Patience and perseverance
Tiago Bicudo is a sport professional and entrepreneur with vast experience working in different sectors of the sports industry and with great academic background.
Dive into Tiago career and learn what he is doing now as Head of Marketing at TemmaSoftware.
Sign up and connect with Tiago at SportIn Global!
Tiago, what is your professional and academic background?
My passion for marketing starts when I was young. I made a technical high school in Foreign Trade. Then I graduate in Advertising and Publicity in the Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba, with an exchange program in Mexico, and I have an MBA in sports marketing in Anhembi Morumbi, with a module in Spain with the Universidad Europea de Madrid and the School of Studies Real Madrid. Besides these diplomas, I conclude many courses to keep learning. My most recent course was an online course in Sports Marketing at Northwestern University.
I´ve started my professional career in an advertising agency as a designer. When I get a job in the sports market, I was responsible for communication and branding in sports events agency. In addition to these responsibilities, I also produced many events such as street races, FMXevents, football, bike, Red Bull events, among many others.
In 2012, I started my own sports marketing agency, called Duo Sports and we worked with different sports and competitions, like IndyCarSeries, football, basket and volleyball. And we served several customers such as BMW/Mini, CaixaEconômica Federal, HP and Gates.
At the Olympic Games Rio2016, I worked as a Venue Operation Manager in the Deodoro Olympic Park, where more than 10 sports took place.
At the beginning of 2018, my family and I moved to Portugal and here I assumed the position of Account Manager and Customer Service at a startup of health and wellness. Then, in early 2020, TemmaSoftware CEO, Fernando Closs, invited me, to beHead of Marketing of the sports software company whose main product TacticalPad.
Your whole life you have been an entrepreneur. What were the biggest challenges you faced when you started your own sports agency?
The sport in Brazil was still becoming professional in 2012, and in several cases, there were amateur mistakes made by federations, confederations, and athletes and teams, which distanced many companies and tainted the sports market.
It is important to note that all of this was before the World Cup and the Olympics in Brazil. The market was not yet very solid.
Therefore, the biggest challenge has always been to change the paradigm of people and companies. Showing that the sport, if used well, can bring excellent results for companies.
The Brazilian sports market still revolves around football, which often scares companies, as investments in the main teams are very high.
For this reason, 90% of the first meetings started by explaining what sports marketing was, that there were other sports (often with more synergy with the company’s target audience) and that it is not always necessary to have very high budgets to invest in sports to have a result.
During the Rio 2016 Olympic games, you had a major role as Venue Operation Manager at Deodoro Olympic Park. How was that experience? What were your key learning points?
A great and spectacular experience!
Everything that I was worked with sports event before Rio2016 give to me the expertise to do it, but is a mega event. Everything is huge. And DeodoroPark was the second-largest Olympic park in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
My venue was the Common Domain, which means that we were the way and connection between all the park venues, more specifically shooting, grass hockey, pentathlon, women’s basketball, rugby, and X-Park. It was necessary to follow the schedules very strictly and always be ahead of events. For example, knowing how many people were watching a rugby game, because when it was over, the whole audience would go to the park again and meet the audience who had just seen a hockey match. It was a very large flow of people.
There were 21 days with an average audience of 20,000 to 30,000 people per day. Also, with the responsibility of opening and closing the park, managing more than 30 functional areas (security, Food and Beverage, Cleaning, Health and Safety, Customer Experience, etc.). The responsibility was to make everything happen as close to perfect as possible.
But my key learning points were: being ready for the unexpected, having patience, and getting around situations. Because even in a very organized event like the Olympics, it is impossible to predict the behavior of all (players and public). From Argentines euphorically celebrating the gold medal in grass hockey, to people who turned off the water fountains to charge their cell phones.
We were working, but for the athlete who was there it was a dream come true, for the audience, it was a unique experience in life, so everything had to be unforgettable.
A couple of years ago you move from Brasil to Portugal. What motivated you to pursue this change and how do you perceive the sports industry in Portugal?
One of my main motivation was to study how the European market works. I believe that learning from different cultures is the key to have the skills developed.
What I feel is that sports in Portugal, in general, are better structured, solidified and professionalized than Brazil, but this has to do with time, as the Portuguese started this process of professionalization before.
Understanding the Portuguese sports market is a daily learning experience, as it goes directly through learning Portuguese culture, their habits, customs and histories.
The behavior of the Portuguese in a football stadium, for example, is very different from a Brazilian, and that changes the whole scenario because sports management and specifically marketing, work based on the behavior of fans and customers.
Since you arrived in Portugal, you worked on different projects. Can you explain to our audience what is TacticalPad and your role at it?
TacticalPad, besides be our main product in Temma Software, is the number 1 Session Planner and Match Analysis software in the world. It´s a software with over 2 million downloads in over 230 countries and used by national teams like Portugal, Brazil and Germany, and clubs like Tottenham, Athletic Bilbao, Velez Sarsfield and 90% of Brazilian clubs in series A and B.
Since then I have dedicated myself to TemmaSoftware, we have four very well defined focuses:
- Launch of the Picco app, a free football statistics app;
- Standardization of the company language and speech on all platforms (since social media until commercial agreements);
- the 10-year campaign of TacticalPad;
- increased sales and conversions for TacticalPad in the UK and USA markets.
In addition to these focuses, I am redesigning the partnership agreements and assisting in updating and optimizing the TacticalPad for Basketball. All this during a pandemic, which forced us to replanning everything.
What tips (3) do you have for those looking for a career in the sports industry?
1. Allow yourself to experience the most diverse areas of the sport, you will be surprised, and this enables you to have a different point of view in different situations.
2. Try to join the organization of sports that are already part of everyday life. Volunteer in the administration of your neighborhood team, talk with a worker of your gym, understand how works the management of where you practice sports. Ask, understand and ask again! Don’t be just a spectator. This will give you expertise and a business point of view.
3. Love sports is not a differential in thisindustry, it is a basic requirement. So study and never stop looking for knowledge.
A final message to our audience?
Patience and perseverance are key points, once this market is quiet closed and difficult to get in.
Do not forget how powerful your network is, keep yourself updated, and watch and learn with all kind of sports (not only the one you prefer).
Make sure to connect with Tiago on social media and at SportIn Global!
Picco: https://picco.app/
Twitter Picco: https://twitter.com/picco_app
Facebook Picco: https://www.facebook.com/app.picco/
YouTube Picco: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc2linjXkuYW8lwTA3ffaZg/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/picco.app/
Tacticalpad: https://www.tacticalpad.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tacticalpad
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tacticalpad
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TacticalPad/playlists
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tacticalpad/
