were pioneers in developing or setting up the idea of ​​a football team or football club in Spain, playing a match in 1890 with Recreativo de Huelva. And beyond history, in the 21st century, in 2025 and in all these recent years, we continue to be pioneers, far beyond the playing field. Why are we pioneers? Is it a refrain, a mantra we can recite? No, it's reality.

And we, for example, have developed in recent years, and this is somewhat the DNA and essence of Sevilla as a club and as a business structure and as a company, various tools that are fully in force today, not only because we use artificial intelligence, which we have been doing for two years now , but because they are reference tools for clubs and competitions. I'll give you an example, which is Transfer Tracker. For those who are more into football, or not, and focusing on transfers, it's a tool that allows football clubs, Sevilla of course, but also clubs in Spain and other competitions, to track inter-club income generated from minor transfers. We're not talking about transfers of 30 million euros, we're not talking about transfers of 2, 3,000,000 or 50. We're talking about much smaller transfers, of hundreds of thousands of euros, even thousands of euros that are unaccounted for, because a player who has been developed by Sevilla, who can develop the youth academy, there are thousands of kids playing now, they develop him, then they go to other clubs, there are other transfers, they don't track them down and that money is lost.

In those small amounts of money, Sevilla has earned 1 million euros more in recent years than had been previously lost. 1 million euros. Hey, a budget of 120, 130, 140. Well, I always say that 1 million euros is enough for a lot of balls, right? So the kids can play.

So, it's a tool that Sevilla has pioneered, and other clubs are buying it. The league itself has also set the commercial trigger for it, and other competitions are also very interested because it's a tool that makes it easier for them to have income that was lost and traceable, and that they now have. We were pioneers in the founding and origins of the club. We are pioneers in innovation, in the use of technology applied to the entity, which Jara will tell us a little more about and go into more detail about. And we have also been pioneers in the formula for implementing an audiovisual platform in Sevilla.

If I say OTT, everyone immediately thinks of it . Well, it's an audiovisual content platform . Yes, we have done that, but we have n't only done that. When I joined the club two years ago, it was already a classic, a veteran, and under her guidance it has grown a lot in technology and digital aspects. When we considered shaking things up a bit and making a transfer, we had the opportunity to undertake, well, we're going to have a Sevillista Netflix, so to speak, as the platform has been somewhat dubbed, but we thought that we could go a little further in several aspects and so we didn't limit ourselves to proposing a new audiovisual platform, we wanted to change the entire digital ecosystem of the club, that's why we're both here, because we work together, we work very closely together and that's why to explain it it's not enough for someone to come and say, "No, we'll put on a documentary or we'll put on some new content and serve it to you like that."

No, it goes much further than that. We'll go into detail now, but it represents an evolution and a philosophy. As I've said, we are always within the club trying to innovate out of conviction, not because the reason for the club was to win the game, let's not forget, but within the club we all have to help the structure, the entity, to improve, advance, evolve and that people after beating Barcelona are much happier with content that is much easier for them to consume, for example. [Music] Here I'm going to let you listen to her mouth, it 's also beautiful, and let's interact a little so she can explain why and what her objectives are. When we considered taking that step beyond an audiovisual platform, we sat down and said, "Hey, what do we want to achieve with this?

Where are we going?" And she more or less said what she's going to say now. Clear. Okay, first of all, I want to thank Sebastian because when he called us recently, he asked if we could participate in a crypto event and, well, and V3, right? And we told him, well, it's not our specialty, but we're the best in technology, it's true, uh, it's not for nothing.

So, we presented him with the disruptive project we were working on, and well, he thought it was a good idea and invited us. So, you might think that two people who have nothing to do with the event are doing this, but it was really to break a bit with the theme you 're seeing and tell you that SEAIA Football Club is number one in innovation and technology projects, okay? Well, when Álvaro and I sat down to define what we wanted and where we wanted to go with the Sevilla FC Mar project, we set out five fundamental objectives so that the club would buy into our ideas. Obviously, a foundation is needed for the project to grow. So we proposed, we need to build loyalty with the user database we had.

Sevilla Football Club is a pioneer in user growth and identity. We now have all the databases of all the club's digital platforms integrated with a single sign-on, a gateway to all digital platforms. We not only have digital projects, that is, communication projects, we have ticketing, retail, all digital platforms go with a single sign-on. That means, one bridge, a single entry point, generates a single database. All that growth is sustained and sustainable growth.

So, our goal is to build loyalty in that database and create first-party data, that is, registered users with valid accounts that generate value, and at the same time, that value gives me the stand, meaning the club generates income again with those users, okay? Internationalization was key for the project to work. We're not just good in our home country; we need to sell something internationally, beyond just ticketing or merchant services, because maybe they do n't reach your borders. What did we have to do with each other? Selling content, subscriptions, and data collection meant we had to continue growing in a sustained and sustainable way, as we mentioned before, so that the model could be sustained.

We currently have over 450,000 users in the Sevilla Football Club database, all confirmed and active accounts. It's a very high number, and that number needs to be valued. Digital assets, obviously there we can generate an infinite series of digital assets that can be sold. Digital assets have a much higher capacity than traditional assets, right? In other words, we can sell much more through serving, advertising, than in the traditional way , and generate new ways to monetize the club.

If we were able to meet these five objectives, they would buy the project. And here he is, Álvaro. Yes. And it came out before we got into a little more detail, if you like, let's take a look at what the platform is, which is a visual platform, and not showing it to you would seem a bit strange, [Music] Well, it was a bit to show you what it's about or how we also approach our partners. When we launched Sevilla Fútbol Club MAC, as I said, it was in June.

Okay, we're going to show you a little bit about the ecosystem we were facing. Now, speaking of internationalization, where did we want to get to? There is a Nielsen report that indicates there are 348 million potential followers at any given time who can follow Sevilla. Let's be honest , that's a very ambitious figure . As we have said before, we have 28 million followers today and we are the fourth club in Spain and among the 25 most in Europe and the world.

In other words, it's difficult to reach this figure. Hopefully. But hey, our motto says we never give up, we'll never say we can't reach those numbers, but we have identified where we could potentially have more niche and more of a pool of followers and fans. With Sevilla Fútbol Club Más, we are obviously breaking down some barriers that we traditionally had in terms of how we reach our fans, and indeed everyone, and it allows us to impact many specific markets in a different way. I'll give you an example that you'll easily understand .

We have the first team, Sevilla Football Club, Sevilla Atlético which is in the first federation and Sevilla C which is in the third federation. And then we have Sevilla D, which is a team made up almost entirely of international players, the International Team, which also plays in regional categories and in that International Team we have, for example, two players from Saudi Arabia at Sevilla Football Club. More than 15 days ago we tried for the first time to stream live a match of Sevilla Football Club D against a rival from a town in Seville. I'm not saying you won't know him. Uh, that game featured two Arab players, we also have a Nigerian, uh, players from the United States, but we tried to directly impact with the announcement of that game in Saudi Arabia.

Well, Arabia is very big, isn't it? But we made an impact with an IP campaign showing him that, hey, there was going to be a Sevilla AD match, but one in which two players from Saudi Arabia were playing . One of them also has a presence on social media because he does tricks with the ball and has a certain reach. Uh, we did a campaign and streamed that game on Sevilla Fútbol Club Más and hey, the experience wasn't so bad that this Sunday, if I remember correctly, not this Sunday, not the next one, they play at home again and we're going to continue showing games of Sevilla D or Sevilla International Team. It's an example of, well, hey, in Asia Pacific we have 170 million, the Middle East 32 million, let's start little by little, let's start with Arabia where we arrive, right?

There is more to Sevilla Fútbol Club than just the platform; it's the entire ecosystem. I believe we would define it as the six pillars on which the birth of the project, its stability and its future growth are based, which I believe is infinite, which is the sustainability of the project. We explain the integration into our new ecosystem, the new digital platform, the measurement of data and, in that same platform, in that new ecosystem, monetization and user identity. There is one essential thing that is important today in all companies, especially in Sevilla , because as I say, we have had sporting success for many years. Lately, the last two seasons have been a bit worse.

We're back, as you may have noticed this weekend, but in any case, beyond the sporting aspect, if we start a project at a football club in an economic situation that is sometimes controversial or even good, but where we are advised to make the projects as healthy as possible, it has to be sustainable. It has to be sustainable from scratch. And analyzing a bit the objectives we had before that Jara mentioned, here we found ourselves, or rather, we made it sustainable from the beginning, and here we started to take small steps to realize that each little step led us to another little step, and another little step, and to a path that was truly beautiful, but above all, it was going to be attractive when we took it to the top and presented it to the president, CEO, etc., etc., etc.

I can say without exaggeration, although we in the south know a little, that if none of the people here, none of the people here, none of this entire event in their lives becomes a subscriber to Sevilla Fútbol Club Más, in 3 years Sevilla Fútbol Club Más will be sustainable. It will have cost less money than what we spent before. Because? Well, because we've eliminated traditional platforms from the life of the Sevilla fan, the life of Sevilla itself. We had a local television station, I'll tell you about that later, and above all because we've been saving costs by converging to eliminate suppliers and concentrate them into one, which obviously offers us all the perks we had before, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense either.

If it costs us less, but we offer less, we do n't like that. We want more, and that's putting it mildly. Uh, how did we do that process? We started looking for suppliers in the market; we had been at it for 2 years. Uh, we found Highway Media, which also had experience, quite a lot of experience in the market.

I had worked at the Olympic Games, I had worked with clubs too, some not on the same project, but I had experience in the world of football, I had also worked with platforms from the Italian Serie A and we found that they could fit what we wanted. What did we want? We wanted a new OTT audiovisual platform that we didn't have; we had something very rudimentary. We wanted a new website and we wanted a new app, but we didn't want all three things separately; we wanted everything integrated. We wanted everything to be one.

That's why I started by saying that we were pioneers, because there are many OTs in the market in football clubs, we are not the first. if we are the first to do this. And I also said at the beginning that, besides being pioneers, Sevilla Football Club was more than just a mere platform or a mere... It's the change in the digital ecosystem. It's a concept, right?

It's a name, yes, but also understanding ourselves within the work is a philosophy. Well, outwards, but also inwards. I have spoken to you about the intention to always save costs. The reality is that thanks to this, all the club's employees, from digital, communication and content, work in the same digital environment. It's much healthier, much more comfortable, much more friendly for all the club's employees, and above all, much simpler.

As I was saying here, everything is in one place, and for example, in our mobile app, the OTT is not an external application; it's integrated into our system, it's within our website, it's within our app, and of course, our application for Smart TVs is also working. But by bringing it all together, we've managed to ensure that every Sevilla fan who wants to consume content, who wants to buy a ticket, who wants to give up their season ticket seat for the match, who wants information, is all in the same digital environment, all in the same ecosystem—that's Sevilla Fútbol Club Más. And regarding the content, I don't want to go into too much detail because, well, I also invite you to go and see it for yourselves, but, of course, we had an analog television channel that we shut down, right? Hey, it wasn't without its critics because the club wasn't doing well on the field, and well, it's a product we had, but we took that risk. I think we have to do it by now.

We closed the television station, along with all the structures that came with it. We started creating new content, we started broadcasting live youth team matches, as you've seen before, Sevilla International Team, as I mentioned, we started offering many more products within our OTT platform. We started it with a series of legends, of which we fortunately have many, like Canuté, who won many, many titles. Uh, we have among other things Maradona who played for Sevilla. Uh, they are very attractive products and an archive of almost more than 20 years of audiovisual material that we are also re-digitizing to make it of higher quality and to have other attractions on the platform.

That's where we develop the plans. It's free for members , it's a service for our members and then we didn't want to go much further and above all we wanted to explore avenues. We have an annual plan of 1999, a monthly plan of 1.99 and a pay-per-view plan of 250, which, as I have told you, some Arabs already know because they paid for the International Team match 15 days ago. And here, beyond the content that we have been reforming and adapting, we also carried out another process, which the expert, my colleague, explained here.

Um, within all the processes of integrating and unifying the databases, we also wanted to be different, disruptive, uh, totally do new things that no other club was doing. Then we developed a social connector. What you see is that you need to add a connector as a partner. All members have a social network directly integrated into the OTT platform, that is, Sevilla FC. In other words, all members join as members and all the content that comes pre-installed on Sevilla Fe is directly accessible to them.

This is the official app, as Álvaro said, the OTT is natively integrated within the application, meaning we are not like other clubs that develop, without mentioning names, an OTT service where you have to download another application; everything is well integrated into the same app. So, natively, when the user logs in with their credentials, the OTT content, the premium content, is released directly. No other club has this, okay? To date, this development has been very complex. Let's see, the pointer appears there, right?

It has been very complex because creating a social network for members within Sevilla FC Má and also taking all the data to the data models to generate that unique database and that behavior that we have of the users has been another very big challenge that we have encountered. Okay? So, what sets us apart is the entire content model, the entire consumption model, and also the fact that all our partners and fans have their vouchers and subscriptions natively available for free. This is my user profile, we also work with another provider, okay? What is Dreid?

So, we manage 360 ​​profiles in real time, that is, we manage a plan, if there is a subscription, any type of action and we have a unique database. You already said it, I'm telling you, 450,000 users, first party data, you register at the club, right? And you confirm your account. From there, for all users who accept the CONSEN, of course, under the GDPR, we begin to manage each of the traceability that the user wants, okay? Last year I did this same presentation, I put my phone number in and it was a disaster, I violated all the GDPR rules.

This year it's no longer valid, the rest is the real me. So, we work with artificial intelligence and machine learning projects, with advanced technology. What can I get out of this time? Um, within all my behavior related to Sevilla FC+ I can identify three variables that are fundamental, okay? Hey, we do n't work alone for Sevilla, you can see I have a monetary value there.

For us, it's not just the monetary value generated by a user that's important; what's important is what we call bits, which is what 487 puts in, which is how active the user is in terms of content or any action that doesn't generate income. So, we have generated the relational value variable, that is, that 1812 is the relational activity value that a user has in our database, which goes beyond the monetary value and the value per bit. We calculate a weighted average and from there we identify all the users who are future subscribers of Sevilla FC Má. In other words, it's a perfect model. The model is databases; we generate databases, advanced machine learning analytics, Sevilla FC+, so all of this is kind of our baby, it's true, we call it that because it really is a perfect model that if we also integrate digital assets and activations at the server level, well, we generate a tremendous benefit for the club, okay?

So, for us it has been super important to define that strategy, uh, the relational variable and above we have how active the possibilities at the machine learning level can be for a future user at the subscription level. Okay, I'll go quickly because time is running out. These are the different alternative monetization systems that we have generated for the club as new revenue streams, in addition to subscriptions, the entire server system that we have integrated where we can generate assets for third parties, and the digital asset packages , which is another project that we have been working on throughout the season. So, what do we have? Advanced analytics, of course, aggregate platform analytics and user analytics, okay?

In other words, they are two screens on which we constantly work and on which we make decisions. All decisions made at the club are based on validated, high-level analytics. And it's true that we report such positive data that it's impossible for them not to buy the project in-house, okay? Uh, we've managed to generate over 43% revenue in less than 4 months. In less than 4 months, we have managed to generate more than 50,000 active subscribers on the platform.

Well, in terms of banner and video impressions on the server, as you can see, we are well above the expected estimates, with more than 2 million unique video viewers, exceeding half a million in record time. Okay, let's continue, we have one minute left, the one I don't give away. And well, and to top it all off with this data, Jara says it's obviously impossible that they won't buy our project because the digital ecosystem hasn't just grown a new platform, we've launched a new platform, but the whole ecosystem has benefited. The website has grown in traffic, the views are higher, we have more revenue, more users. Well, it's good, nice, and cheap.

Yes, it's good, nice, and cheap. It turned out well, it turned out nice, and it's cheap. So, they also win like Sevilla, so everything is perfect. So if you think it's similar, let's also finish by refreshing a little bit about what the platform is. And that's it, thank you very much for also getting to know Sevilla Football Club Má.

[Applause] [Music]