Presenting an AI Fan Engagement Strategy to Atlético de Madrid

How our team pitched a Context Engine to the club’s innovation department

Written by Paolo Giannitti, Global Sports Business & Digital Transformation Master Student at ESBS

In February 2026, our team of five had the opportunity to present a strategic proposal to Atlético de Madrid‘s innovation department at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano. We had spent weeks building a concept from scratch, and now we were standing inside one of Europe’s biggest football clubs, pitching it to the people who actually make these decisions.

That moment, walking into the stadium knowing you’re about to defend your own ideas in front of industry professionals, is something a classroom can’t replicate.

The project

Our brief was open-ended: develop a strategic proposal that could create real value for Atlético. We chose to focus on a gap we kept noticing during our research. The club has 151,000 members and near-universal app adoption among season ticket holders. The digital infrastructure is mature. But between matchdays, engagement drops, especially for the roughly 90,000 international members who experience a diminished version of the local fan journey.

We proposed a Context Engine: a privacy-first intelligence layer that sits on top of Atlético’s existing systems and orchestrates personalized experiences based on real-time fan context, location, engagement history, match schedule, event capacity. Instead of asking «what should this fan see?», the system asks «what should this fan do, and where, and when?»

Paired with the engine, we designed Lifestyle Studios, physical spaces in Madrid and pop-up activations in international markets, where digital engagement becomes something tangible and communal. The proving ground: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, using ambient marketing around Atlético’s own players without touching any FIFA-protected marks.

We built a full revenue model with three scenarios, a multi-jurisdictional privacy architecture covering GDPR, CPRA, and Mexican data law, and a competitive analysis positioning the concept against what Real Madrid already does with Adobe Experience Platform. The base case projected €3.33M in Year 1 revenue against roughly €1.3M in investment.

Presenting at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano

Honestly, the nerves hit hardest in the minutes before we started. Once we were in it, the preparation took over. Each of us owned a section, and the flow felt natural. The innovation team listened closely, asked questions, and engaged with the details.

Their feedback caught us off guard, in a good way. They called it the most outstanding presentation in terms of research, benchmarking, market knowledge, and regulatory awareness. They also pushed us on how the project would attract new audiences beyond the existing member base, which is exactly the kind of question you want from a club that’s actually considering the idea seriously.

What I’m taking from this

This experience connected everything I’ve been studying at ESBS, digital strategy, fan engagement, sports marketing, data privacy,  into a single deliverable that had to survive contact with real professionals. It forced our team to think like consultants, not students. The research had to be airtight. The numbers had to add up. The pitch had to land.

I walked out of that stadium with a much clearer picture of where I want to take my career in sports. A huge thank you to ESBS and Atlético de Madrid for making this possible.