Kick-start Segmentation Guide for Football Clubs
Reading time:
9 mins
Thomas Maurer works with clubs, leagues, and vendors around the globe. As Managing Director of FBIN, he sees the inner workings of football organizations from all sides — from tactical innovation to structural bottlenecks.
In this interview, he shares hard-earned insights on why so many club projects stall, how strategy often gets lost in operational noise, and what it takes to build commercial relevance that outlasts short-term results.
His perspective is sharp, grounded, and rooted in real conversations with real clubs. If you’re thinking about long-term growth and what separates talk from traction, this one’s worth your time.
First, I think there’s a difference between clubs and leagues. Clubs are very much driven by the day to day business – losing or winning affects the daily work. That’s obviously not the case at leagues. So, leagues are more “stable”, they work more like an average company. So I’m rather talking about clubs here. At clubs, naturally, a lot of money is spent on players and many things depend on their performance. Not that many clubs manage to “disconnect” a bit from the sporting performance and run a successful business independent from results on the pitch. Usually, people working at clubs are therefore very much focusing on operations. It’s hard for them to find time to work on strategic development. Especially, if they lack manpower, which is the case at most clubs as well. Whether they make 3 million a year in revenue, or 300 million, you could always need more people. And that lack of time, of manpower, often is an issue when implementing strategies, adding new tools, new ways of working. These projects get stuck somewhere in the middle. And if we talk about data – what you see often is that clubs collect a lot of data, but don’t exploit it as they could. Usually linked to the lack of manpower again or also the lack of tools, of knowledge, etc.
That’s a very good question. I don’t think there is THIS specific idea or solution. As every club is individual – in maturity, circumstances, the socio-economic environment they must deal with – there is not a single ideal solution.
What is key in my eyes – and that’s general then – is to have a strategy. To plan long-term. To know who you are and who you want to become as a club (and probably also as a vendor and as a person). And to compare mainly with your previous self and get better every day. While I’m a fan of putting a big focus on data and leverage its huge opportunities, it’s down to the situation of every single club to decide upon the right next step. The most important thing is that everyone in the club is aligned and wants to grow and get better.
I think this is a step-by-step project again. First, I think you need to know who you are, what you want, and how you want to get there. You need to have a clear picture of yourself and a clear strategy.
And somewhere on that path of growth there certainly comes a moment when focusing on data is key and will stay highly relevant for a sustainable existence.
Thomas’s insights echo something I’ve seen in countless conversations with clubs: there’s no lack of ambition, but there’s often a gap between vision and bandwidth.
His observation that clubs collect loads of data but rarely use it well hits home. It’s rarely a tech issue but it’s a prioritization issue. Day-to-day firefighting overshadows strategic thinking, and promising initiatives stall because no one has the headspace to follow through.
What stood out most to me: his pragmatic focus on clarity and alignment. Not every club needs a “revolution.” But every club does need a shared direction and a clear sense of identity before layering in more tools or complexity.
A takeaway I’ll carry with me: instead of constantly chasing the next big idea, clubs should first make sure they’re fully committed to executing what they’ve already started.
