Sports

Sevilla, to the conquest of the ‘Indian Silicon Valley’

Sports Desk, Mar 22 (EFE).- The city of Bangalore is known as the ‘Indian Silicon Valley’ for the potential of its technology companies.

In 2021, the technology industry in the city generated 52 billion euros, according to the regional government data.

Sevilla arrived there through Bengaluru United, an emerging club that wants to follow in the footsteps of Sevilla, opening the door to a market of millions of inhabitants and offering the talent of its engineers to develop new technologies.

The partnership grants Sevilla access to the Indian market and technology while offering the four-year-old, third-tier club the experience they lack, Bengaluru United chairman, Gaurav Manchanda, told Efe.

“With Bengaluru United we connect very well in terms of values, in their way of doing things, and Sevilla have sponsors, such as Valvoline (an American manufacturer of car lubricants) who have a special interest in India,” Sevilla’s general director of business, Jorge Paradela, told Efe.

“If you connect the dots: Sevilla, Bangalore, Valvoline and India are a strategic market for LaLiga, it is important for our strategy,” he added.

Football ranks between the third and fourth most followed sports in India, but aims to move to second within the next few years, only behind cricket, Manchanda said.

LaLiga wants to take advantage of this momentum to gain a foothold against the Premier League, which have a large fan base as there is no language barrier, he added.

The Spanish club is set to launch a youth tournament in the Indian city, home of 12 million people, which will be “very attractive”, Paradela anticipated.

The partnership, signed in 2021, however, goes beyond the sports aspect. “The most attractive thing about this plan is that we are going to do ‘hackathones’ in Bangalore and Andalusia,” Paradela said.

With such a common initiative in the computer engineering and software development sector, Sevilla want to involve the technological community of India’s Silicon Valley with Andalusian developers.

“They are going to work on solving problems that the club’s data department is investigating, on artificial intelligence applications in aspects of our sports management,” he said.

“For example, (problems) related to predicting attendance at the stadium or injury prediction,” he added. EFE

Mam/ta/mp

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