Since its founding in 2013 by Juan Luis Hortelano and Steve Olechowski, becoming the first software service platform to offer real-time analytics for social media and digital channels, Blinkfire Analytics has been continuously growing and evolving according to the needs of the market. Accompanying the company along the way has been Valencia CF, whom Blinkfire Analytics consider "a global benchmark for the way they give exposure to their sponsors on their social networks."

VP of Sales, Dani Roca, spoke at the 'Innovation in Sport' roundtable discussion organised by the Valencia CF Business Club last week.

Using Artificial Intelligence, Blinkfire Analytics detects brands within images and videos, primarily on social media, going on to converts this value into advertising exposure. It is a service that is obliged to undergo permanent reinvention, both due to the appearance of new social networks and the increasingly demanding requirements of its clients.

One of the changes made at football clubs in recent years has been the great commitment to the club's own communications channels. “Before, the game lasted two hours. Now it lasts seven days a week, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. The paradigm has changed 100%, and now there can be attention paid to content at all times. Before, all of the focus was on match day, and now that they have given us the opportunity to generate our own content, the clubs have become a means of communication and decide which images or videos are published. You decide if you want one brand or another to appear in the selected image. All of this multiplies the value of the club's channels significantly,” said Roca.

“As digital allows you to establish targets, you will no longer generate a standard digital asset, such as starting lineup, but rather publish the lineup with different sponsors for different geographical areas, on different social networks and for different audiences. What does this mean? That the market is going to open up even more. Whilst now we see large sponsors, the trend will be to move to a large collection of smaller sponsors, even regional ones, targeting certain clients according to their age and their country... creating campaigns that are going to be much more effective."

Despite the fact that digital assets are gaining importance at football clubs and the world of sports, the fear of the unknown made the company's beginnings difficult. With time the value of digital has been recognised, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The situation generated by the pandemic has been an accelerator for digital. On a sports sponsorships level, many clubs have had to save their sponsorship contracts using digital assets. Those who had digital assets measured have been able to say: 'Don't worry. Even though there is no matchday, we have this, this and this that will allow you to reach these people, and that has an economic value,'" explained Roca.