IES861-PDF-ENGcaso Barcelona

IES861
January 2021
FC Barcelona: More Than a Club, More Than Data

Javier Zamora
Isaac Sastre Boquet
Ana María Vilet
On a pleasant spring night in Barcelona, Leo Messi received the ball from Arturo Vidal in the
heart of the opponent's penalty area, and with a quick movement of the hip, he lodged it in
the net of the Levante CF goal. Joy erupted in the stands of Camp Nou stadium, as this goal
meant winning the league title of the 2018/19 season, the 25th in FC Barcelona’s history. This
victory prolonged a sports dynasty that had begun in the 2000s and which was already the most
successful stage in the club’s history.
But had this excellence on the field been followed by excellence in the organization? Undoubtedly,
the club had grown by leaps and bounds. Income had doubled in less than 10 years, bordering on
one billion euros this year and sure to exceed it the next. The organization behind the club had
been growing and adapting – not without teething pains – to the new realities of football, a gigantic
global business that could no longer be managed as it had been 20 years ago, when the club won
its first European Cup.
With these changes in mind, the club launched an ambitious strategic plan in 2015. It was the
first of its kind in an organization that, by its nature, had difficulty thinking in the long term, given
a governance structure where club members elected a president every 6 years in a vote that
was usually subject to the ups and downs of the team's football success.
Four years after the launch of this plan, Jorge Mateu, the Director of Strategy and Innovation of
FC Barcelona, sat down to review the progress of the plan to date. Several of the indicators were
progressing well, but he was aware that there was still much to do. The reorganization the
plan entailed would change the culture and the way of doing things of a century-old
organization, introducing new management methods based on data collection and tracking
progress throughout the entirety of the club's activities.
This case was prepared by Professor Javier Zamora, Isaac Sastre Boquet, case writer, and Ana María Vilet, research assistant.
Some of the information in this document has been altered for confidentiality reasons. January 2021.
IESE cases are designed to promote class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective management of a given
situation.
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Last edited: 3/3/21
This document is authorized for use only in Richard Moarri's Proyectos de business analytics II 31 at ESAN - Graduate School of Business from May 2023 to Jun 2023.
SI-206-E FC Barcelona: More Than a Club, More Than Data
But with every great transformation, difficulties arose. Had the correct decisions been made?
Were all parts of the organization lining up? Were the tools, information, and decision-making
skills being deployed at the right points in the organization so that it could react quickly, but
consistently and with coordination, to the growing challenges of the football business?
These and many other questions were in Mateu's head. He and his team were aware that
competition in the football world was increasing. The rise of clubs such as Paris Sant Germain
and Manchester City, which had vast external financial support, made the success of the
strategic plan a must, in order to lay out the foundation for more and better financial growth
and sporting success.
But Mateu wanted to go even further. FC Barcelona should be taking its cues not just from other
sports clubs, but from the best managed companies in the world. FC Barcelona, as a global
entertainment company, should strive to be compared not only with Real Madrid or Manchester
United, but with Netflix, Google, and Apple. The strategic plan was part of this effort. The
question was ... were they on their way to achieving this goal?
The History of the FC Barcelona: From Hans Gamper to Leo Messi

In 1899, Hans Gamper, a Swiss businessman and football pioneer, published an advertisement
asking for people interested in founding a team. A group of Swiss, English, and Spanish
enthusiasts appeared, and Football Club Barcelona was born. The club was one of the founding
members of the Spanish Football League in 1929 and won the first edition of the competition.
The club's first golden age came in the 1950s, when “Barça” (as fans affectionately called it) won
the national league five times in ten years under the leadership of the Hungarian club legend
Ladislao Kubala. In 1957 the club moved to Camp Nou, the largest football stadium in Europe,
costing a record 288 million pesetas at the time.
The club was much less successful in the 1960s, until the signing of Dutch superstar Johan Cruyff,
considered one of the best players in history, who revitalized the team. Cruyff led Barça to win
the league in 1974, for the first time since 1960, but it was not until his return as a coach that
he would have a major influence on the club.
This was in the late 1980s, which had been a frustrating decade for FC Barcelona, despite signing
Diego Armando Maradona in 1982 for what was then a record 1,200 million pesetas (7.2 million
euros). Maradona, another of the best players of all time, suffered a serious injury and was unable
to adapt to the club, which he left bitterly in 1984. Cruyff was named coach in 1988 and managed
to win four league titles in a row, plus the first European cup in 1992. He did it with a very technical
style of football, based on ball possession, which became the essence of the club: the so-called
"Barça DNA." Cruyff was very involved in Barça’s development and reformed the team’s youth
academy, promoting the Catalan midfielder Josep Guardiola to the first team.
Cruyff left in 1996 as the best Barça coach of all time up to that point. However, the early 2000s
brought another period of crisis, with Barça firing five coaches in three years in an attempt to
change their luck. The change came with the appointment of Dutch coach Frank Rijkaard in 2003
and the signing of Brazilian offensive midfielder Ronaldinho Gaúcho for 27 million euros. The
second FC Barcelona European Cup, later renamed the UEFA Champions League, came in 2006.
This period was also significant due to the consolidation of Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, and
Lionel Messi, all of whom came from the youth academy, to Barça’s first team.
2 IESE Business School-University of Navarra
FC Barcelona: More Than a Club, More Than Data SI-206-E
Under the command of Josep Guardiola, who was coach from 2007 until his departure in 2010,
these three players led a team that achieved unprecedented success. In the period from 2007
to 2018 they won three Champions League and eight Spanish League titles, including two trebles
(winning the three major football trophies, national and continental, in the same season) in 2008
and 2015. Xavi and Iniesta were also the backbone of the Spanish football team that won the
European Championship twice (in 2008 and 2012) and the World Cup in 2010, while Argentine
Lionel Messi won the Ballon d'Or, awarded to the best player in the world, five times. Many
hailed him as the greatest player of all time.
Barça and the Football Industry

In the 2010s, the FC Barcelona had established itself as one of the richest and most popular clubs
in the world, with sustained income growth (see Exhibit 1 for an evolution of the club's business
figures throughout the decade).
Football had become a global sport whose main events, such as the Champions League final,
attracted an audience of some 200 million spectators in 2017. That year, continental club
competitions organized by UEFA raised €2.35 billion in commercial revenue, while the screening
rights for the Spanish Football League sold for €1.1 billion per season until 2019, while the Premier
League obtained €1.5 billion. Major clubs, such as Barça, had grown into large global companies
with income from a wide variety of sources in a wide variety of markets, and paid astronomical
transfers and salaries for footballers such as Neymar (€222 million), Mbappé (€180 million), or
Coutinho (€150 million). See Exhibit 2 for a list of the 20 highest-earning clubs in the world, and
Exhibit 3 for an evolution of the income of the football world in the previous 20 years.
The Organization of FC Barcelona

The peculiarities of the organization of FC Barcelona began with its own legal status. It had no
shareholders, and no owners in the traditional sense of a business organization. Its
141,846 members (2018/19 season figures) directly elected a board of directors every six years.
The current chairman of the board was Josep Maria Bartomeu, whose term expired in 2021. He
could not stand for re-election, since presidents were limited to two terms. It was not
uncommon for the results of the football team to affect the results of the elections.
Moreover, some of these members (2.5% chosen at random from the total plus 0.6% of older
members) formed the General Assembly, which each year had to approve club results and
budgets and had the power to approve or intervene in important decisions. Many key decisions
could even be taken to a referendum among members: in 2014, 72% of members voted in favor
of renovating Camp Nou, the centerpiece of what would later become the Espai Barça project
within the strategic plan.
In times past, the board of directors had managed the club directly – which had been common
practice in Spanish sports clubs. But with the exponential growth of the football business and
FC Barcelona in particular, the management had become professional. The club today had a CEO
and a steering committee appointed by the board, which were in charge of the club's day-to-
day management.
Indeed, FC Barcelona had become an organization of enormous complexity: six professional
teams in five sports (men's and women's soccer, basketball, hockey, handball, and futsal), nine
sections of amateur sport, a highly technically-specialized sports medicine area, a commercial
IESE Business School-University of Navarra 3
organization that managed several stores in addition to granting and managing licenses for Barça
products, an area for attracting sponsorships for practically all the activities of the club, an event
organizer that regularly gathered tens of thousands of people on the club grounds, a sports city
that trained hundreds of athletes, and a residence that catered to the schooling and nutrition
needs of dozens of young people. It also managed the most visited museum in the city of
Barcelona (two million visitors a year), offered support and services to the more than 1,200 fan
clubs established worldwide (with some 150,000 members), and interacted on social networks
with more than 300 million Barcelona fans spread across the globe. It also had a charitable
foundation (Fundación FCB), which carried out projects every year for a million children, as well
as 50 football schools spread around the world.
Each of these areas had very different needs, objectives, technology, and management systems.
And in each and every one of them, FC Barcelona aspired to be one of the best in the world.
The Strategic Plan 2015-2021

In a period where competition was growing in the football world, the board of directors, headed
by Josep Maria Bartomeu, won re-election for the club's presidency in the summer of 2015. Part
of the platform was the creation of a strategic plan that would steer the management of the
club throughout the entire term.
This was the club's first strategic plan. Previously, only financial or economic viability plans had
been implemented, and were irregularly followed upon. Some functions also had their own
planning, but a transversal plan at the club level had never been implemented.
All functions were involved in the development of the strategic plan: sports, social, commercial,
communication, HR, finance, operations, technology, and legal. The plan was approved by the
board of directors in November 2015, and was subsequently presented by managers from all
areas at La Masía (FCB’s youth academy). According to the plan, the club's mission was defined
as follows: “To be the most admired, loved and global sporting institution.”
To achieve this goal, the plan laid out 5 lines of action:
 Sporting Excellence: achieve sporting success in all sections of the club, promote
women's sports, and make FC Barcelona the best sports knowledge center in the world.
 Social Implication: reinforce the relationship with members and supporters’ clubs,
highlight amateur sports, and make the Barça Foundation a reference for children in the
world of sports.
 Patrimony (Espai Barça): build economically sustainable infrastructures that would be an
international reference, integrated into the city, and that would provide an income-
generating space and a meeting point for fans.
 Brand and Global Positioning: enhance the image and presence of the Barça brand
internationally, and grow its capacity as a source of income generation.
 Financial Management and Sustainability: maintaining the economic independence of the
club and its ownership structure through solid management that becomes a global
benchmark, based on innovation and digital transformation.
The plan outlined concrete goals for each of these lines of action, as well as strategic projects to
achieve them. These can be consulted in Exhibits 4 & 5.
Moreover, the club created a strategy function as part of a profound reorganization of

the management structure (see Exhibits 6 & 7, the organizational layouts of FC Barcelona in 2015
& 2019).
In January 2017, Jorge Mateu, who had already participated in the creation of the plan as an
external consultant, joined the executive team as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer.
He described the importance of the plan: “For the first time we have a transversal instrument
that is common to the whole organization, which is what we need.”
But this plan was not exempt from difficulties. Miquel Zobel joined as Corporate Director in July
2017 and explained the challenges the club was facing:
“We are in an important phase and facing important growth; it is a relevant growth that at the
organizational level has its tensions. One of the key challenges for the club is to be able to match
the speed of both of our growths: the growth of the business and internal organizational growth.”
Following the Plan

The corporate management of FC Barcelona was well aware of the challenge at hand, which was
the transformation of the way the club was managed. One of the first obstacles that the strategic
plan encountered was the absence of clear and standardized tools for monitoring the activities
and projects to be carried out. Furthermore, the club had to ponder what exactly "doing things
right" meant. As Mateu explained:
“What is sports success beyond scores? How do you measure whether you are doing well in
sports beyond the result at the end of the season? What is the most important thing for the
Masía: developing players or winning youth competitions?”
The need to create dashboards was born from this dilemma. They were created on three levels:
 Board of directors
 Steering committee
 Management areas (sports, commercial, brand, patrimony, strategy, corporate, etc.)
But when creating these dashboards, the first important decision arose: what indicators should
be reflected in them? Although in certain areas these indicators could be defined in clear and
concrete terms (i.e. the number of tickets sold, financial ratios, sales of products), in others it
was less clear. Jordi Pagés, Data Manager within the IT Department, explained the kind of
difficult decisions that appeared, decisions that went to the core of understanding the business:
“How well did match day go? In other words, what KPIs need to be looked at to understand
if the day went well? That a number of people connected to wifi, that people got in on time
and didn’t have to wait in lines, if there were incidents or not? Basically: What does it mean
to say that a day went well or badly? I think this is what needs to be defined: which KPIs are
the ones that define this, and that everything is focused on deciding what this means.”
Data Collection
One of the main hindrances to the strategic plan was that the club did not have a structure to
automate and systematize the collection of data generated throughout the organization.
Many times, this data was simply unknown. The club discovered, for example, that it had little
information about the profiles of visitors to the museum or the club store in Camp Nou itself, or
that it didn’t know the number of employees who cleaned the facilities after a match.
Creating this structure became the job of Jordi Pagés as Data Manager. The department faced
three challenges in this regard:
 Ensuring that the data was correct
 Ensuring that the data was available
 Ensuring that the data was used
With all this in mind, a data warehouse was created to store all the information generated by
the club, which would then feed all the dashboards. This was an arduous task. There were data
sources spread all over the organization, from the turnstiles at Camp Nou to reports from talent
scouts, and all used different formats and collection methods. There were ad hoc databases,
registries where unstructured data was dumped, even handwritten notes. Some were not even
collected on a regular or standardized basis. Not all data could be automated (for example, injury
data had to be entered manually by the evaluating doctor).
Pagés explained the difficulties. “We have many businesses, and some are not very mature,”
he explained. “When we moved to the operational part of the plan, we saw day after day that
the systems were not ready. Collecting dashboard data became a job in itself.”
There was, moreover, a problem of data ownership. FC Barcelona found that it did not own, or
even have access to, much of the information necessary for the management of the organization,
a good deal of which was controlled by third parties. For example, the club maintained 50 sports
schools, many of them franchised, from whom it received little information. Many outsourced
services - such as cleaning or catering services - did not share data with the club or did not do so
in a structured way. Information regarding the profiles of television audiences was in the hands of
the companies that held audiovisual rights, such as Telefónica or Mediapro. And Facebook
controlled all the data related to the enormous activity of the club on both Facebook and
Instagram – estimated at more than 300 million contacts.
The club therefore carried out a census of all the important information that was not in their hands
and tried to include data integration as a condition in contract renewals. This was easy in the case
of franchisees or companies that provided services to the club, but more difficult with large
companies like Telefónica, Mediapro or Nike, many of whom already had their own platforms that
weren’t necessarily compatible with that of FC Barcelona. Despite the difficulties, the club had
moved from 5 external integrated data sources (at the start of the plan) to 49 in 2018 (See Exhibit 8
for a list of several of those sources).
Some early wins demonstrated what could be gained from a structured data policy. The club's
CRM had tripled the number of contacts by ordering and organizing the data sources. There
were also challenges related to legal certainty and compliance with all the requirements of the
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which were left to the corporate risk department
and the club's compliance area.
By the middle of 2019, access to 40% of the data generated by the club had been automated.
The goal was to reach 100% by 2021. It was also important to reduce waiting times – much of
the dashboard data was still collected through manual surveys in the different areas involved, a
process that was done quarterly and took a month and a half to complete. The goal was to
reduce this to 10 days. Without this reduction, a great deal of data was too old to be useful.
Information Systems Architecture

Another challenge facing the club was the homogenization of its information systems
architecture. The legacy silo structure in which the club had traditionally worked had caused the
different areas to develop and adopt their own IT solutions and platforms, with their own
databases.
The systems architecture of the club was divided into various blocks, mainly:
 Members: this was dedicated to the social side of FC Barcelona, managing for example
season tickets, the release of seats, and services to subscribers, members, and supporters.
 Venue: managed everything relating to the sports arenas: security, access, accreditations,
ticket offices, and others.
 Business: in charge of the commercial use of facilities, ticket sales, events, catering, VIP, etc.
 Corporate: managed corporate functions. Included are the areas of finance, human
resources, purchasing, legal, compliance, etc.
 Sport: in charge of sports, which included medical services, scouting, collection and analysis
of athletes’ data, etc.
The applications that served these areas were divided into several layers. A data layer, overlaid
with a layer of BPM (Business Process Management); back office, which managed and
administered data; and web/mobile user interface, which allowed interaction with users
(internal or external) through different APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allowed
users to make use of different services – so that a ticketing provider could use it to develop its
services, for example. Many of these layers used different providers and platforms. The
structure was further complicated by the existence of external systems such as the AVET
computer system, owned by the Liga de Fútbol Profesional (Spanish Professional Football
League), which, among other functions, controlled the Camp Nou access turnstiles. Therefore,
the ticketing data (i.e., tickets sold as well as season tickets) had to be consolidated in AVET in
order to manage access to the facilities during the match.
The goal of the club's technology transformation plan was to streamline this diversity, reducing
the total number of platforms and managing most club systems with just one provider (NEXUS).
Using modular platforms would reduce costs and increase flexibility.
Digital Technologies at FC Barcelona

Apart from the difficulty of creating a data structure capable of supporting the club’s activities,
Barça had to face the fact that the different areas of the club were starting in very unequal places
with regards to adopting new technologies.
Mateu commented on this:
“We realized that this is an organization in which everyone has lived apart, built their own
role and we were coming in to fight against this reality and make everything transversal. It
isn’t easy, and there are days when everyone’s frustrated, but also more hopeful days.”
Carles Díez had recently joined as Head of Business Analytics and explained the difficulties of
overcoming the momentum of a very heterogeneous organization with a long history.
“People work in silos, each with their own data and doing things their own way, and sometimes
it’s hard to make them see that this information, which is useful to them, can also be valid in
other areas. This is an important barrier to what we’re doing.”
This meant that achieving the objectives of each of the action points in the strategic plan — sports
excellence, social involvement, patrimony (Espai Barça), brand, and management and economic
sustainability – was challenging. But simultaneously, there were chances to improve business
drastically in all aspects of the club's activity.
Sporting Excellence
Sports, the “core business” of the club, had already done an intensive job of incorporating digital
technologies. During the matches and training of the professional teams, an exhaustive monitoring
of the players' performance was carried out, using GPS and video recordings. This had gone
beyond the usual practice of employing a team of sports analysts who viewed game videos.
FC Barcelona had adopted new image recognition technologies and advanced statistics that gave
the club greater analytical skills. Among these technologies was the Wimu Pro, a wireless device
that monitored physical activity and was capable of generating 20,000 datapoints per second from
a single player. In many cases the youth teams served as a “pilot test” of technologies that were
later incorporated into the senior team. This extensive technological development, which took
place in an environment where all major clubs exploited any legal possibility that could give them
an advantage on the football pitch, contrasted with other areas of the club, which were much less
developed.
Brand and Global Positioning

Digital
One of the less-mature areas was digital. Fan engagement, for example, was barely developed.
The club only had registered and contactable, in 2019, a very small number of the more than
300 million fans estimated worldwide. Teresa Romeu, the club’s Digital Director, explained the
work that remained to be done in her area:
“We’re late to the game, at the end of the day this is a football club and what I do isn’t core
business. But there’s a clearly pressing need for income generation, and now everyone is
asking ‘where can we get money from?’”
The club had many sources of data that were disaggregated or not being exploited (the museum,
the store, the stadium, etc.). These could be fed the CRM and provide a lot of information about
the fans. The more data the club had on their fans, the more it could personalize their
experiences, thereby increasing engagement and monetization. As Romeu explained:
“The goal is to have a singularized vision of the fan and to be able to say: he or she is from
such a country, he or she is this age ... came to the stadium seven months ago and bought a
shirt, watched a game, then went online a week ago, etc., that is, we want to have an
integrated vision. And if you add a layer of AI to that, you can achieve greater segmentation
and we think that is very powerful.”
Romeu believed that “now we’re are starting to build these profiles; in ten years this will be the
most important source of income for the club.”
Barça Licensing and Merchandising

Within the strategic plan’s “brand” section, the commercial area presented great challenges, and
great possibilities. In 2018, the club had retaken control – until then in the hands of Nike – of the
club's physical stores with the FC Barcelona brand, as well as the granting of licenses to sell
products bearing the club's image. This business had been grouped into a new entity, Barcelona
Licensing and Merchandising (BLM). The retail business consisted of three directly managed stores
(the Camp Nou flagship – which had been Nike's second largest store in turnover worldwide – and
others on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia and an outlet mall La Roca del Vallés), as well as 15 stores
that Nike had licensed (not franchised) to third parties. The club was now facing the management
of these stores. Taken together, they accounted for 51 million euros in revenue in 2017, which
amounted to 50 million from the three directly managed stores and 1.5 million in royalties from
the rest. The club wanted to expand into other prime locations (such as the Ramblas in Barcelona),
and needed to make a decision about what to do with the licensed stores. Marina Acosta, Director
of Licensing and Merchandising, explained: “It is one of the decisions we are facing: manage all of
them directly or changing the management model. If we choose the latter, we would go to a
franchise model where we maintain some control.”
To do this, one challenge would be accessing the information of these licensees, not only to
learn exact income figures, but also client behavior.
Moreover, the club wanted to enter the e-commerce space as a strong player, which would
require coordination between systems, digital, brand, and commercial departments. Acosta
broke it down:
“We believe this channel has amazing potential for the future, with all the complexity that
entails. It is indispensable for us if we want to grow in certain countries where we are in great
demand, such as China, which currently neither we nor Nike can supply. We want to plant
our foot – in fact, our whole body – in China and the U.S.”
In addition, BLM managed some 400 product licensees who sold a total of 7,000 different
products with the club’s image, a business that generated about 11-13 million euros per year.
The club estimated that the global business of products with the Barça brand was over
250 million euros and believed that reorganizing this area could lead to significant growth in the
club's income.
Patrimony - Espai Barça

The FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou, had the highest rating (4 stars) awarded by UEFA and was
the largest football stadium in Europe, with a capacity of 99,000 seated spectators. But it had
been built in 1957, and despite being renovated various times (most recently in 1994) it didn’t
meet the needs of a modern club. One of the most important pieces of the strategic plan was
therefore "Espai Barça," a major urban development project with the core task of remodeling
Camp Nou at an expected cost of 360 million euros. This redesign would improve comfort,
empower the stadium as an entertainment center for fans and improve its ability to generate
income. Additionally, the surrounding area would gain new sports facilities (such as a new
basketball arena that conformed to FIBA regulations), shops, green areas, and offices.
But the Espai Barça project went beyond a simple urban intervention. Barça intended to create
a “smart stadium” that would improve the experience and services offered to fans. It had already
started to deploy a wifi network powerful enough to serve 100,000 people inside a single facility.
This could be used to provide augmented reality experiences, enable digital purchases, provide
orientation within the venue, and create a gamified experience that would increase the
engagement of the supporters. All these initiatives, and more, would help the club know its fans
better by exponentially increasing the points of contact between club and fan. This would also
allow them to control internal flows within the stadium better and increase monetization while
building fan loyalty. The club wanted to go from the 6 million annual visitors to the FC Barcelona
complex in Les Corts to 12 million. Jordi Pagés said, “I want a visit to Camp Nou to be the best thing
that ever happens to you.”
But such a large-scale project incorporated multiple dimensions and stakeholders – internal and
external to the club – who were not always well coordinated. Jorge Conrotto, Director of Real
Estate, explained:
“As an example; we’re going to open the Johan Cruyff1 stadium and we have a very specific
contract with La Liga for certain components (megaphone, lighting, turnstiles) as they want
to standardize the stadiums throughout Spain. It’s easy for us to say ‘okay’ but then La Liga
starts having their own internal arguments about endorsements, payment schedules, and
everything else and, to be honest, they end up upsetting our plans.”
He continued:
“The club's problem is this: the club only works on the basis of the season, and one can
imagine what this means when trying to follow a strategic plan. The mentality is, ‘I have my
budget for the season, and I do what I can with it.’ Everyone tries to move their projects
forward but then comes the summer and the end of the season, and with the new season
new projects begin.”
Managing and Exploiting the Data

The vast majority of managers involved were clear about the primary purpose of data governance:
to support decision-making that was previously made based on intuition or gut-feeling.
For example, was there a relationship between the team's lineup and the television audience for
a game? Which nationalities were more willing to buy merchandise? What was the best way to
retain fans who connected to the club via social networks compared to those who did so via the
website?
It was not about eliminating managers’ experience and capacity, but rather helping them by
providing the best possible information. But Jorge Mateu already flagged one of the main
challenges they faced: “I believe that the future for us is to be able to extract intelligence from all
this data, there is a lot of data, too much, and it is true that each area has an interest in its own.”
Mateu went further; he believed that it was time for the club to start a conversation about how
to use all this new information:
“I don’t know if we are at the point where, operationally, tactically, you can make decisions
following this method. But at a strategic level we can spark a debate that is important because
it is a debate that has never been had. I think that we are now at the point of creating this
debate and later, when all the information we have is optimal, we can make the decisions.”
1 The Johan Cruyff Stadium was set to replace the Miniestadi, the then-current field for the youth teams, which was
scheduled to be demolished as part of the urban renewal project for Espai Barça.
The role of Data Manager within the IT area had been created in 2016. Since then, the team had
worked to add data from more than 70 internal and external data sources, ensuring the quality,
governance, security and distribution of the information. The data team worked with the
dashboards of each of the areas, and currently had more than 110 of them. In addition, common
cross-area KPIs had also been created, and the organization now employed market-leading tools
to integrate, govern and distribute information. During this period, the IT area had also
guaranteed that the technological platforms were unique in each layer, selecting transversal
tools for the entire organization, thus avoiding duplication and breaking information silos. Mateu
already had good information to start enhancing data governance.
Therefore, Mateu's objective was that, for the upcoming 2019-20 season, the club started hiring
data management experts, that would use the information contained in the dashboards. Jordi
Pagés described his ideal profile as:
“A person who sits down to look at that dashboard, understands it, comes to a conclusion and
then goes to the business analyst or to the head of the area to say ‘Look, in recent months this
has gone up and this has gone down, etc.’ and the business person will say ‘I have to go to the
right or to the left because I hadn't realized that the visits to the web are going down and
the Facebook visits are increasing… so I have to change something.’ A dashboard with
70 indicators takes a long time to understand.”
But was it realistic to expect each of the departments to have an analyst? Or would it be a
function that the strategy area would provide to all areas? This linked with another of the great
internal debates in the strategy group, that of where to keep the analysis of the information
obtained, and what autonomy to give to the different areas. If the analysis was done in the areas,
it would be "closer to the ground" and could better relate to the business. However, at the same
time, the silo structure might be reinforced and the move to transversality that the management
group so longed for could be impaired (See Exhibit 9, for a list of the capacities available to each
of the areas of the club).
And it was in this transversality between areas where the greatest opportunities were to be
found. Before the strategic plan, FC Barcelona did not even have a formal structure to drive and
follow projects that affected various areas. The strategy group believed it was important to
break down organizational silos and to define KPIs that spanned different areas and brought out
new efficiencies and business opportunities. For example ... how much did it affect match sales
(commercial) and activity of social networks (brand) if a player like Leo Messi played a match?
Accordingly, the club decided to put a three-level structure in place that would try to combine
both sides:
 The IT Department: whose function would be to integrate and validate all data, eliminate
duplications, and ensure that everything was clear and unambiguous. The department
would manage the data and provide it, together with analysts, to all areas.
 Area analysts: would use the data provided by IT to guide decision making, in conjunction
with their knowledge of business in their area (sports, commercial, corporate, etc.).
 Business Analytics Department: would use the data to gain transversal knowledge and
would guide decision-making throughout the organization.
See Exhibit 10 for a more detailed breakdown of the three-level structure.
Furthermore, the club tried to break silos whenever possible. For example, meetings were
organized between analysts from different areas so that they shared what was being done in
different areas.
Lastly, there was the possibility of outsourcing part of the management analysis. FC Barcelona,
due to its prestige, received constant proposals. For example, there were already partnerships
with universities to analyze the data from La Masía (FC Barcelona's sports training center).
Although these kinds of partnerships could provide immediate solutions and capacities to the
club, there was a danger that knowledge might not stay within the organization.
David Vicens, Chief Information Officer, summed up the apparent contradiction that had been
generated as the organization learned more and more about its businesses: “The paradox is that
the more technology and information you have, the more technology and information you need
to digest it. It’s a circle.”
In the strategy area, everyone was well aware of the danger of introducing new layers and decision
processes, which could backfire on the ultimate goal of achieving a more agile and efficient
organization. As Mateu said: “There is a tension between the necessary growth and restructuring
of the organization, and the danger of bureaucratization. In other words, the processes delay the
activities that the organization has to carry out.”
The Status of the Strategic Plan in 2019

In mid-2019, Jorge Mateu contemplated the results of his department’s validation process to assess
compliance with the strategic plan. In practically all areas (except patrimony, where the execution
of the Espai Barça project depended on the approval process by city authorities), this was
summarized as “on track,” reflecting the good work and involvement of all areas and professionals.
(See Exhibit 11 for the percentages of compliance with the strategic plan in mid-2019).
Moreover, the club was prepared to announce a revenue budget for the 2019/2020 season that
would exceed a billion euros, which gave a double-digit CAGR from the start of the plan. But
despite this, Mateu was aware that he faced many challenges. How to get from the current
phase of “prospecting,” in which the entity was rapidly acquiring a large amount of data, to
refining it to make better decisions and take advantage of business opportunities? Were new
roles necessary? What consequences should it have on the organization of FC Barcelona?
The strategy team knew that it had to come up with the right answers, since a good digital
transformation of the club would be the foundation of success, not only financial, but ultimately
sporting, of FC Barcelona.
Exhibit 1
FC Barcelona – Financial Evolution (in Millions of Euros)
1,500
1,000
500
0
2011/12 2012/23 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19
-500
-1,000
-1,500
Earnings Expenses Net Result EBITDA
Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.es/es/club/organizacion-y-plan-estrategico/comissions-i-

organs/reports-anuals.
Exhibit 1 (Continued)
FC Barcelona – Expenses by Area (in Millions of Euros)
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19
Sports salaries Non-sports salaries Management expenses Other
Note: Sports salaries include player transfer fees.
Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-

plan/commissions-and-bodies/annual-reports.
Exhibit 1 (Continued)
FC Barcelona – Earnings by Area (in Millions of Euros)
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19
Stadium Members Media Marketing Transfers and other
Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-

plan/commissions-and-bodies/annual-reports.
Exhibit 2
Ordinary Income of the 20 Richest Clubs (2018)
Club Earnings (millions of euros) Country
1 Real Madrid € 750.90 Spain
2 FC Barcelona € 690.40 Spain
3 Manchester United € 666.00 UK
4 FC Bayern € 629.20 Germany
5 Manchester City € 568.40 UK
6 Paris Saint-Germain € 541.70 France
7 Liverpool € 513.70 UK
8 Chelsea € 505.70 UK
9 Arsenal € 439.20 UK
10 Tottenham Hotspur € 428.30 UK
11 Juventus € 394.90 Italy
12 Borussia Dortmund € 317.20 Germany
13 Club Atlético de Madrid € 304.40 Spain
14 FC Internazionale Milano € 280.80 Italy
15 AS Roma € 250.00 Italy
16 FC Schalke 04 € 243.80 Germany
17 Everton € 212.90 UK
18 AC Milan € 207.70 Italy
19 Newcastle United € 201.50 UK
20 West Ham United € 197.90 UK
Note: The list does not take into account extra income such as that generated by selling players.
Source: “Deloitte Football Money League 2019,” Deloitte, January 2019, https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/sports-business-group/articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html,
last accessed: May 10, 2019.
Exhibit 3
Combined Earnings for the 20 Richest Clubs in the World (1997-2018)
9
8.3
7.9
8
7.4
7 6.6
Thousands million euros
6
5
5
3.9
4
3.3
2.8
3
2.2
2
1.2
1
0
1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: “Deloitte Football Money League 2019,” Deloitte, January 2019, https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/sports-
business-group/articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html, last accessed: May 10, 2019.
Exhibit 4
FC Barcelona Strategic Goals (2015-2021)
Source: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-plan/commissions-and-bodies/strategic-plan-2015-21#.
Exhibit 5
Strategic Projects FC Barcelona 2015-2021
Source: FC Barcelona. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-plan/commissions-and-bodies/strategic-plan-2015-21#.
Exhibit 6
FC Barcelona Organizational Structure (2015)
Steering committee President and

Board of
General management staff Directors
Internal Audit Communication
General
Management
Institutional
Relations and Security
Protocol
Legal
Sports Area Corporate Area Commercial Area Social Area FCB Foundation Patrimony Area
Source: “Francesco Calvo, nuevo director comercial del Barça,” Sport, September 14, 2015, https://www.sport.es/es/noticias/barca/francesco-calvo-nuevo-director-comercial-del-barca-4507512,
accessed September 2019.
Exhibit 7
FC Barcelona Organizational Structure (2019)
Steering President and

Committee Board of Directors
Compliance
Internal Audit
Officer
Presidency and
Board of Directors CEO
Area
Secretary to the
CEO Assistant
President
Professional Patrimony and Legal Services Licensing and Strategy and

Communication Commercial Area Brand Area Social Area Corporate Area
Sports Area Espai Barça Area Merchandising Knowledge Area
Finance adn
IR and PR HR Area Strategic Relations
Area
Facilities
IT Area
Operating Area
Barça Foundation
Source: “Estructura ejecutiva”, FC Barcelona, https://www.fcbarcelona.es/es/club/organizacion-y-plan-estrategico/estructura-ejecutiva, accessed November 2019.
Exhibit 8
Selection of FC Barcelona Data Sources
1. Digital 2. External
SOCIAL NETWORKS SCHOOLS BIHUB/UNIVERSITAS BLM CRM
WEB+APP eTICKETING eCOMMERCE COMMERCIAL SEGUIMIENTO MEDIA BLM ERP
ANALYSIS TOOLS API
CRM FANS SPORTS DATA
3. Corporate 4. Sporty
Corporate CRM MEMBERS APP CORE
INTRANET SOCCER – PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS – MASÍA 360 – SPORT SCIENCE
CORPORATE ERP NAVISION/NEXUS GAME AND RIVAL ANALYSIS SMART MASÍA
AVET GPS AND TRACKING ATHLETES VIDEO SYSTEMS
TELECOMMUNICATIOSN, MONETIZATION AND SUPPORT
5. Reports
REPORTS: STRATEGIC PLAN, ESPAI BARÇA MEMBER BRAND STUDY RELEVANT BI REPORTS
OBSERVATION
Source: Information provided by the company.
Exhibit 9
Analysis Capacity of Data Assigned to Each Area of FC Barcelona
DATOS + BUSINESS ANALYTICS
DATA SOURCES REPORTS ANALYSTS CORPORATE DATA

& ALERTS ANALYTICS SCIENTIST
TOOL
DUPLICITIES & NON-SUPERVISED SYSTEMS
DIGITAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE BIHUB/UNIVERSITAS
TICKETING BUSINESS (SPONSORS) COMUNICATION (SOCIAL MEDIA)
SPORTS AREA BLM OTHERS CLUB
Exhibit 10
Data Management Layers in FC Barcelona
AREAS
SPORTS/COMMERCIAL/BRAND/PATRIMONY/STRATEGY/CORPORATE/OTHER
- Identify the data needs in every area
- Identify the business opportunities that can be analyzed
- As specialists in their field, train other areas in technology and analysis (knowledge sharing)
BUSINESS ANALYTICS IT (SPORTS & DATA)
- Prioritize investment in data, together with - Process and consolidate data from different
the IT department places into a single repository.
- Offer a transversal vision of all club data to - Manage all the club’s tools.
avoid duplication and uncover new business - Secure data at all stages.
opportunities.
- Secure the governance, quality and security
- Define, working with the areas, solutions of data in line with the current GDPR.
and dashboards.
- 24/7 support to all areas of the club.
- Create a data-driven culture.
- Enrich corporate data with external
information.
Exhibit 11
Implementation of the Strategic Plan by Area (2019). Percentage of Actions
Completed
L5 Management and Economic Sustainability 66%
L4 Brand and Global Positioning 55.50%
L3 Patrimony (Espai Barça) 42%
L2 Social Involvement 69.60%
L1 Sporting Excellence 67.60%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

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IES861

FC Barcelona: More Than a Club, More Than Data

Last edited: 3/3/21

The History of the FC Barcelona: From Hans Gamper to Leo Messi

2 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Barça and the Football Industry

The Organization of FC Barcelona

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 3

The Strategic Plan 2015-2021

4 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Moreover, the club created a strategy function as part of a profound reorganization of

Following the Plan

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 5

6 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Information Systems Architecture

Digital Technologies at FC Barcelona

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 7

Brand and Global Positioning

8 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Barça Licensing and Merchandising

Patrimony - Espai Barça

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 9

Managing and Exploiting the Data

10 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 11

The Status of the Strategic Plan in 2019

12 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Earnings Expenses Net Result EBITDA

Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.es/es/club/organizacion-y-plan-estrategico/comissions-i-

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 13

Sports salaries Non-sports salaries Management expenses Other

Note: Sports salaries include player transfer fees.

Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-

14 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Stadium Members Media Marketing Transfers and other

Source: FC Barcelona annual reports. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 15

16 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 17

18 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Source: FC Barcelona. Available at: https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/organisation-and-strategic-plan/commissions-and-bodies/strategic-plan-2015-21#.

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 19

Steering committee President and

Internal Audit Communication

20 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

Steering President and

Professional Patrimony and Legal Services Licensing and Strategy and

Source: “Estructura ejecutiva”, FC Barcelona, https://www.fcbarcelona.es/es/club/organizacion-y-plan-estrategico/estructura-ejecutiva, accessed November 2019.

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 21

Source: Information provided by the company.

22 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

DATOS + BUSINESS ANALYTICS

DATA SOURCES REPORTS ANALYSTS CORPORATE DATA

DUPLICITIES & NON-SUPERVISED SYSTEMS

DIGITAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE BIHUB/UNIVERSITAS

TICKETING BUSINESS (SPONSORS) COMUNICATION (SOCIAL MEDIA)

SPORTS AREA BLM OTHERS CLUB

Source: Information provided by the company.

IESE Business School-University of Navarra 23

Source: Information provided by the company.

24 IESE Business School-University of Navarra

L5 Management and Economic Sustainability 66%

L4 Brand and Global Positioning 55.50%