The Shortlist: From Capital to Capability

The Shortlist

By Tahoe Lillelund

Introduction

Welcome back to The Shortlist - your weekly briefing on five stories shaping the business of football. Each edition highlights what’s changing across ownership, media, and innovation, giving you a quick, curated look at the ideas and shifts shaping how the game is run.

This week’s theme is capability and execution. From Inter Miami’s global brand strategy to clubs building data-driven teams and smarter technology stacks, football’s advantage is shifting away from pure spending power toward how well organizations are run. The question is no longer just who owns the clubs, but who controls the systems, data, and decisions that turn scale into sustained success.

Here’s what’s happening this week:

1. David Beckham’s $1 Billion Inter Miami Empire: The Messi Effect

With Messi and Inter Miami winning the MLS Cup, let’s look at this article detailing the financials behind the team. Inter Miami is valued at $1.05 billion in 2024. David Beckham negotiated the rights to buy an MLS franchise for $25 million when he shocked the world to join LA Galaxy after leaving Real Madrid, in 2007.

My Take: Beckham, the Mas brothers, and other investors haven’t always made the best decisions, but their hard work has paid off immensely. The biggest takeaways for new sports teams or franchises are:

• Global > local

  • Inter Miami built a global brand focusing on international preseason tours and academies playing globally

• Ownership of their new stadium and the surrounding land

  • Miami Freedom Park is expected to add $200-$300 million in valuation through real estate assets and increased matchday and non-sporting revenue

• Creative deals structured as partnerships

  • Miami’s unique deals with Apple and Adidas allowed them to bring Messi to Miami through revenue sharing

Read on arthnova→

2. Italy's Serie A explores options to boost international media rights business

Serie A has hired JPMorgan to review a range of options for its international media rights. Currently their media rights is $292.9 million annually, a fraction of the Premier League’s deals.

My Take: Lots of leagues are struggling to keep up with the Premier League’s dominance and media rights deals. Even the lower teams in the Premier League can regularly beat out top teams in Italy to sign players, due to the money and exposure a Premier League club can offer. It is important for Serie A to maximize the next media deal, but more needs to be done to bridge the gap to the Premier League. Clubs need to get more creative to expand their revenue and brand reach. AC Milan and Como 1907 have done a great job recently creating attention and combining that with on field success. Como 1907 has created a celebrity feel around the club, leaning into the glamour of Lake Como. AC Milan’s new American owners RedBird Capital, have been using the fashion legacy of Milan through their collaboration with Off-White. These clever strategies, looking to gain a global audience will help grow their commercial success.

Read more on Reuters→

3. Viborg FF implements 3D performance analysis in Danish football

This customer story from Genius Sports highlights how Viborg FF has implemented ProView3D to give players and coaches deeper insights during analysis. The software creates a 3D replay of the game and lets staff see the perspective of individual players, which helps explain why a decision was made in a specific moment.

My Take: Smart software implementations like this can be extremely valuable for clubs competing against bigger teams in their league, like Viborg competing with FC Copenhagen. This type of 3D technology helps players understand more of what the opposition is doing and improves their decision-making. Clubs in similar situations, such as those in the Scottish league facing Rangers and Celtic, could use tools like this to gain marginal advantages. The software alone will not win them the league, but a strong and thoughtful implementation can move them a meaningful step closer. What stands out most is how clearly this shows the real future of sports technology, which is not more data but better ways for clubs to apply it in coaching and player development.

Read more on Genius Sports→

4. Youth Soccer’s Economic Dominance: A Story of Scale, Not Splurge

Kinetica’s latest study, based on more than 18,000 U.S. respondents, shows that soccer generates over 5.2 billion dollars annually in youth spending, making it the largest youth sport in America. What drives this is not high individual costs but massive participation. Average spend sits at about $480 per child, far lower than high-cost sports like hockey or gymnastics. Soccer dominates because of volume, not price.

My Take: The size of the base makes soccer one of the most stable markets in youth sports, and the moderate per player spend shows how much growth potential still exists. The next phase of value creation will come from raising the ceiling through better coaching, smarter technology, premium facilities, and higher quality experiences for the most committed families. Soccer is already huge. It is also underdeveloped. That combination creates real opportunity for the businesses and clubs that know how to capture it.

Read on The Soccer Business→

5. Jaime Rioperez: “The biggest change we’re seeing in the football industry is digitalization and the incorporation of new technologies”

In an interview with the Johan Cruyff Institute, Jaime Rioperez explains how Club Deportivo Leganés is modernizing its operations by expanding its business and technology functions. Since Blue Crown Sports Group, an American investment fund bought the club, they have grown its corporate staff from 15 to more than 46 employees, with the strongest hiring focus on digital strategy, data analysis, and commercial roles. Leganés is building a fan-centric, data-driven model to improve ticketing, sponsorships, retail, and overall monetization, moving away from instinct-led decision-making toward specialized teams and structured growth.

My Take: Football is slow in the adoption of technology. Jaime admits that many of the changes they are making, and the adoption of technology more broadly, happened in most industries twenty years ago. The time is now coming for football clubs to adopt these new forms of digitization in order to improve data driven decision-making. His interview also brings up another really interesting insight, which is the roles they are looking for. “In our organization, the most in-demand profiles are very closely linked to technology and data-driven roles, basically anything related to digital strategy.” The clubs that move first on these roles will shape how the modern football organization is built.

Roles:

• Technology and Data

  • Digital strategy roles

  • Data analysts focused on fans, ticketing, sponsorships, and business performance

• Commercial and Business

  • Business development and monetization roles

  • Sponsorship managers split between local and international markets

  • Retail lead dedicated to the club store

• Marketing and Communications

  • Marketing roles expanding beyond on-pitch storytelling toward revenue impact

  • Communications roles supporting fan engagement and brand growth

• Organizational Shift

  • Move from generalists to specialized roles

    • Clear career paths across business and digital functions

Read more on the Johan Cruyff Institute

The Takeaway

This week’s stories show how football’s competitive edge is moving beyond spending power toward execution and control. Clubs and leagues are focusing on how they build brands, use technology, and own the fan relationship. From Inter Miami’s global-first strategy to data-driven coaching and commercial teams built around digital skills, the advantage is shifting to those who turn infrastructure, data, and systems into lasting value.