World Football Summit speaks exclusively to Kike Levy, Southern Europe Lead Sports at Meta, about the metaverse and the key pillars football clubs need to adopt in the face of new monetisation opportunities. This interview features 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 subscribe to WFS Digest HERE.

Meta is a technology company responsible for some of the world’s most popular social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. It also develops the Quest device, which allows its users to immerse themselves in the virtual reality that will become increasingly important in the future of the metaverse.

This is one of the star topics that Kike Levy talks to us about, in a preview of what our attendees will encounter on 18 May at our second edition of the Football Innovation Forum.

“Football clubs have to be prepared because the metaverse is going to be the internet of the future and the new technologies being developed will give user and fan experiences that aren’t available today.”

World Football Summit: Despite being one of the “buzzwords”, the metaverse is still at a very early stage; even Mark Zuckerberg has mentioned that we are still 10-15 years away from living in a metaverse that matches people’s expectations in terms of interactivity. If this is the case, should football teams start preparing to embrace it? If so, how? Are there any particular skills that football clubs should consider?

Kike Levy: Yes, they have to be prepared because the metaverse is going to be the internet of the future and the new technologies that are being developed are going to give a user and fan experiences that are not available today: the sense of presence without necessarily having to be there.

The best way to start is to focus on the applications that are available today, the technologies that we have right now. The metaverse is going to be an intersection between the digital or virtual world and the real world; today via Facebook or Instagram you can already give your fans a series of virtual experiences that you can’t give them anywhere else. Being able to interact with fans 24 hours a day if you want to and not just during the match, the interaction becomes much broader.

Starting there is how clubs are going to be best prepared to enter the metaverse: the whole augmented reality experience, the possibilities with Facebook and Instagram filters, even a simple video call can already be considered a digital metaverse experience. What is going to change in the future I think is the sense of presence and immersion because when people talk about the metaverse, almost everyone thinks of virtual reality, but in the end the metaverse is going to be accessible both with a virtual reality headset as well as from your computer, your mobile, etc.

???? #FIF SPEAKER DROP ????

Introducing our first wave of speakers confirmed for the Football Innovation Forum on 18 May…

????️ Ramón Alarcón (@RealBetis), Fabio Gallo (@LaLigaTech), @KikeLevy (@Meta), @ParadelaJSr (@SevillaFC) pic.twitter.com/rvyHZXa2ub

— World Football Summit (@WFSummit) April 15, 2022

WFS: So, we can consider that we are at a point where virtual reality and augmented reality are going from being very niche to mass-market, is that how you see it?

Levy: Absolutely. Mark Zuckerberg articulated that very well when he announced the metaverse: an evolution in which the first generation of the internet was associated with the personal computer, the tool that people used to search for information and communicate mainly through static content. Then we experienced the second generation where the internet jumped to the mobile phone and led us to user-generated and more interactive content. We believe that the metaverse is the next step to the mobile internet, which will be accessed from many devices and will revolutionise the sense of presence.

WFS: Many football teams need to generate new opportunities, revenue and ways to reach the fan more in the short term. So, within the range of solutions Meta offers, what opportunities can these teams take advantage of?

Levy: Right now the metaverse is a long-term game. Football clubs have to focus on the platforms available to them. We like to structure our work with partners on three pillars.

Firstly, audience development, which is how clubs can generate their content to build their audience, build their community and provide the opportunity to create a digital experience to interact with fans.

Once that audience has been built, monetisation strategies can be considered, and this comes mainly from three different avenues: monetisation through video content to generate direct revenue through advertising; the second avenue, which clubs are not exploiting as much as they could, is the eCommerce part which includes merchandising sales; and the third is branded content, how to use the distribution that clubs have and how to generate quality content to generate value for sponsors and that the returns on investment that sponsors can show are greater than those of shirt sponsors or billboard sponsors in the stadium. The biggest opportunity for branded content is that the inventory is virtually infinite.

The last pillar is innovation and thinking about strategies on the metaverse or other new products and how to invest to be at the forefront with all these technologies.

WFS: Focusing on some of the opportunities you mention, what advice do you have for teams considering entering branded content or eCommerce?

Levy: As I said, the key on Facebook and Instagram is to build your audience. Once you’ve built that audience and a loyal community that follows and consumes your content, that’s when you can consider monetisation strategies.

There are clubs, particularly in Spain such as Real Madrid, F.C. Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid, that are a good example of this because they have more resources and very integrated direct strategies for both sponsorship and video monetisation, but then there are other very good examples such as Real Betis or Sevilla. If we go outside Europe, we have to look at the American leagues. But all these success stories have one thing in common, which is to start creating quality content, publish it and build an audience around that content.

In terms of eCommerce, on Instagram you have the ability to tag products from your catalogue in your posts and potentially generate a sale, but you don’t necessarily have to advertise the shirt, you just post a photo of the match and in that photo you can tag the shirt.

So, as with branded content, it’s not about trying to sell products, it’s about integrating into your content all those tools that will allow you to achieve your business objective. It’s not explicit advertising but integrating the advertising message of the sponsor, the possibility of buying a product or a ticket, etc.

WFS: Sometimes it’s very easy to get distracted by all the technology we suddenly find ourselves with, what are the basic principles to build on?

Levy: There are commonalities within the strategy that make it successful, and a lot of times you tend to believe in creativity and do things you’ve never done before and I always say try to be more methodical. You can’t have a creative idea every day, you have to have a constant and recurring content strategy so that fans know what to expect from the account.

Video has exploded as a format in recent years and this means generating quality video content in a consistent and predictable way. When we talk about video content, we get into a discussion about which are the ideal formats, as before it seemed that long content was the one that gave the most and best results, but now it seems that short content in vertical format works very well, hence the launch of Reels on Instagram and Facebook.

We have to work on both formats, short and long content. With short content what we achieve is to reach more people in order to have more reach, more views.

On the other hand, with long content you get to retain the audience better, you are looking for ‘storytelling’. The key is also to measure the performance of one type of content and another; two things that have different objectives cannot be measured in the same way. The quality of the content will determine the metric.

WFS: Finally, what are your expectations for the Football Innovation Forum and what value can such an event bring to the industry?

Levy: Expectations are high, especially after two years without being there, it is a joy that all the in-person events are coming back, and World Football Summit21 was a success. I have no doubt that FIF22 is going to be at the same level of audience and impact, especially being the first event to be held in Seville, a city that lives football in a very particular way and that this year is key for the industry not only because FIF and WFS will be held there, but also because it is also the final of the Europa League.

This interview features 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 subscribe to WFS Digest HERE.