Company

The Belgian Pro League is the top-tier football league in Belgium, organizing and overseeing professional football competitions among 16 clubs. The league operates a system of promotion and relegation, with teams competing in regular-season matches followed by playoffs to determine the champions and handle relegation. The primary focus is on managing and promoting professional football competitions within Belgium.

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Strategic Question

The Pro League and its clubs are operating in a new media context, with evolving fan behaviour, new competitive forces and a dependency on digital.

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Objectives

• Which trends will impact the football industry in the next coming years?
• Which innovations should the clubs incorporate?
• What are leading leagues and clubs doing?
• What trends are occurring in industries of interest?
• How can we steer the innovation roadmap of Belgian football clubs?

Challenge

The Pro League and its clubs are facing a new reality. The shift to digital streaming, OTT and cord-cutting is accelerating, causing a shift in stakeholder strategies, as well as volatility and uncertainty in the traditionally stable sports media rights market.

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The modern football fan is changing and adapting to new trends, and younger demographics are not consuming content in the same way as traditional fans, demanding new channels to engage with and experience the game. The blurring of sport, entertainment and media, coupled with advanced technologies, mean the Belgian Pro League and its clubs now find themselves in the entertainment industry, competing with new forces.

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Sports entities have seen traditional audiences shrink or shift away from TV and are responding by further developing their D2C capabilities so that they can own fan relationships and monetise them in future. On top of that, football is facing its own issues

• The European football ecosystem survived the latest attack on its togetherness with the shutdown of the Super League, but this story did reveal just how misaligned the different stakeholders are.
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• FIFA and UEFA continue to strengthen their models through the maximisation of revenue from their flagship properties and the distribution of funding through solidarity and development mechanisms.
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• Financial Fair Play has existed for over ten years, with improvements across clubs and leagues. However, the pandemic revealed the economic fragility of European football and the dearth of profitable clubs across the continent.
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• Investors from different regions are pouring into football with different strategies for growth and profitability, seeking rising value rather than pure profitability.

Solution

The Belgian Pro League offers a trend radar encompassing 60 trends that continuously monitor what the sports and football landscape will look like in three to five years. These trends were identified during a strategic planning exercise launched by the Belgian Pro League. Trendtracker continuously monitors the evolution of these 60 trends, clustered into seven themes:

1. Business models
2. Sustainability
3. Fan experience
4. Media
5. Metaverse
6. Sports technology
7. Technology

This specific trend board is made available to all staff at Belgian football clubs working in strategy, innovation, market intelligence, digital, development, strategic sales and so on. Every one of these employees can access the online platform 24/7 to gather all insights.

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This process is fully automated. By using Trendtracker, the Belgian football community is fuelled by 100% data-driven intelligence on the context of football and sports.

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Impact

By using Trendtracker, the Belgian Pro League and its members get 360° insights on:

• Emerging technologies
• Market-disrupting trends
• Media shifts
• Changing consumer preferences

and much more specific trends impacting the football landscape.

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