World Football Summit speaks exclusively with Rayde Luis Báez, founder of The Connect and co-founder of SPORTHINK, about content generation and the competition football clubs are facing in regard to the entertainment sector. This interview featured in the latest edition of WFS Digest, our insider’s guide to the latest and most relevant thoughts and practices from within the football industry. You can read the full interview here: https://worldfootballsummit.com/content-generation-and-how-football-can-compete-with-the-entertainment-industry/

World Football Summit: It’s said that, in this era, clubs and sport properties should operate as a media company if they want to successfully face this digital revolution. Would you agree?

Rayde Luis Báez: That’s, for example, the project around Barça Studios or Real Madrid TV, and all the media conglomerate that other teams would like to build. But at the end of the day, every weekend you have to go out to win a game, sign players, fight against, let’s say, all that news of greater or lesser importance that make the sporting part, which is what’s at the centre, function properly.

Therefore, given its complexity, many teams don’t have the capacity or even the interest to do it.

However, I believe that there are many warnings signs to look out for and, ultimately, we come back to the same thing, the audience wants to hear from those protagonists who understand that they are legitimised and validated to give the news, what has happened on the field, what has happened off the field, and what happens behind the scenes.