E154: Football as a platform

This is a conversation about how the digital economy is changing how football clubs define themselves, either as digital platforms or ecommerce vehicles. And we look at how the financial markets encourage this trend, and whether or not its feasible or desirable for big clubs like Manchester United, with huge global followings, to seek to be seen in the same company as the stars of Silicon Valley such as Pinterest or TikTok.Our guest is Lucas von Cranach is well placed to help us answer these questions. He founded OneFootball, the digital platform which boasts 85 million active users across the world, many of whom are under 30. The company is a veteran of digital, having begun life in 2008 and was among the first 1,000 apps in the Apple App Store.Recently, OneFootball acquired Dugout, the digital football network co-owned by ten of the biggest clubs in world football, including Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Milan. This places OneFootball and Lucas von Cranach at the centre of football’s digital economy. It’s a conversation I know you’ll enjoy.And if you like the Unofficial Partner podcasts, you’ll really like our weekly newsletter, which is read by thousands of people across the global sports business, and is where we talk about the topics and themes that arise from our podcast conversations.We can send it direct to your inbox every Thursday, all you have to do is sign up via unofficialpartner.com, where you’ll also find our back catalogue of podcasts.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.