CASE STUDY
Southampton Football Club Future of Football Challenge der Yolo Group
Customer
Industry: Web3 und SportTech
Project: Southampton Football Club’s Future of Football Challenge is helping the club find new ways to engage fans and support football teams by using tech solutions. From 260 startup applications from 43 countries, 10 startups were selected to work and pitch their solutions to Southampton FC over a four-week virtual programme. A prize of £100,000 was offered for post-programme solution development.
Company: Yolo Group on behalf of Southampton Football Clubs
Contact person: Calum Cameron
Challenges
The ten short-listed startups had to submit a competitive proposal to Southampton FC within two weeks to win a potential contract for their solution. It was important to prepare all teams well in terms of value proposition, sales arguments, negotiation tactics (value on the table, attractiveness, competitiveness, link to the football club\’s business), business model and to create a competitive and attractive package for the pitch. It was necessary to hold detailed discussions with the individual business owners in the football club to understand their interests and the initial situation for the individual solutions and to be able to incorporate them into the proposal.
Solution
- Establish a basic structure of a proposal
- Discussion of the relevant background information to link the individual proposals to the value proposition and goals of the business owners.
- Challenging the startup teams to sharpen the perspective on their project from the customer\’s point of view and to adapt the proposal to the level of interest.
- Calculating the value on the table and sharpening the arguments for the competitive process.
Results
2 teams won a contract for implementation as part of the competition (twice as much as advertised). Congratulations to turfcoach and Atom Stars!
About the collaboration
SFC about the collaboration:
Southampton Football Club ? Atom Stars & turfcoach
Our Future of Football challenge winners! They beat more than 250 other applicants, from across 45 countries, to win the four-week virtual sprint programme.
The Future of Football challenge, powered by Sport Republic and Yolo Group, asked some of the best and brightest startups in Web3 and sports tech innovation to put forward prototype ideas that could be used to build future value for the club, on and off the pitch.
Throughout, they were offered expert mentoring and coaching, with the winners going on to work in partnership with us to develop their technology.
#AtomStars pitched an off-the-shelf gamified experience in virtual environments, while #turfcoach entered their pioneering AI for turf management technology.
Congratulations to our winners and to everyone who entered, proving how exciting the Web3 and sports tech innovation space is.
Calum Cameron, LinkedIn
Petra Wolkenstein about the collaboration:
There were excellent teams from the Web3 and Fan Engagement environment, but also with solutions from the HealthTech area (Team Performance) and ClimateTech area (Lawn Improvement) at the start. The organisation of the competition by Yolo was very professional so that we could focus on the content. I am happy that we were able to sharpen the start-ups’ focus on the customer, including the quantification of the added value the solution can bring and the individualisation of the messages. I am happy that not only one team won, but that in the end, two were able to convince the jury to continue working together. Congratulations to turfcoach and Atom Stars!