Watch the full conversation here.

Three Estrella clubs started the new season this summer, and each came in from a very different place. Cascais SAD was coming off an undefeated title. Pro Patria had been relegated, and we took over the club during the summer. Carvoeiro United was still building its squad. Looking at all three side by side shows how much of a club’s success happens away from the pitch, how long that work takes, and why we now look for partners, not just sponsors.

Three clubs, three different starts

We closed the Pro Patria acquisition in July, which left us four and a half weeks to build a squad for the new season. The club had just dropped from Serie C to Serie D, and with a new owner, a new coach and several youth players moving up to the first team, almost everything changed at once.

Cascais faced the problem that comes with success. After winning the league last season without losing a match, the team now faces stronger opponents every week, and in September it lost for the first time in 18 months, then won the following weekend again. This season the club also started a B team. It gives international players a route into Portuguese football and U19 players a step between youth football and the first team. That step matters more now, because several of last year’s U19 players are already in the first team.

Visibility makes recruiting easier

This season we also played the first match between two Estrella clubs, when Carvoeiro travelled to Cascais. Both clubs were promoted to the fifth division last year, and it was good to bring the two groups together off the pitch as well. The match also showed that the two clubs are at different stages, because Carvoeiro is still building the kind of squad Cascais already has.

Most of that difference comes down to attention. Last season, when Nuno, Cascais’ technical director, contacted players, he first had to explain who he was, what the club was and what the project was, and players still turned down trials. This summer, agents already knew the project, and players knew that playing regularly at Cascais would get them noticed by bigger clubs. In our first year, three Cascais players moved to Estoril in the Portuguese first division.

A brand comes before sponsors

We don’t put a large amount of money into a club on day one and change everything overnight. Building a brand takes time. Cascais’ social following grew from around 4,000 to 40,000 last season, and now that the project is visible, it’s easier to find the right sponsors. We’ve only owned Pro Patria since August, and we’re still redesigning its brand. The order is always the same: we position the club as a brand, then fans and interest come back, and only after that can we bring in new sponsors.

One deal, three clubs

Some deals we sign at Estrella level and then roll out to every club, such as Fever for ticketing and Catapult for GPS tracking. Others are local, like the keeper glove deal Yannick signed for Carvoeiro. We also help each club build a sponsorship deck and a sponsorship pyramid, so it can move sponsors up from smaller packages to bigger ones.

The LED boards are a good example of how this works. When Pro Patria went looking for LED boards, we realised Cascais and Carvoeiro would need the same hardware, so we’re now buying it as a group and negotiating one deal. The club gets the boards and sells 45 minutes of each match to local sponsors, and we sell the other 45 minutes to international ones. That way, no club has to fill all 90 minutes on its own. We’re still building this, but it’s one of the clearest advantages of being part of a multi-club group.

We’ve seen this work before. At PEC Zwolle, where Xander worked, the club rented LED boards that had to be set up before every match and taken down after it. In the end, the club bought two rows of its own, which was unusual in the Netherlands at the time and is now a common sight at Champions League matches.

All of this has changed how we think about sponsorship. A sponsor brings in money and is mainly paying for visibility. A partner lowers your costs, stays for longer, and widens your network. Fever normally works with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Formula 1, so a Serie D club would never be on its radar. Fever signed with Estrella because we invest in clubs near big cities, in countries where Fever already sells museum tickets. A tourist who buys a museum ticket now also sees the option to watch Pro Patria.

The other 347 days of the year

A football club typically earns its revenue on 17 or 18 match days a year, and that leaves a lot of room in the calendar. With Fever, we can also sell tickets to non-football events at our stadiums, such as a candlelight concert on the pitch. Before we get there, though, the basics have to work. This is the first season Cascais is selling tickets for matches, so for now the job is getting fans used to buying them, even in small numbers.

Deal flow doesn’t stop

We’re still talking to clubs in Spain, France, Denmark and Sweden, and we recently signed an MOU with a first-division club in Austria. In the same weeks, we walked away from a club in France that wanted to sell us 10% and keep us as a passive shareholder, because we only invest in clubs where we’re involved. A few weeks ago, another deal we were 98% sure of fell through at the last moment.

That happens in football, and our process is set up for it. If we bought clubs one at a time, each new club would take forever, so we always keep four or five clubs in the final stages of an agreement. When one falls through, the next is ready, and new clubs keep coming into the pipeline. Every club that joins also makes our group partnerships stronger, because a deal like Fever or Catapult is worth more with every club it covers.

Watch the full conversation with David, Xander, and Laura on the Estrella podcast here.

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