#74 The Ballketing Letter
How Futbol Emotion is conquering the football equipment space, embracing sustainability through data, driving growth at top tier sport brands, the 2022 Globals Sports Marketing Report & more!
Hey there Ballketers,
Welcome to post #74! This week:
We analyze how Futbol Emotion has become one of the most compelling business cases in the “football / soccer apparel industry.”
A special mention to the pieces of content that look into how top brands like ESPN, Roblox or Orange Theory Fitness are driving growth.
As usual, the best content of the week aimed at helping you take your sport business to the next level.
Let´s get down to business!
“Profit is the applause you get for creating a motivating environment for your people so they take good care of your customers.”
Ken Blanchard
A remarkable masterclass on leadership where Guy Kawasaki interviews Ken Blanchard. The best organizations understand that their most important customers are their employees and then, the people who buy their products & services. And, a good leader sets the vision and then puts him or herself at the service of employees so they can meet their objectives and fulfill that vision.
These are some of the nuggets that are dropped during the episode, so make sure you check it out if you want to be a servant leader.
How Futbol Emotion is conquering the football equipment industry one niche at a time
In this week´s brief, we look into a prime example of a brand that had an early vision of the sports apparel market, a focus on a very specific niche, and the capability to scale its marketplace from there into the mass market.
Futbol Emotion has become a relevant player in the football equipment & apparel space and hopefully, we will be able to distill the main lessons from their business case for you to apply to your own sports brand.
Origins: A marketplace for goalkeepers by goalkeepers
Futbol Emotion was founded in 2001 under the initial name of “soloporteros.com,” which in Spanish means “just goalkeepers.” So, you get a clear view of who the target market was, right?
The founder is a former professional football (soccer) player who back in 2001 was able to foresee that the future of sport apparel would be “online.”
(For context, keep in mind that Google was founded in 1998 and Facebook would not enter the scene until 2004!)
Javier Sánchez Broto is a former pro goalkeeper that played for important teams like Real Zaragoza, Villareal, Getafe, or Celtic, among many others. At the time, he found it extremely difficult to find “goalkeeper” specific equipment and he decided to build the store he wished he had available for himself. As with many other initiatives we have discussed in previous editions, the business idea had its origins with the founder “trying to scratch his own” itch.
Since then, the business “outgrew” its niche and diversified into equipment and apparel for all football players.
In a way, this brings to mind the concept of the “minimum atomic network” that Andrew Chen describes in his book, The Cold Start Problem. In essence, successful marketplaces build their foundations on the back of a very specific niche and as they grow, they expand to new segments and verticals.
Such was their growth that in 2016 the business had to rebrand into “Futbol Emotion,” as a way to cater to all football fans/players, not just goalkeepers.
Today, they have become a massive business with multiple revenue streams...
Business Metrics and a diversified business model
Their revenue projections for 2021 are around €30 million, which would put them at “pre-pandemic” levels; this is a remarkable feat considering that they were heavily impacted by the lockdowns during 2020. What are their main sources of revenues?
Online Sales: This channel represents, approximately, 60%-70% of their earnings. They currently have an online presence in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Poland, Croatia, and Mexico (with their sights set on expanding across LatAm).
Physical Stores: They currently have 20 stores across Spain & Portugal, although they are planning further openings during 2022.
Teamsports division: This service could be considered “the rising star” of their business. Through it, they basically position themselves as a middleman between professional football clubs and kit manufacturers like Nike, Adidas, or Puma.
In a way, this is a similar concept as to the one we reviewed with Footdistrict in The Ballketing Letter #71, and the benefits for the manufacturers is that they can outsource the entire operation (negotiations, operations, etc.) to a partner that has deep knowledge of the local market.
So far, they have managed to close deals with top-tier clubs like Elche CF, Mallorca, or Huesca for Nike and, with several youth clubs across the market for Puma. In total, they have agreements with 250 clubs and the revenues from this business contribute around 20% of the total (after having achieved a 200% growth during 2021).
Futbol Emotion has also launched its own apparel brand, After90`, a sustainable athleisure brand to enter the lifestyle space and compete with other brands like Cooligan, which we have also talked about in the past.
Through their eCommerce, they have been able to enter international markets such as Portugal, Mexico, Poland and Croatia.
Finally, the brand has even had time to launch its own NFT, a digital copy of the boots that Leo Messi used during the 2020/2021 season, the last one he played for F.C. Barcelona.
Lessons to learn
Futbol Emotion is a brand that exemplifies the importance of:
Having and believing in a vision on the foundation of one´s own need.
A solid business strategy that leverages a physical product, an in-person experience, and outstanding digital service (eCommerce).
Being able to constantly adapt to new technologies (from eCommerce in their origins to their recent experimentation with NFTs).
Monitoring the entire value chain and being able to recognize where they can add value, as is the case of their Teamsports division.
We are pretty sure though that Futbol Emotion will seek further avenues for growth and, hopefully, we will be able to keep you posted on their developments.
Level up your marketing game
Copywriting masterclass to drive conversions
Do you want to increase your website conversion rate? Then, tune in to this episode of the Everyone Hates Marketers podcast which shares a great framework to take your copywriting skills to the next level. It is based on 3 steps:
Research your audience and gather insights based on their “pain”
Organize the message and frame it through the “Problem / Agitation / Solution” framework
Validate and optimize the message
Paid Social Masterclass
Refine Labs shares a masterclass on building your paid social strategy, including the strategy, platform selection, targeting, ad execution, or measuring performance.
The key message comes at the end:
Keep it simple (Messaging, one target, content execution, deeply understanding who you target, a simple purchase process, etc.).
You cannot scale “complicated.”
How are the best winning the game?
Driving growth at ESPN by identifying new customer segments
The Sports Innovation Lab hosts ESPN´s EVP of Marketing and they discuss the increasing importance of women´s sport, how ESPN is identifying new customer segments and, how they are developing their marketing strategy around what those segments look for.
At the end of the day, the key is to make the fan “see themselves” in the content.
Partnership Strategy in Roblox
Is your sports brand exploring potential marketing tactics in Roblox? This episode of The Current Podcast is a good resource to understand how they approach their partnership strategy, mistakes to avoid, best practices, and more!
Being the CMO at Orange Theory Fitness
Ever wondered what it feels like to lead the marketing strategy at one of the coolest fitness brands around? If so, listen to this episode of The CMO Podcast in which the CMO of Orange Theory Fitness shares the day-to-day of his role, the importance of purpose for the brand, the opportunities ahead, managing talent, and more.
A particularly interesting segment makes reference to how Orange Theory was able to stay relevant and avoid being just a fad. That is what builds brands in the long term.
A 2022 Global Sports Marketing Report
Nielsen explores “global consumer shifts over the last two years and their impact on sports sponsorship models and content distribution.” This is a must for those sport executives that need to understand how fan behavior has and will evolve in the upcoming future.
Formula 1´s climate change strategy & using data to embrace sustainability
It´s fantastic to see major sports brands embrace the climate change challenge. Check out how F1 is trying to, despite all challenges, trying to win the race towards carbon neutrality.
And, now that we are on the topic of sustainability, this episode of Sports Pro Media´s podcast shares practical advice for those executives in sport that want to implement actions aimed at improving diversity in the workplace or the competitions.
An email marketing masterclass through 15 examples
Brilliant article from Demand Curve that will help you take your email marketing strategy to the next level. Based on a 4 step framework, the team includes 15 detailed examples of brands you can learn from, including, for instance, Strava.
The 4 elements of an effective email marketing campaign are:
Subject line
Design
Body copy
Goal
The 3 types of visitors based on intent
Andy Crestodina shares a great framework to target the different types of buyers that arrive at your landing page. There are actually three types of search intent.
Know - informational queries
Do - transactional queries
Go - navigational queries
The article will show you what their searches look like, the landing page and content you need to develop to move them further down the funnel and even they way to monitor the key metrics for each segment in Google Analytics.
A modern decision-making process
Brandingmag shares a great framework to apply a data-driven decision-making model. The interesting twist is that it explains why and how machine learning can be applied to take the analytic capabilities to the next level.
The 3 elements of a complete marketing strategy
Reforge shares a fantastic article that explains the 3 realms of a complete marketing strategy:
Brand marketing (the promise and the experience)
Product marketing (the solution to the problem)
Growth marketing (acquiring and retaining customers).
The key is to understand that the 3 of them need to complement each other to compound growth and that they need to evolve based on internal and external signals.
A go-to-market framework for web3
A16Z shares an insightful article for those looking to generate business opportunities in web3. Tokens are identified as a foundational piece of the GTM strategy, which essentially means that growth is achieved through all stakeholders, not just customers:
To summarize: In web2, the primary GTM stakeholder is the customer, typically acquired via sales and marketing efforts. In web3, an organization’s GTM stakeholders include not just their customers/users, but also their developers, investors, and partners.
And that does it for The Ballketing Letter #74! Thank you if you made it to the end of the post and, if you have any feedback, please reach out.
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Keep safe.