Global Fútbol

For the past three seasons, SD Huesca have been paying tribute to the teams they’ve visited through their special captain’s armbands. This object is one of the most symbolic elements of any football team and it can be used to promote messages related to the values of the sport. In SD Huesca’s case, they create a personalised design for each away game, incorporating elements of the club and city they’re visiting, thereby highlighting the culture and identity of each opponent.

Diego Pesque, marketing and communication director of SD Huesca, explains the initiative from a cultural point of view: “Football gives us the chance to get to know new places, their history and traditions. We wanted to build bridges of sportsmanship between clubs, cities and fans via our captain's armband, always doing so with a lot of respect.”

As a result of this initiative, SD Huesca have gained a great deal of exposure even outside Spain. “One match we played against FC Barcelona was the one that gave the campaign the definitive boost,” recalled Pesque. International publications such as L'Équipe took an interest in the initiative, and published articles that spread the club’s story to different parts of the world.

The success of the campaign inspired SD Huesca to continue promoting it on an international level: “We were encouraged to submit the campaign to the Football Business Awards, where we were finalists,” added Pesque.

After three seasons of this initiative, for the 2022/23 season SD Huesca wanted to give it a twist and go one step further. With the help of 'Huesca La Magia', the tourism promotor of the province, they decided they’d select one characteristic of the province of Huesca that matches an element of each city the team visits in this LaLiga SmartBank season. Giving an example, Pesque said: “So, when we visited Granada CF, the captain’s armband represented our Mount Aneto and Granada’s Mount Mulhacén, since these are the two highest peaks of the Iberian Peninsula and the second and third highest, behind Mount Teide, for all of Spain.”

When it comes to the business side, SD Huesca have been able to turn the armbands into a sponsored digital asset. 'Huesca La Magia' now sponsors the presentation of each armband’s design on social media, with these posts shared three days before each match as the characteristics of each design are specified and all the work behind it can be seen. “This content draws the most engagement on our social media and generates the most conversation,” said Pesque.

As this is recurring content, it is very valuable for both the club and the sponsor. Through Blinkfire Analytics, a sponsorship intelligence provider, the club attributed an economic value to the content to monetise it.

This is the first time that the club has sold its own content on social media, which is a new way of generating revenue and increasing its turnover at the same time as club sponsor 'Huesca La Magia' achieves its goal of promoting the different elements of the province.

“Working with Blinkfire has been very useful for us as we can control the visibility of our sponsors and we can monitor the impact of our social media activity to detect new opportunities for selling content,” concludes the SD Huesca marketing and communication director.