Arthur Goldstuck | CEO | World Wide Worx | Editor-in-Chief | Gadget.co.za | mail me |
Liverpool Football Club (FC) plays in a stadium that holds just over 60,000 people, but its fan base runs into the hundreds of millions.
That gap creates a problem the club cannot solve through football alone. While a crowd in a stadium moves together, a global following does not. It spreads across time zones, devices, habits and local gatherings. Each supporter experiences the club in a different way.
Liverpool’s global fan base
At the recent SAS Innovate 2026, the annual conference of the world’s pioneering data analytics firm, it was startling but not surprising to see Liverpool FC represented on the keynote stage in Dallas, Texas. The discussion focused on “big data” and analytics.
We started discussions with Liverpool about 18 months ago, and it was very clear that they would be able to offer us exposure to such a scale of fans. Highest audience of any sport globally. If their fans were a nation, they’d be the third most populous nation in the world.
– Jenn Chase, Chief Marketing Officer of SAS
Scale explains the attraction of Liverpool as a customer. However, it also explains the complexity of the challenge. Liverpool’s supporters, like those of any other major club, watch matches, follow highlights, buy merchandise, attend games and form local fan clubs. One example is the club in South Africa, where Liverpool FC claims it has 12,5 million fans.
Turning fan data into big data
These fans also engage across multiple platforms. Liverpool says it has 8.9 million South African social media followers and had 37 million cumulative TV viewers last season. Each interaction leaves a trace. However, those traces dissipate into different systems before the club can analyse them as big data. This is where SAS comes in.
They’re using SAS Customer Intelligence 360, our solution for marketers and the data analytics platform) SAS Viya. They’re going to use our software, and then we are going to promote ourselves as a member of the club.
The arrangement will run for five years. Liverpool will use the technology to understand and respond to supporters across channels. Meanwhile, SAS will use the partnership as a live demonstration of how its systems perform under pressure and at scale.
Why would a company born in North Carolina, best known in industries like health and financial services, get in bed with an English football team?
One of the challenges I have leading an organisation that’s been around for 50 years is that somebody’s exposure to SaaS could be from a period long time ago. We want to make sure they know what we have in terms of our capabilities today. So brand awareness is a big pillar for us.
From brand awareness to demand generation
The second is around demand generation. We’ll be able to tell those stories that have people thinking, ‘Oh, wait a minute, fans are really just customers. I could use that type of application in my business’.
Then we get to use our software to engage with a fan base that is passionate, and we really want to make sure we’re doing the right personalisation. They talk about a fan journey of one: every fan is different in terms of what they want their experience to be with the club, and we’re excited to be able to help enable that. They’ve got tremendous data about their fan base and their operations, and they’re looking to be able to act on that and to do that at scale and personalised.
Banks, retailers and telecom operators all manage large customer bases and large volumes of data. However, they often fail to turn that data into meaningful interaction. The Liverpool FC use case opens the door to those customers.
In conclusion
Liverpool FC is such a widely revered club, whether you’re a Chelsea FC fan or a Real Madrid FC fan. We realised that other sports organisations will begin to look at that and say, ‘That’s something I’m interested in too.’
We chose sports because it’s so relatable for anybody. Somebody who’s leading a financial services organisation or a bank can easily say, ‘I want to engage with my customers in that same personalised way’. So it allows us to expand that metaphor to work in other industries.
