Entering the North American market in 2018 through a joint venture with Relevent Sports Group, LaLiga made digital content a core component of its growth strategy in the region. All LaLiga matches are played in Spain and though the league has a large following in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, until recently, fans have been limited in how they have been able to engage with their favorite Spanish soccer clubs. Knowing this, LaLiga designed a localized, always-on content strategy aimed at bridging the gap between fans residing in North America and the Spanish league.
The existing LaLiga fanbase in the U.S. is predominantly Hispanic. Fans range from first, second, to third generation Hispanic Americans, which often determines the type of content they’ll watch and preferred language in which they will consume content. Knowing this, we tasked ourselves with creating a multicultural social and digital media strategy to appeal to our Hispanic American fanbase and their diverse content preferences.
To execute this strategy, we created LaLiga North America Studios, an in-house content studio based in New York and Mexico, with the goal of fulfilling this multicultural content strategy focused on Hispanic Americans.
Hispanic Americans are the predominant consumer of soccer in the U.S., yet currently few teams or leagues are creating content designed specifically for this audience. In LaLiga, for example, Hispanic Americans made up 81% of the league’s American television viewers last season. These numbers are consistently high across other leagues as Hispanic Americans accounted for 67% of total soccer TV viewership in the U.S. in 2017.
Through weekly digital shows in Spanish and English, our studio creates content and shoulder programming that offers these fans expert commentary, highlights, predictions, and more. During the 20-21 LaLiga season, the studio created 12 weekly shows across both languages. This content roster expanded to more than 22 weekly shows at the start of the 21-22 season (9 in Spanish, 8 in English, and 3 bilingual).
The studio’s multicultural content strategy is informed by an audience analysis conducted in the early days of the joint venture to better understand fans in the region. The goal was simple: to know more about the soccer fans in North America than any other league or team.
Based on findings, LaLiga initially focused its content strategy on its core existing audience: Hispanic Americans. This community has an inherent passion for soccer and a strong connection to LaLiga through the Spanish language and the multitude of Latin American superstars who have played in Spain.
Knowing this, LaLiga built a plan that consists of shoulder content built around LaLiga clubs, players, and match highlights in their preferred language, with locally relevant storylines and anchors. Having successfully reinforced a strong connection with the Hispanic community, LaLiga expanded its content slate to include programs designed for English speaking, general market fans in 2020.
With a dedicated team of 20+ people that includes seasoned soccer journalists and multimedia experts, our studio has continued to build off of the initial content strategy set in 2018. The studio also includes audience development and analytics personnel who work closely with the marketing and sponsorships team to ensure that all content created has value both for fans and brand partners.
With the goal of continuing to build out LaLiga’s multicultural strategy, the studio selected a diverse roster of talent who were representative of the audience LaLiga was trying to reach. This included hiring talent like Rodolfo Landeros (Mexican American FOX Sports and FOX Deportes commentator), Wera Kuri (Mexican soccer personality), Mando Fresko (Mexican American media personality), Melissa Ortiz (former Colombia international soccer player), RatedHugo (Mexican American gamer), and Aaron West (soccer personality) among others. Each of these figures resonates with a key soccer fan demographic, helping strengthen the connection with those that live across our first, second, and third generation Hispanic American fan base while bringing new fans into the fold.
Last season (20-21), LaLiga North America’s multicultural content strategy achieved more than 123 million impressions, 113 million in reach, and 17 million video views. All content has been published across our own social channels and cross-promoted across talent, club, and other media accounts, including Gas Station TV, which is a strategic partner of LaLiga in the U.S.
In the first half of this season (21-22), we’ve already exceeded last year’s results having earned over 130 million impressions, a reach of 119 million, and 17 million video views from August 2021 through the end of January 2022. By doubling down on our multicultural content strategy and launching new pieces of content tailored to members of each Hispanic American generation (such as La Cultura - a LaLiga lifestyle show created for third generation Hispanics and the general market), we’re on pace to double last season’s results. Collaborating with our new broadcasting partner ESPN has helped as well as we’ve been able to promote our multicultural content strategy across ESPN and ESPN Deportes accounts.
Additionally, the multicultural content has received high interest from sponsors, allowing us to monetize the content and generate revenue back towards the joint venture and the studio. The validation from brands across the U.S., in addition to other content producers like John Skipper and Dan Le Batard’s Meadowlark, who have recently doubled down on creating multicultural content for Hispanic sports fans, proves the value of this type of multicultural content strategy.
