Client success story
Anticipating the future of football
Trendtracker empowers the Belgian football community by monitoring 60 key trends impacting football and providing insights on innovation and change.
Case study: Proleague
Sector: football


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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Business models
Sustainability
Fan experience
Media
Metaverse
Sports technology
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.
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.
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.
Get started with your trend intelligence journey.
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experts
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