Five Questions with Yeray Alfageme

Yeray Alfageme is a consultant in sports practice with EPAM, a U.S.-based software engineering and product development services company. Based in Spain, he has extensive sports broadcasting background. He’s overseen event coordination, broadcast systems and project management around the Olympic Games, UEFA competitions, FIFA and FIBA World Cups and La Liga.

As the business development senior manager at Optiva Media, an EPAM company, Alfageme helps clients with their digital content distribution. He works with teams, leagues and what he calls “event owners,” such as organizing committees and governing bodies, as well as broadcasters and rights owners.

1) Where does the conversation start when a team/league wants to reach fans in a different way?

ALFAGEME: First of all, to understand your fan audience, what ages are we talking about? What kind of audience do you want to reach? Then, what are the activities you have? More or less, for everything and for every sport, the activities are the same: You train, you travel, you do press conferences and you compete. So you need to differentiate your content from the others. In which way? Bring in more insights, bring in more VIP-like experiences and so on.

And what technology is facilitating this? Not only with AI, but with all the devices we have around us today -- to generate content is very easy. To generate quality content is not that easy. And to be able to select which content your audience wants is starting to be a little bit trickier.

But if you allow these fans to reach you in the way they want, with the content from your activities, then you are going to have more revenue channels, because they’re willing to buy more tickets, they’re willing to buy more merchandise or they’re willing to buy more VIP experiences around the venue or around the team to access the matches or access the practices, etc. And at the end, you are going to reach more engagement with your fans.

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Find out how emerging technologies are allowing teams and organizations to gain a competitive edge, improve performance and enhance the fan experience. Download the whitepaper to learn more: https://www.epam.com/insights/white-papers/how-sports-technology-is-changing-the-game