The future of the sports industry in Barcelona: discover the Sports Talent Day at Euncet Business School

The first edition of the conference at the Campus Barcelona Can Dragó has brought together a multitude of companies in the sector and has been the scene of different presentations focused on innovation and marketing of athletes and sports entities.

Barcelona is the 4th most sports-related city in the world. This was pointed out in 2024 by the Burson Cohn & Wolfe agency, which took into account factors such as the Olympic past of the Catalan capital, its facilities or the presence of important clubs with great international projection. In this scenario, the Euncet Business School held the first edition of the Talent Day on March 13  at its Campus Barcelona Can Dragó. The event, focused on sports entrepreneurship and attended by more than 80 students and Alumni of the Bachelor’s Degree in Sports and Fitness Science and Technology, brought together a multitude of companies in the sector and has been the scene of different presentations focused on innovation and marketing of athletes and sports entities.

During the event, university students had the opportunity to participate in a Speed Networking session  in which entities from the sector such as Akaw, Metropolitan Sport Club & Spa, Eurofitness, Global Performance, Aiesec, 4Athletes, Marcet Football University, Alfa5 or the Sports Federation Union of Catalonia (UFEC) were present.

In addition, to learn about the functioning of the Sports Tech ecosystem in Barcelona, the students attended the presentation "First steps when it comes to entrepreneurship and entering the Sports Tech ecosystem", given by Xavier Trallero, Managing Director of Barcelona Sports Hub, a physical and virtual space that tries to promote competitiveness and innovation among startups, entities, investors, educational institutions, research centres, athletes and brands. In reference to the origin of the hub (the result of collaboration between the Barcelona City Council and INDESCAT after the Covid-19 pandemic), the professional stated that "in entrepreneurship you must have a plan, but you must also be flexible enough to adapt if things do not go as expected".

In his presentation, Trallero showed the CTEF students some examples of startups that have had the opportunity to test their MVPs (minimum viable product) at the Barcelona Innova Lab Sport, a facility that serves as a testing space for emerging companies in the sports industry. He highlighted initiatives such as that of Kamleon, a company that has devised a "smart toilet" capable of measuring the hydration level of athletes. As the expert pointed out, the laboratory is a place where you can detect errors and think "out of the box".

The entrepreneur also highlighted other technologically innovative proposals that are currently growing in the sports industry, among which he mentioned projects such as those of Improfit, Padmi, Moments Lab, 3D Digital Venue, StadioPlus, HOOP, VEXR or Oliver. However, he also made clear a revealing statistic for future entrepreneurs: out of every 100 startups that are created, 97 are forced to close after four years of life and the remaining 2 end up doing so in the 6th year. 

At the Talent Day of the Campus Barcelona Can Dragó there was also space to talk about digital marketing in the sports sector, one of the many professional opportunities that graduates of the degree will be able to access. In this sense, the event was attended by Alex Saltó and Andrés Gil, Project Managers of the digital marketing agency Akaw, a company that manages the social networks of well-known athletes such as Pau Gasol, Silvia Domínguez, Xavi Simons or Jeremie Frimpong, among others. In this talk they underlined the importance of adapting communication according to the client and their audience and reflected on the future of the profession. In this regard, Gil was blunt: "In the world we live in, everything is constantly changing. What we explain to you today next year will surely be expired." 

Mentioning tools such as TweetDeck or Metricool, they warned of the dangers of getting too carried away by the figures, which they described as "very greedy", on social networks. "A tweet doesn't mean anything. There is a lot of toxicity on the networks and a negative comment makes more noise than a positive one, but you must have everything under control. Forget that after 10 days you will have 1,000 more followers. The only thing we can ensure is that the client will have their networks well worked, with a clear message that communicates what they want to explain," said Saltó. 

Another of the topics they addressed was the balance between satisfying the audience and the companies with which the client works. To do this, they stressed that a sports marketing professional is not only selling quantifiable results in, for example, likes, but is creating a coherent strategy in the medium and long term. This strategy, the experts recalled, ends up generating an economic return, turning the image of athletes into important assets for the clubs. To end their conference, they had the students participate in an activity in which they had to decide what marketing strategy they would use in different situations, such as communication related to a tournament or the retirement of a renowned athlete.

The conference was also a good opportunity to remember that this coming academic year 2025-2026 Euncet Business School is launching an academic offer of university degrees in the field of sport. On the one hand, the university updates its sports degree under the name of Bachelor's Degree in Management and Digitalisation in Sport. On the other hand, it also presents the Double Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Sport and the Double Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and Sport, which combine knowledge about the emerging sports and technology industry with the business bases taught in the rest of Euncet's training programs.