Left to right: Real Madrid President Florentino Perez, Microsoft Country Manager of Spain Maria Garaña and Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chairman, Emerging Markets, Orlando Ayala.
Real Madrid partnered with Microsoft to help engage their massive fan base.
The 10 time European Champion has 450 million fans around the world and were named the best soccer team of the 20th century by FIFA.
But even the wealthiest team in sports is struggling to engage with their fan base in this digital age.
“We are the richest club in the world, but the current business model is a little bit exhausted,” said CEO of Real Madrid, Jose Angel Sánchez. “The club has a comparatively primitive digital presence.”
So Microsoft is using their Cloud, 365 and Azure technologies to help Real Madrid. They created an app for Real Madrid fans available for download on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Fans will be able to watch videos of past games, tour the stadium and search data on the club’s past and present players through the app.
Microsoft also created an engagement platform for Real Madrid which helps track every transaction a fan has with the club, from mobile check-in’s at the Bernabeu to favoring a tweet from the teams’ official Twitter page.
This allows Real Madrid to get feedback from fans and create content relevant to them. It also allows them to focus their marketing efforts toward what the fans really want to see.
“Using the Microsoft cloud, we are building a way of understanding who our fans are, where they are, and what they want from us,” says Sánchez. “We can find out if they want products or content, as well as whether they want to have an influence in decisions. This is an old dream of ours now made real with the Microsoft solution.
This partnership should bode well for all parties.
Microsoft will flex their digital muscle to 450 million fans before the launch of Windows 10, an operating system they need to be a success. Real Madrid will be able to market more successfully and engage their passionate fans, while the fans of Real Madrid should expect to see more engaging, streamlined and in-depth content from the club.
