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In football, keeping fans engaged is more critical than ever. Clubs and leagues are using data-driven solutions to meet the growing demand for compelling content. See how Stats Perform and Opta are transforming fan engagement with innovative strategies.
“Fans’ thirst for football content is pretty much unquenchable,” said Manchester City’s Head of Editorial at the 2024 Opta Forum.
Football clubs and leagues constantly face the challenge of not only meeting this demand but ensuring every piece of content is engaging and shareable. This is where Stats Perform and Opta come in, empowering clubs and leagues internationally to deliver 24/7, data-driven coverage.
From social-first content to rich in-depth analysis of matches and performances on a clubs owned channels, Opta data empowers clubs and leagues to deeply engage their fanbases.
This matters because more engaged, invested fans means happier sponsors, richer first-party data, more opportunities to grow fan revenue and ultimately many more touchpoints throughout the season.
Here’s eight-ways Stats Perform have supported teams and leagues this season to get your creative juices flowing.
A-League: a brand-new live match centre that creates new value for fans (and sponsors)
The A-League have inserted Opta’s brand new Opta Stream product into aleagues.com.au to enrich the live game fan experience on their website and app – with no manual intervention required for A-Leagues content and gameday presentation teams.
The AI-powered tool provides the A-League with a dynamic stream of content about every A-League game with live score updates, brandable and sponsorable data visualisations, game insights and much more. With hundreds of unique pieces of information about a game delivered over the course of the 90 minutes – A-League fans are glued to the site for longer – in anticipation of what might come next.
Opta Stream has helped The A League create new inventory for brand partners including eToro who sponsor the substitute alerts and McDonalds who sponsor the entire match centre.
Manchester City: A Nostalgic Dive into the 1999 Playoff Final
Nostalgia is a powerful, yet underused tool in sport, capable of reigniting fans’ passion and strengthening their loyalty by reconnecting them with unforgettable moments they might have missed.
In May (during the off-season), Stats Perform helped Manchester City transport fans back to the 1999 Playoff Final, a historic match with never-previously recorded Opta data and match insights revealed for the first time to provide a fresh perspective on this famous win.
Their analysis of this historic match revealed unique insights like these that help place the victory in even greater context. A great way to expand the meaning beyond just another trophy in the cabinet.
- 6] City became the first team in Wembley history to score two goals in the 90th minute of a match. In fact, City didn’t score with any of our first 17 shots in the match, then scored with each of our final two in normal time.
- 4] Paul Dickov had the first shot in the match (16 seconds) the final shot in normal time (his goal, 90 minutes + 5) and the final shot of the entire match (115th minute). Dickov accumulated the most xG of any player in the match (0.52), had the most touches in the opposition box (9), had the most shots on target (3) and only Gillingham’s Robert Taylor (7) – who would play for City the following season – had more shots than Dickov in the final (6).
- Note the use of expected goals here – because it adds richer context to the stand-out performance of Paul Dickov!
This season they also worked with Liverpool to revisit the 1974 FA Cup Final with Phil Thompson. Phil’s emotional reaction to seeing his stats from the match for the first time ever are an indication of the power of nostalgia.
The Thai League: Answer fans unique questions about your players and teams effortlessly
Sports fans love to get answers to their unique questions and hunches. Who better to answer them than the league itself? Stats Perform’s connected sports data research and content creation toolset, OptaAI Studio makes this effortless (watch our product overview film here).
The Thai League facilitated an interactive “Ask Me Anything” on their official Facebook page, where hundreds of fans engaged in lively conversations, asking questions about their favourite players and key stats from the season. OptaAI Studio acted as a one stop shop for this project, the tools enabling the league to both find and distribute the answers with ease.
Opta Search, a powerful data search engine meant the league could query hundreds of thousands of data points and find the answer to each fan question in a matter of minutes.
Opta Graphics, helps turn that data into bespoke data-powered graphics for each answer, including player imagery, club sponsor logos and consistent club branding, the best part? They could create each graphic in under a minute.
A representative from the league said of the tools “Using Opta Search and Graphics isn’t difficult at all. Both platforms were designed to make things easy and have everything ready at just your fingertips. Whenever we need a certain data point or make any modifications, it can be done very easily.’
FC Barcelona: Unlock new sponsor categories with the unique data + stories from your matches
Balancing commercial priorities and visibility is an ongoing challenge – but if your sponsors can be connected to the performances of your team and players through their unique data – the potential is vast.
During the 2024/25 season FC Barcelona has been using Opta Graphics to connect first-time sponsors in three unique sponsor categories: banking, tool-making, and rapid delivery to their player’s performances during and after games.
“Best Built Goal,” sponsored by Stanley Tools, uses Opta’s goal sequence data to visualise Barcelona’s finest goal scored that week.
No manual data entry is required, Barcelona’s social team simply: choose the game, the goal, and Opta Graphics does the rest, rendering a gorgeous, brand-compliant, sponsor-approved and publish-ready graphic in seconds.
Connecting data to your sponsors in this way – means it ticks the authenticity box – and that’s why the fan reactions and engagements for FC Barcelona since starting these new collaborations have been so successful. From the start of the 24/25 season – they’re at over 2 million engagements and counting.
Bayern Munich: A Data-Powered Monthly Magazine That Is Creating Super Fans
Bayern Munich collaborates with Stats Perform’s Data Editorial team to produce a monthly, paid magazine created for fans who’s thirst for information and detail about Bayern Munich has not been quenched by other news sources.
Bayern 51 goes deep into the detail of Bayern, providing more than 200,000 fans with stats, data visualisations, tactical breakdowns, and match reviews, making Bayern fans some of the most knowledgeable on the planet.
As of the 2024/25 season, more than 200,000 fans subscribe to the monthly magazine – unlocking a reliable and recurring new revenue stream and crucially providing high-impact new inventory for Bayern’s commercial partners.
In the example below, the Bayern 51 magazine crunches the numbers on Harry Kane’s fast start to the Bundesliga season with 5 goals in 5 games, comparing and contrasting him with all-time Bayern greats.
Eintracht Frankfurt: YouTube, the biggest untapped channel for football clubs?
Eintracht Frankfurt’s new series Game Vision combines the club’s access to current and former players and Opta data into an engaging interview-style format. Each video features a player breaking down their skills, backed by statistics and match clips.
Fans love watching highlights of matches – and by combining Frankfurt’s highlights archive with the numbers and context behind it – takes it to a whole another level.
One of the latest episodes, features Omar Marmoush, a player attracting a lot of praise and attention for his eye-catching performances this season. The series helps Frankfurt to bring fans closer to Omar, help them understand his approach and the method behind his success this season – backed by Opta data and easy-to-understand visualisations.
Manchester City Podcast: Unlock richer, more engaging conversations with your players so your fans care more and listen longer
Fans revel in hearing their favourite player’s stats broken down, and players love it too, with the insights acting as springboard for a richer, vibrant discussions. Why? Because it gives each player something deeply personal to get passionate about and is different from the questions they typically get asked.
On Manchester City’s subscription-only fan podcast, hosted on City+, Opta data plays a key role – helping the host to develop unique questions to explore.
In a recent episode with Erling Haaland they ask about his career stats and the only player who is ahead of his record, “that since his 2020 debut for Dortmund, only one player has scored more goals than him in Europe’s top five leagues”. Erling confidently responds with the correct answer—Robert Lewandowski—and is delighted when the co-host exclaims, “Erling knows his ball!”
These kinds of excited, unscripted reactions are special, memorable and are the sort of thing that even fans of the opposing team would admit they have a soft spot for.
Brighton & Hove Albion: Simplifying Match-Day Content Production down to a few clicks of a button
On match days, fans flood social media for team news, kick-off times, score updates, and player statistics. Research tells that even when their watching a game on TV – more than 40% are using social media.
This thirst for content, and the challenges that come with producing it every game of the season is why teams like Brighton & Hove Albion use our Opta Graphics platform to connect their team’s data, their unique brand and personality and the stories that their fan bases seeks in a few simple clicks.
Opta Graphics helps Brighton’s small media and comms team streamline their game-day content production, allowing Brighton to cover every match, every moment effortlessly. With publish-ready graphics populated in seconds, they deliver the content fans want, as the action unfolds on pitch – like this goal sequence graphic scored by fan favourite Danny Welbeck and sponsored by Monster Energy.
It’s not just goal-sequences though – it’s a huge variety of match-day content.
Opta data doesn’t just fuel football content—it powers the passion of fans around the world. Whether through real-time match updates, nostalgic trips down memory lane, or deep dives into the tactical nuances of your team, Opta helps clubs and leagues keep their fans engaged, excited, and always coming back for more.
Opta’s predictions for 2025
We’ve seen clubs of all sizes get increasingly creative in 2024, integrating sports data and content into new formats and platforms including. video, podcasts, club apps, magazines, watchalongs and more.
Opta helps club’s media, marketing and commercial departments turn your team’s performances into memorable stories and information that your fans will actively seek out, share and talk to other fans about online, at home and inside your stadium.
Here are three predictions for football team personnel as we look ahead to 2025:
Football clubs will create more revenue opportunities from YouTube
YouTube was the most viewed individual streaming platform in October 2024 and shows no signs of slowing. The platform has over 2.5 billion monthly active users but is perhaps underused by sports teams as a revenue generator. Our Sports Fan Engagement, Content Monetisation and AI trends survey highlighted that only 30% of Leagues, teams and federations are using the platform for revenue generation. Little Dot Studios YouTube Knowledge Hub revealed that a 2-hour video on YouTube generates $3000 on average, versus $180 for a 20 minute video.
Expect to see clubs create longer-form content on YouTube – with support from Opta, our tools and our data insights teams.
Live Watchalongs with embedded statistics (and interactive stats), player interviews with incisive questions about their performances and career highlights, podcasts that deeply analyse how the team plays and beyond, that can all be connected authentically to sponsors and partners.
More stats means more loyal, passionate, regularly returning digital fans
Stats Perform are constantly examining new ways and methods to analyse and understand sport and performances, adding new data points and metrics to our vast data vocabulary every season. This enables club’s content, marketing and commercial teams to tell rich, deep stories about their team, players and performances that your fans will seek on your platforms.
Live scores apps have become the go-to destination for fans looking for sports stats and metrics attracting hundreds of millions of users every day. Expect to see clubs try and win some of that traffic back. Integrating advanced Opta data, creating stickier, bespoke match centres and expanding their gameday content before games, and after matches, and in-between.
In the recent years clubs have been slower to adopt our latest metrics and analysis on their website, apps and into their coverage, fearing that they might shed light on the difficult periods every team go through.
A shift is occurring. A Premier League club recently told us they don’t worry about this anymore. By not supplying these stats, metrics and analytics on their own channels they are missing out on important fan traffic.
First party data and the passion of fans is crucial for clubs and when combined clubs can get super creative. Think; hyper personalised experiences that further fuel engagement, entertainment and fandom for your club.
The U.S. falls deeper in love with soccer
U.S. soccer fans interest in football is growing rapidly and is set to grow even more with the 2025 Club World Cup and the 2026 FIFA World Cup being hosted stateside next year and 2026 respectively. Both competitions present a major opportunity for clubs and players to grow in the passionate American market.
Our Fan Engagement, Monetisation and AI report revealed that over half of Leagues, Teams and Federations we surveyed are looking to grow their international audience.
The stories of your team, your unique history and the milestones and records your players break, as they break them, is a memorable way to create lifetime fans when attention on soccer will be at its peak.
