Interview of Jean-Pierre Rivière, the President of the OGCNice

We realized an interview of Jean-Pierre Rivière who is the current President of the OGCNice Fottball Club, the professional club of Nice who is playing the 1st French division.

Unfortunately we couldn’t have talk to him more than 30 minutes to go deeper on all the aspects and challenges of managing a football club, however here are interesting answers about managing the uncertainty, the community of fans, the fan experience and the relationship with partners.

What are for you the key aspects when managing a football club, like you are doing with the OGCNice ?

I think that it is firstly a human adventure because the core of the company is not to work on products or service but on the team performance. 

Here at the OGCN we can’t compete with the most financial powerful clubs such as Paris Saint Germain or l’Olympique Lyonnais, so instead of buying the best players to improve the team’s performance, we implemented a strategy based on the formation of players with investments on the Youth center. 

This strategy has a particular aspect that we need to be really careful with managing people since we are forming kids that arrive from 11 years-old at the Youth and are isolated from their parents. Moreover, we know that only a few percentage of them will succeed in becoming professionnals. So, we invest a lot on the psychological support of those kids and the academic formation. We are proud that for the last 5 years, 100% of our young that took the High School diploma, passed it.

The 2^nd aspect is managing the community of fan.

We know that us, the direction of the club, are just passing and are a small part of the club history. We try to implement set of actions in order to make the club grow but it takes time to do it and sometimes it is hard to make the fans understand some decisions. 

The major issue is that fans tend to believe that the club is theirs, so everytime an decision is made and does not please them they express their opinion and sometimes anger toward the direction, by either throwing banners or songs in the stadium or by throwing objects on the buses of players and managers.

Another aspect of managing a football club is that we can not control the performance of the players on the game day but we can not control the image we want to convey. 

Unfortunately, with the incidents of the supporters’ invasion of the stadium (that came fighting Bastia players for having unfold and waved a Corsican Flag in front ot the Supporter Kop after a recent legislation that intended to forbid to express any particular regional objects in the stadium), we had a really bad image of the club in the media. 
The key is not to comment on it, because we can’t react to all those type of stuff that impact the club image without having any control of it. We stand still behind our initial strategy and try to anticipate those damageable events in a better way in order to minimize the risk of having them to happen.

How do you try to maintain and improve the OGCNice community of fans :

From last year we are playing in a brand new stadium, the Allianz Riviera, which is a Connected stadium, with access of the internet everywhere and technology available in some part of the stadium.

So, based on what we ‘own’ we try to enhance at the maximum the fans’ experience when coming to the stadium but also at home when going on the internet.

We implemented the Social Screen which allows fans to ask questions through social networks on our official pages and account (facebook and twitter) and some questions are selected then a player of the team answer them before or after a game when playing at the Allianz Riviera. The player reads the questions on digital screen and answers it. The answers are recorded by a cameraman and then uploaded on the social networks and the Web Tv of the club.

Another action was to take 360 degrees photos of the stadium’s bleachers when the team is playing at home and make this 360 photo available on our website so that from the halftime of the game and afterwards the supporters can upload the part of the photo they appear on their stadium seat and sometimes post it on their facebook account and tagging themselves or posting it on their twitter account.

The last action we implemented for fans, in partnership with BmyTeam, is to offer them the possibility to put their photo on the back of the game player’s jersey. All the pictures are combined and appear on the number of the player’s back. For 15 euros they will have the chance to be on the jersey of Cvitanich on its number 9 in the back of it’s jersey for one game during the season.

Thank you Mister Rivière. Can you tell us more about your strategy concerning the partners ?

Football is the most popular sport in France and therefore a great way for brands to be visible through sponsoring deal with football clubs and competitions. However, it is important for those brand to share the same values, ambition and vision and not only to gain in visibility but also by making business thanks to it.

So what we implemented for the last few years is to allow our partners to meet each other 2 times a year during a day here at the Stadium. Most CEO and managers are crossing each other every 2 weeks in the stadium VIP loges without knowing each other. So what we decided is to invite all of them twice a year in the Saloon of the stadium to meet during round tables and cocktail and the innovation was to set up a Speed Business Meeting. Based on the same model of the speed dating concept, CEO’s and managers of brands that are sponsors of the OGCNice have the chance to meet each other and discuss about their company, what they do and thanks to the Speed Business meeting develop their network and generate partnership and business for them.

This particular strategy was very successful and is helping us being more attractive for brands. We attracted many companies that were thinking about sponsoring the Club but were hesitating because of the return on investment between visibility and Business generation. This innovative strategy convince them with the argument that its strengthen their capacity to generate business not only with the great visibility we offer them but also with the availability to approach all of the OGCNice partners and make business with them.

Source : Jean-Pierre Rivière, President of the OGCNice

European Club Soccer to develop in China

European Club Soccer to develop in China

      European football clubs rapidly grew number of fans in China. China has become a super soccer market, attracting many European football giants to cooperate with Chinese market.

      From the creation of the professional league, there is a Chinese surge in the number of fans. China has gradually grown into the most world attention in the football market. The 2011 Sino-German soccer forum, some experts pointed out that Germany registered players are up to 600 million, while China has only 5 million people. According to China's 1.3 billion population base, China's football market potential is up to a trillion. It is based on such a big market temptation, due to the increasingly heavy financial crisis, many of the giants of European football clubs will aim at the Chinese football market, to carry out various forms of commercial activities.

      European giants experience the enthusiasm of Chinese fans. China will make the European giants in the Chinese business game peaked. In addition to millions of dollars in revenue match, Real Madrid and Asian Sports Development Company signed a promotional contract in Asia, worthy $50 million. Followed by Manchester United, Barcelona and other European clubs and the brightest are targeting the Asian markets, led by China, the huge appearance fees earned through the game as well as promote their own brand, expanding fan base. August 2009, the Italian Super Cup held in Beijing Bird's Nest, the Italian Cup win over Lazio Serie, a champions Inter Milan cup. Data show that there are more than 73,000 fans to watch the battle scene. The total box office reached 77 million yuan, setting a sales record for domestic game sporting events. By 2011, the Super Bowl against the two sides into a Serie A Milan clubs: AC Milan and Inter Milan. Under the contract, the winner AC Milan get appearance fees of € 3,000,000, which is 55%. Inter Milan will get the remaining 45%, the two sides also have their own section of the dividends at the box office. European media assess the single-game income, which is four times more common in the Champions League group stage. According to the Italian report of "the market", the Milan clubs in Beijing could gain a total 150 million euros. Thus beyond the 2009 Super Bowl, it jumped to the Chinese business game No.1.

      In the context of the European economic downturn, more and more European football clubs are in financial crisis. Many of Europe's top leagues have chosen to sponsor the team from China. The home team wear jerseys printed with Chinese words "Weibo" played the game. The team shirt sponsor is the Chinese brand Xtep. Then more and more Chinese enterprises began to sponsor Euroleague teams in the league, for example, Li Ning, Yingli Group, Haier, Suntech, etc.

      Football Club can guarantee the survival of the fans and the football market, China's huge population and maintain good posture economic situation, laid the foundation for China to become the world's biggest football market. Many European football clubs in China has a huge fan base, while the number of European clubs is the future development of the Chinese market as the primary task.

      Football fans and football market are the guarantee of survival for football clubs. The vast number of population, as well as the good economic situation, laid the foundation for China to become the biggest football around the world. Many European football clubs have huge number of fans in china. Moreover, many rich European clubs consider developing Chinese market as their principal task.

World second biggest football club !

The major European football clubs, position themselves as the leading global entities. Due to the historical success and media development, European football teams attract the best players in the world, which made the strength of a football club.

Established in 1878, and 14 times winners of the league, Manchester United is the world’s second biggest football club in brand value.

As their main strategy they want to increase they revenue and profitability. As one of the most known football clubs in the world, and has to secure sponsorships with leading brands, such as Audi, Nike, AON, AIG, Vodafone, Thomas Cook…

Its marketing strategy is based on promoting the brand covering all his over activities beside soccer.

Manchester United focused on expanding their selves on a regional sponsorship model. For more visibility, they decided to gain a new market, and opened offices in Asia and North America.

The strength of Manchester United is strong brand name, everyone knows it, sponsors include Adidas, Siemens, bwin and Coca Cola, and it’s one of the richest club in terms of revenue.

Manchester United use their players in media promotion. Through the popularity of players such as Eric Cantona, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo, and the distinguished history, allows the club to expand their selves into a global brand with an international follower base.

Compared to PSG, Manchester United and Real Madrid are more known and more present in football word. After some research, we find out that PSG could become one of the more recognized football clubs in the word.

5th most expensive football player in history

James Rodriguez a young man of 23 years old, was in AS Monaco club, and was bough for an incredible amount of 80 millions euros by Real Madrid in 2014. Which would make James Rodriguez the 5^th most expensive football player in history. He is now the key man of the returns of Columbian football.

“James Rodriguez signe son contrat et pose avec son nouveau maillot”

Twitter, Football News, 22 july 2014

Since the return of the presidency of Real Madrid in 2009, if the football men want to stay in the club, they have to give 50% of their image right.

This permits to Real Madrid to ensure significant assets, based on sporting value of his players and their symbolic value. The club gets half of the advertising revenue generated by the players.

Real Madrid earns money on the holding of television rights. In Spain, in contrary France, football clubs can negotiate television rights. Through its notoriety and reputation, Real Madrid continues imposing their tariffs to the media.

As an example, in 2013, Real Madrid owns 161 million euros only through TV right, against 44,69 million euros for Paris Saint Germain.

The strategy of Real Madrid is to spend big amount of money to buy players, to show the power and the reputation of the club. The Real Madrid president wants everyone talk about the club around the word.

The club attracts well-known players, they give the club 50% of the image right, the influx of celebrities increases the cost of television rights, it allows the return on investment, and buying more known players. The Real Madrid strategy works very well and pays at the end.