The evolution of interaction with a soccer team: from radio to Web 3.0
Soccer: from radio to Web 3.0
By Lucas Compan, crazy about soccer
I'll start by telling a story from my childhood and my relationship with the team I've been passionate about since I was a child: Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas. Despite being born and raised in the city of São Paulo, I've been hooked on this team since I was little, because of my beloved and late father. In other words, a passion that survived all the years at school where friends supported teams from São Paulo - and didn't understand how I could support a team from Rio de Janeiro.
When I was a kid, there was no internet. In other words, if Botafogo's games were broadcasted on TV, great. Otherwise, I often followed the team's duels on a shortwave radio my father had. And that made my imagination fly high: I was able to be “live and color” at Maracanã stadium, imagining every pass or dribble, every goal, the vignettes marking the game time, every cheer from the crowd. And I transported all that magic to objects like my button football team, team shirts, pennants, a steel Botafogo flag that my father gave me - and that he had on his bike when he was a teenager. I even imitated the players' signatures I saw in my dad's football magazines.
Mendença, botafogo ido from 1975 to 1982
I used to play football two or three times a week. I was fairly good at it. when I was still a child, my friends called me Mendonça, my very first idol. When my father took me to Maracanã, damn, it was glory, my private ecstasy. Too beautiful. Unforgettable. Even when the team lost. The magic was far greater than any momentary defeat, which only made me even more passionate, bewitched, as well as consuming and surrounding myself with even more objects with my team's badge. Even 433 km (271 miles) away from my passion, even with an interaction limited by distance, that feeling never diminished, it only increased. Everything revolved around Botafogo.
my first mac, powerbook g3 bronze keyboard
Then, the internet came. And along with it, the sports and football and team news sites. I was thrilled with this new possibility. I was eating the internet for lunch and dinner, day and night. The interaction and closeness with my team increased. But still, this interaction felt limited. Mainly because I was in São Paulo and Botafogo in Rio.
Then social media was emerging. The feeling was that, then, I would be able to be more part of the life and day-to-day of the team that I have been following for years. Now, I thought, the interaction would be more instantaneous and more constant. Yes, I accessed a lot more content about football and my team. But again, after a while, I felt a little frustrated about my expectations. I felt that this interaction was still superficial, limited. However, what I started to realize was that, actually, the main difference between my relatives and friends fans of Botafogo who lived in Rio and me, was that they could go to more games than me, if they wanted to. Only that.
That's when I started to think: "Since I was a kid, I've been feeling this magic and this passion for Botafogo. Why doesn't my club care that much about me if I'm so in love with it?"
Botafogo didn't even know about my existence. Of course, I wasn’t the only fan feeling this way. Even if I wanted to be a supporter living in São Paulo, there was no option for me. Only very recently, a membership program was created to contemplate fans from all over the country. Still, a program that aims first at increasing the club's revenue, then offering some benefits to members.
More about my relationship with sport
I went to live in Brasília, brazil’s capital city, transferred because of work. My connection to sports, this time at a professional level, took me to a new exciting chapter. Now, it wasn't about football. I had the opportunity to experience and be part of the team that created one of the most successful programs, in terms of new business generation and brand awareness, in the history of sports in Brazil: Banco do Brasil Beach Volleyball Circuit. I was there, in the communication and marketing area at Banco do Brasil. Our challenge, at the time, was to create something that would feed the relationship with current customers and turn young people into customers. Those were days when advertising for any federal organization was suspended indefinitely. And in the 1990s, the only way to communicate with current and potential customers was through mass advertising. Then, through structured research and based on the feeling of the team members, we had this idea that investing in sports would be the most emotional way to activate a rational relationship - the one we have with a bank. That’s how the sponsorship of Brazilian volleyball teams and the creation of the BB Beach Volleyball Circuit were born.
female match in the BB BeaCh VolLeyball Circuit
We experienced such a fantastic response. Even children and teenagers, started sending messages in envelopes, delivered to us during matches in the beach volleyball arenas, or sent by mail. E-mail wasn't still very popular, and mainstream social media was still almost a decade away. Passionate messages like "I love this yellow shirt. How do I get one?" or "I want to open an account at banco do brasil and have a golden card in my wallet." The reaction was incredibly better than we’ve ever dreamed of. And despite being a large company and, therefore, moving slow in many ways, it was at that time the first products and services were created targeting a young audience, people aged 18 at the time. In other words, every company's dream: having teenagers and young people passionate about its brand. more than that, banco do brasil (BB) was perceived, in the mid-1990s, as traditional and safe to trust your money, but outdated when it comes to services to its customers.
the majority of BB customers, at the time, was around 35/45 years of age. Today, they are somewhere around 70 years old or have already departed from this planet. We were conquering not just teenagers, but helping with building the company's future. I made mistakes, some small, some big. I have learned a lot from all of them, way more than from the successes.
Thas was a fantastic experience with sports marketing. Priceless. Unique. Wonderful. It lasted a little over 5 years. The day came, my cycle in that capital city’s environment came to an end, though. I resigned from a position at the company's third hierarchical level. First, I looked up and saw the vice-president of marketing and the president of Banco do Brasil above me. And those positions were not something that inspired me the ambition to get there. Second, those are political positions. I have nothing against it, but it was never my thing. precisely because of it, the Federal District became something where I didn't feel myself challenged anymore. I learned a lot about its secrets and the underground. It takes a well-prepared stomach to digest many things that happen there. I designed a new challenge for myself: to create my own business, my solo adventure.
The return to soccer, a personal ecstasy
maracanã stadium, 102,000 botafogo fans, copa do brasil, june 27, 1999
The ingredients in my recipe: my passion for soccer, my academic background in advertising, my experience on both sides of the counter — as a copywriter in advertising agencies and in a large company — in addition to a solid experience in sports marketing and other areas of branding for a large bank, which was served by advertising agencies of the same size. After leaving Banco do Brasil marketing area, I went back to São Paulo And started cooking something.
after nine months, Gol Comunicação was born, on May 9, 1998, the first Brazilian soccer branding agency. My main motivation: i believe Brazilian soccer brands can be among the most powerful on the planet. No exaggerations.
morumbi stadium, são paulo city
BeginNer’s luck?
First client: São Paulo Futebol Clube. We designed concepts such as the first double-faced McDonalds: on game days at Morumbi (the club’s stadium), the store would open its doors to the street and to the interior of the stadium; on non-game days, the service would be running only on the drive-through facing the street. We create solutions such as sector-rights, focused on dividing the Morumbi stadium into sectors and marketing them to companies interested in implementing improvements in those sectors, in exchange to marketing actions on match days.
Other actions that were innovations at the time: hiring fashion designers to create exclusive clothing with the official SPFC brand, segmented by audiences, including women and children, who had a really hard time with finding official products designed exclusively for them.
It was a job where I learned a lot and where, in particular, I was able to put into practice some of the concepts I experienced during my experience with beach volleyball. The results could have been much better if the business environment at the club would be more professional and, of course, if I had more experience in that industry. in that first experience working with a soccer club, we were surprised to see directors and vice presidents arrive at the club around 5 or 6 pm to do their work at the club. I mean, not just any club, for that matter. it was A giant like São Paulo Futebol Clube. my business partner and I were a little perplexed. Anyway, it was an amazing experience. Getting to know every inch of Morumbi stadium, getting on the field and see the professional team playing, feel the crowd in the stadium, watch games from the stadium boxes — and experience the backstage of a football club. Everything was fantastic.
Ecstasy in black and white
botafogo hq, know as general severiano. photo: vitor silva/botafogo
My particular apotheosis, though, was about to begin. Our new client: Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas. Oh, My God. I was daydreaming. The day we signed up with the club, I couldn't sleep anymore. I thought about working 24 hours a day. Again, it was an opportunity to put into practice something we believed in: audience segmentation, creating customized engagement to conquer their hearts and minds even more.
It was challenging. For a club with debts of all sorts and late salaries, we were seen with a lot of suspicions and even anger by many within the club. Employees thought it was an absurd paying an outside company if their salaries were past due; the cheerleaders looked at us with distaste, just because we were the new kids on the block; and in general, including some members of the counselors board, did not believe in a Paulista (people born in São Paulo) who claimed to be a Botafogo fan. In their view, we were just there to "grab our stake" and leave. Well, maybe some of them saw us as competition. But, of course, this dynamic was not exclusive to Botafogo.
It took us 60 days of work for the first financial results to appear. Those were very significant results. Then, what was distrust and scolding became intrigue and hope. I remember that one day, when we arrived at General Severiano's head office for one more day of work, there was a queue of employees to receive their late payments. That was the first time everyone smiled at us. From then on, we were seen as competent and as walking bags of money.
A moment of professional ecstasy came with the final match of Copa do Brasil at Maracanã. In the week before the game at Mário Filho, we tested something that had not yet been done: segmented communication with all fans. In 1999, there was still no social media. The communication of companies with their audiences was done through advertising in magazines, newspapers, TV, billboards, etc. Through conversations with one and the other, we discovered an owner of street advertising panel companies (billboards) was a fanatic of Botafogo. It didn't take us long to convince him to use twenty-one panels placed in high visibility points in the city of Rio de Janeiro exclusively for Botafogo for a week. at zero cost.
That week, we created daily messages. On the first day, aimed at make some noise to bring attention to the final match and inviting fans to be there fervorously rooting for botafogo at Maracanã. On the second day, a message exclusively designed for women; the next day, for the children; then for teenagers; and for the heavy-fanatics. All audiences that interact with their passion for the team were contemplated, in a personalized way, in the language of that particular audience. One message for each day of the week.
“First day: fans in general; second day: women; then, children, teens, men, and fanatics, were contemplated in our customized one-week communication strategy.”
We got some serious buzz result of that communication strategy. As if the appeal of a Copa do Brasil final wasn't enough, everyone felt even more motivated to go to that game. Result: world’s record for the presence of women in a single soccer game, 15,700, according to Suderj (Superintendence of Sports of Rio de Janeiro, responsible for managing the Maracanã complex). In addition, almost 102,000 Botafogo fans at Maracanã on that June 27, 1999.
We created a VIP cabin with the slogan "Being Botafogo is Being Important." We invite celebrities, actors, and actresses from Rede Globo (the largest TV broadcast group in the country) to the VIP area, we offered buses departing from General Severiano to Maracanã - as well as parking spaces for their cars in the attached shopping mall. More: buffet service in the VIP area at the boxes, personalized t-shirt created exclusively for them, and even a sponsorship action for the VIP area: a Fossil pop-up store.
To win over what may be, perhaps, the most loyal and crazy audience for Botafogo, we went to the Maracanã electronic scoreboard operating room and arranged a tribute to the two biggest fans organized at the time: Folgada do Russão and Torcida Jovem. . I remember when, minutes before the game started, I called Russão in the stands and said: "Russão, at halftime, look at the scoreboard. You'll have a tribute with the name of Torcida Folgada flashing there." He almost didn't believe it. He hugged me and cried. During the break, there were: Folgada, Torcida Jovem and, as an extra, the phrase "Gol Comunicação: Botafogo's marketing agency." What moment. I will carry these memories with me forever
Well, but in this life, nothing is perfect: success in the profession, failure as a fan. Unfortunately, amid such immense joys, I experienced a deep sadness: Botafogo did not become champion in 1999. A day of extreme emotions for me. But precisely for that reason, they will be kept forever.
“The record is there and it belongs to Botafogo fans. Forever registered in the history of Maracanã.”
The day after the game, we aired a message on those same 21 billboard spots: a thank you message, to the fans who would be forever in the Botafogo “Guinness Book of Records.” Records that have never been surpassed: the 1999 final match is the largest audience for the Copa do Brasil to date. The Maracanã stadium has already undergone renovation and the total audience capacity has decreased. But the record is there and it belongs to Botafogo fans. Forever in the history of Maracanã.
BOTAFOGO FR
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BOTAFOGO FR 〰️
Some might argue that a final is a final, that those marketing communication actions with the fans did not influence the records at all. I counter-argument saying: in 1995, Botafogo was the Serie A Brazilian champion. In the first game of the grand final against Santos Futebol Clube, there were 53,000 fans in the same Maracanã. A number way far from the 102,000 present in the 1999 Copa do Brasil final.
From those projects with soccer clubs I got something in particular registered in my mind: the desire to achieve the complete professionalization of Brazilian soccer, in particular Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas. In the early 2000s, that was one of my dreams, as well as the former president Bebeto de Freitas’. We were very positive that professionals in the club management team would make all soccer clubs, and Botafogo, victory machines.
New York, New York
New professional challenges made me go even further away from my Botafogo: I moved to New York City in 2006. Which only increased my passion for The Glorious Botafogo. I read and watch daily, more than once a day, news and content from General Severiano's Alvinegro. The passion for football is nurtured on foreign soil, with a few trips to New York City Football Club games at Yankee Stadium.
iconic view of the manhattan bridge and the empire state building, dumbo, brooklyn, new york. photo: lucas compan
In New York, through greatfuturestories, I have been learning, in practice, something we call the digital body language of audiences in the most diverse city on this planet. Projects for Housofshop, Piccola New Yorker, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, One World Trade Center, BrazilFoundation, The Welcome Hub, Taxi & Limousine Commission of the City of New York, as well as tourists from all over the world, have given me useful insights about what works or what does not, digitally speaking - and how to create emotional connections with different cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
Technology has changed radically in the past two decades. But the level of engagement with the essence of the club hasn't changed all that much. Despite having a lot of content to access these days, I still have that feeling that our passion for our soccer team, as fans, could generate more satisfaction and pride for fans, current, and future, as well as excellent monetization for the club.
new york city football club, yankee stadium, the bronx, new york city. photo: lucas compan
A New Era for the Brazilian football
Botafogo's long-awaited professionalization finally has arrived in 2022, after nearly three years of work. The superhero is the current president Of Botafogo, Mr. Durcésio Mello, and his team, to hire Mr. Jorge Braga to prepare the club to become a company. In less than a year, a very well-structured work was delivered and very well conducted by professionals who are among the best in the market. Botafogo football is now a Sociedade Anônima de Futebol (SAF), with 90% of the company acquired by American businessman Mr. John Textor.
This is just the beginning of a much needed change. Back in the day, when I started to work with soccer brands, my purpose was my belief that Brazilian soccer brands can be among the most powerful on this planet. I still believe it. Maybe a bit more than in the past but there is so much to be done yet.
Soccer branding in Web 3.0
What did these experiences teach me and how does the current moment inspire me? My inspiration is to develop solutions to bring the club closer and engage with different segments of fans.
Companies invest millions of dollars in many different types of advertising, to try and seduce their audiences and monetize these relationships as much as possible. Football clubs, even with little or no effort at all, have the loyalty of a lifetime from the most faithful customers on this planet: their fans. The challenge is to transform this emotion and passion into generating new revenue for clubs, by creating more interactive engagement, both digital and real, with fans — in a win-win dynamic.
Going far beyond social media, today we have technologies such as blockchain, NFTs, cryptocurrencies - the Web 3.0 digital environment - and the much-talked Metaverse, where virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and Extended Reality (XR) play leading roles.
These digital technologies made me start studying in-depth, thinking, and creating, some time ago, an ecosystem for engagement between football fans and clubs. Unbelievably, decades have passed and the vast majority of football clubs in Brazil and around the world still do not communicate with their fans with the same passion that they dedicate to this relationship. Clubs don't even really know their fans.
From when I was still a child listening to Botafogo games over there in São Paulo until now, little or nothing has changed when it comes to how clubs create reciprocity to this limitless passion that fans dedicate to them. But the possibilities we have in our hands now are very promising. Botafogo and other clubs can and will have fans all over the world. How to activate this passion in other countries? What digital paths exist for the internationalization of these brands?
I'll talk more about these fantastic solutions in part II of the "Fans and Engagement in Web 3.0" series.
