Global Fútbol

The vice-president and managing director of Albacete Balompié, Víctor Varela, explains that the club from La Mancha is working on various projects, such as increasing turnover, communicating with fans through different channels and improving the fan experience at the Estadio Carlos Belmonte, which needs to be adapted and redeveloped to keep up with modern needs.  

- What is the club’s roadmap in a business sense?

The club is constantly evolving to grow in business and brand positioning, which will lead to the improvement of services and the experience of our fans. We want to be an active, enterprising and innovative club, one capable of championing our region, its people and the products and hallmarks of La Mancha around the world.

- What is the club doing to grow its brand?

We are working in many areas, starting from a point of humility and self-awareness to firstly understand how we are perceived and to then be able to develop a more effective strategy. For example, we have grown our communication department and we have allocated more resources to our digital strategy, because we are committed to and keen to create interesting content, in all formats, for all our followers.

We have also started internationalisation projects with some partners that will soon be officially launched, and we have developed other projects such as the ABP Business Area to foster cooperation and opportunities among the companies in our region.

- You are back in professional football after a season in the third tier. Is there a noticeable difference with being back in LaLiga SmartBank when it comes to sponsors and establishing new commercial agreements?

LaLiga is a very attractive space for sponsors, both for the competition's own sponsors and for those of each club. We still had very significant backing in the third tier and I must thank those who supported us and believed in our project, but there’s no doubt that being part of LaLiga is valuable for the reputation of any brand as well as being a source of opportunities and a vehicle capable of taking your brand to almost 200 countries.

- Last season you achieved promotion in a historic way. After that, how have you been working to connect with more fans and the younger generations?

One of the pleasant surprises of the massive promotion celebrations in the streets of Albacete was, without a doubt, seeing young people enjoying their city's team, especially after years of a pandemic that has deprived us of the most beautiful thing in football, which is the fans. In Albacete, we’re fortunate to be able to count on the loyalty of all those who have grown on a personal level, and I’d dare to say experientially, thanks to the club. Now, we have the challenge of connecting with younger fans.

Of course, there is constant evolution and change so we need to be active on the same platforms as these young people, to communicate in their language, to continue to visit them in schools, to organise online events and promotions so that they can participate and feel connected to the players and, at the same time, we need to make it easy for them to attend the stadium by adopting the right policies.

- How is the club adapting to the generation of digital natives and their consumption habits?

I must acknowledge that, in this sense, LaLiga helps the clubs a lot in the development of joint digital strategies that help us create content that allows us to reach and interact with this generation, as well as in the ‘training’ of our professionals so that they can hone their skills and be more effective in communicating with digital natives. The eSports project is an example of the kind of content that allows us to identify even more with this generation.

- Communication has changed a lot since the days of the generations that saw the club’s first stint in the top division. How do you keep them ‘hooked’ to the club? Or is this now a generation of firmly established supporters?

That generation experienced something magical, unforgettable and unrepeatable in the 1990s. Albacete was a wonderful success story of how the sporting achievements of a club were able to transform a whole city and its people. Many still say that Albacete Balompié put the city on the map, while many others tell me that their first trip to big cities like Bilbao or Barcelona was thanks to the team. I think that when that pride of belonging hits you like that, the club is then part of your life forever. For that generation, it’s important that they can feel proud of the club and notice it in the daily life of the city, safe in the knowledge that it hasn’t lost its identity and that, even with how much football has changed, its essence is still there.

- How does Albacete Balompié view Boost LaLiga? What are the main projects that the club has in mind?

The growth of the club requires the adaptation of the Carlos Belmonte to the demands of LaLiga, and I’m not only referring to technical requirements or matchday operations but also to turning it into a stadium for use 365 days per year, to implementing technological solutions so that the club can be more efficient in generating business and innovation to reach new markets, and to growing the brand and gradually embracing international projects, making the most of the opportunities that belonging to LaLiga gives us. We have a long road ahead of us, but all the departments of the club share tremendous enthusiasm to see the club grow and we want to take advantage of the opportunity that Boost LaLiga is providing us with.