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A football club with 500,000 social media followers may know how many people watched a video or reacted to a post. It still does not necessarily know who those supporters are, where they live, whether they attend matches or when they last bought a ticket.
The club produces the content, but the social platform controls its distribution. An algorithm decides which followers see a post, while paid promotion allows the club to reach the same audience again. Advertising shown around a last-minute winner or derby victory also generates revenue for the platform.
A like, view or follow provides an engagement figure. It does not automatically give the club a verified email address, purchase history or permission to contact that supporter directly.
Blocksport argues that clubs should use social media as an acquisition channel rather than the final destination. The objective is to give followers a reason to enter a club-owned environment, register and remain active there.
From a follower to a verified fan profile
Blocksport provides sports organisations with a branded fan app, single sign-on and customer data platform. According to the company, more than 50 clubs, leagues and federations use its technology.
Its model consists of four stages: collect, segment, engage and convert.
The process begins with one fan account covering services such as the app, website, ticketing system, online store and newsletter. Instead of keeping information in separate databases, the club can connect activity from multiple systems to one supporter profile.
At Vitória SC, Blocksport connected the club’s ticketing, website, store and email system through a single login within one month. The complete SuperApp followed within two months. The Portuguese club registered 5,000 users in the first ten days and later reached 23,000 downloads. Blocksport says 15% of Vitória’s social media audience became app users.
Supporters register because the platform offers something specific: ticket access, exclusive content, predictions, competitions or rewards. Their profiles can then be expanded gradually through missions. A supporter might receive fan points for confirming an email address, adding a location or selecting a favourite player.
The club can consequently collect several types of information:
- verified contact and demographic data;
- ticket, merchandise and payment activity;
- content preferences and match predictions;
- app sessions, completed missions and loyalty status.
Across Blocksport-powered platforms, 70% of users consent to sharing their data with the organisation.
Registration needs a reason to return
Moving a follower into an app solves only the first part of the problem. The club must then provide reasons for the supporter to return.
Blocksport uses missions, points, loyalty levels, leaderboards, predictions, voting and exclusive content. Practical functions can include tickets, digital season cards and cashless stadium payments.
At Qarabağ FK, 95% of users started fan missions, 85% progressed and 90% earned rewards. The club also operates a paid premium tier offering exclusive content and VIP voting.
Matchday tools create another reason to open the app. Blocksport reports that daily active users of the Latvian Virslīga platform increase by 40% on matchdays. Around 60% of fans joined the league’s fantasy game, while 70% participated in quizzes.
Social media remains part of this process. Instead of promoting an app without context, a club can direct followers towards a specific activity: predict a result, vote for the MVP or enter a competition. Website banners, newsletters and QR codes inside the stadium provide additional routes into the platform.
First-party data becomes usable through segmentation
A registered fan profile allows the club to divide its audience according to behaviour, interests and commercial history. Blocksport’s customer data platform provides more than 50 segmentation options.
The club can identify supporters who bought tickets last season but have not returned, regular attendees who never purchase merchandise or highly active fans living abroad. Each group can receive a different notification, email, content item or offer.
At Qarabağ, Blocksport measured 65% verified engagement inside the app, compared with 20% across social media. Average sessions lasted four minutes in the app and 34 seconds on the club’s website.
Blocksport can also connect with existing systems, including Salesforce, Mailchimp, Eventim, Adyen, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce and Sportradar. The collected information can therefore feed the club’s existing marketing, ticketing, payment and retail infrastructure.
From fan activity to commercial value
Blocksport’s client cases connect first-party data with three principal commercial areas:
- Payments: OH Leuven supporters loaded more than €200,000 onto over 4,000 cashless stadium cards through the app during its first five months.
- Subscriptions: Qarabağ introduced a paid package with exclusive content and VIP voting.
- Sponsorship: Tonybet Virslīga recorded a 25% increase in sponsor click-through rate and a 40% increase in sponsor visibility, according to Blocksport.
At AS Monaco Basketball, broadcaster TV Monaco sponsors the welcome screen, homepage, missions and voting. Its weekly programme also appears in a dedicated content section. Blocksport reports an average dwell time of two minutes and 46 seconds for that section, compared with 50 seconds on the homepage.
These formats allow sponsors to become part of a poll, prediction game, mission or content section. The club can then report impressions, clicks and time spent rather than relying only on estimated social media reach.
Built for clubs without development teams
Blocksport says most of its clients have marketing teams of one to three people and no internal developers. The company handles platform development, hosting, security, maintenance, integrations and app-store publishing.
The club provides its brand assets, promotes the platform and supplies the exclusive content, prizes and access that encourage registration. Blocksport also offers launch plans based on the club’s match calendar and existing content.
The follower remains useful for distribution. The registered supporter gives the club something more: a direct communication channel, a verified profile and a relationship that does not depend entirely on the next algorithm change.
Partner content produced in cooperation with Blocksport.
