Joan Laporta formally closes successful Sports Tomorrow Congress

This Tuesday was the second and final day of the Sports Tomorrow Congress promoted by the Barça Innovation Hub and being held as part of the Mobile World Congress.

Participation has been a huge success, with more than 500 people registering for the face-to-face sessions and more than 500 more watching the on-line stream that could be purchased from the BIHUB website.

Laporta: “We must use technology responsibly and ethically in order to promote improvements to our industry”

President Joan Laporta was on hand to officially close the congress, speeking of the "bright future" of the sports industry and recalling that "technology is at the forefront to help us optimise performance and well-being, and personalise the fan experience to bring supporters closer to the action”.

"The transformative power of technology can trigger business opportunities", he acknowledged. "In a changing digital environment, the club's ability to learn and adapt to new technologies will determine its ability to innovate." Here, the president cited the example the work done by BIHUB and its investment in start-ups.

Laporta also announced that BIHUB is to become a shareholder of a new start-up, Made Of Genes, a company dedicated to the analysis of bio-markers. He also revealed that the 2025 edition of the congress will be focused on sporting excellence and high-performance models, "traits that make Barça a unique team".

After giving his speech, the president visited several Mobile World Congress stands to get to know a little more about the contents of this latest edition of the world's leading telecommunications fair.

Deco: “The challenge is to know how a player will adapt mentally to the team”

FC Barcelona's sporting director, Anderson Luís de Souza, better known as 'Deco', was also at the event to participate in a session entitled 'The future of the transfer market'. He explained how talent is developed and how technology can help enhance it, and also highlighted some challenges, which include "knowing how a player will adapt mentally to the team, which is an issue that technology cannot yet offer us."

With regard to the talent scouting, Deco insisted that "it is evolving in terms of individual statistics but we still need to know how this talent would fit into a team. Football is a team sport and the key is to understand what type of player you need for your team."

Entertainment and investment, other topics on the agenda

During the morning, several sessions were also held at which content for fans and new investment trends were discussed. Another of the topics was engagement and entertainment in the world of sport. One of the talks was given by Bryan Bachner, general director of Barça Vision and of the vlub's offices in the United States and Asia Pacific, with the participation of Jordi Mompart, research director at FC Barcelona and Justin Castillo, advisor in the field of digital entertainment.

José González Ruzo, founder of the start-up OLIVER, talked about the new performance data collection device for amateur teams that his company has just launched. And Daniel Foth, founder of CeleBreak, the app that creates a community of people to play amateur football matches, also took to the stage to talk about fans and digital communities.