There is no doubt Portugal is a football-loving nation, with millions of passionate fans following the national team and their favourite clubs. Conscious of not stagnating, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) has taken proactive strides to remain innovative and forward-thinking, keeping fans engaged and maximising commercial potential.
The Challenge
The challenges were manifold: from championing women’s football to nurturing budding talent, and elevating performance analysis to engaging fans on a global scale, the FPF was looking for ways to make football more accessible and inclusive for everyone, regardless of their level or budget. There was also a strong desire to provide players and coaches with the best possible tools to develop and improve their skills. This is especially important since many amateur and youth leagues lack the resources to broadcast their games or provide video analysis to their players and coaches.
The FPF’s ambitious Project 2030 plan puts an emphasis on four major areas:
- Promoting women’s football. The FPF wanted to increase participation, coverage, and visibility while providing more opportunities for girls and women to play football, from grassroots to elite level. Improving the infrastructure, coaching, and governance of the sport are fundamental to underpinning these aims, as well as targets in their own right.
- Developing youth talent from U15 to U23 from local home-grown talent and preparing them for the future challenges of professional football.
- Enhancing performance analysis. The importance of using data and technology to gain a competitive edge in modern football is paramount and became clear there was a need to upgrade the FPF’s performance analysis capabilities by installing state of the art technology at the national training centre in Lisbon.
- Expanding fan engagement across Portugal and globally. By offering fans more content, more interaction, and more excitement, the FPF aims to connect with fans of all ages and backgrounds through promoting Portuguese football culture and values.
A partnership shaped for the future.
The FPF identified Pixellot as being the partner to help them with their ambitions.
The FPF’s CTO, Hugo Freitas said, “Our partnership with Pixellot represents a significant step in our digital transformation, revolutionising league coverage and providing an immersive, data-rich experience for fans, coaches, and players.”
Putting women’s football centre stage
Pixellot came on board to help the FPF showcase women’s football and futsal to a wider audience, by filming, producing, and streaming all matches of the premier Women’s Leagues on FPF’s OTT platform the Canal 11 network. In addition to this, Pixellot will also provide data analytics for teams, coaches and players, allowing them to improve team performance and tactics.
A central hub for passionate fans
The FPF had a clear goal of democratising access to fans across all levels of the sport. To that end, it empowered Pixellot to help develop and shape Canal 11 as a fully branded OTT platform that will serve as a hub for all Portuguese football content. Not only will the platform stream all matches produced by Pixellot across five leagues: Liga 3; Liga Revelação; Liga BPI and Liga Placard (Men and Women’s Futsal); it will also feature editorial and external content, such as exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and documentaries. Additionally, the platform will present a rich layer of data and on-screen graphics alongside the action, enhancing the viewers’ understanding and enjoyment of the matches.
Nurturing talent
Not only does Pixellot’s technology offer fan deeper insights, but further solutions have also been developed to allow coaches direct access to detailed player-focused analytics, including heat maps and shot charts, via their personal devices or a dedicated video wall at the training centre. This has positively impacted the FPF’s development to the extent that Pixellot’s services now extend to all five leagues. Covering over 1,000 matches annually, this setup provides valuable video for scouting and analysis. Furthermore, Pixellot provides a coaching and video-data exchange platform for the football and futsal leagues, offering over 4,000 match data points, a substantial increase from previous data made available.
These advanced systems, equipped with event, action, and player tagging software, will also capture high-quality videos of all training sessions for national teams at the impressive training facility.
Access to this comprehensive video and data coverage across all the leagues, including futsal, is central to identifying new talent and developing local and women’s leagues in Portugal. This integration, under a unified platform (Exchange), underpins the strategy to enhance the development and visibility of Portuguese football.
A blueprint for success
The partnership demonstrates what’s possible when sports federations and technology providers align. Through their partnership there are multiple possibilities: from making women’s and youth sport more accessible and visible to fans; to enhancing the performance of the current top-flight payers; to developing the next generation of budding talent. The sky is the limit for Portuguese football. As Freitas acknowledges, “We are sure that the fruits of this investment and the implementation of these technologies will further advance Portuguese football, engage the fans across the country and allow us to discover the next generation of talents.”