5 years of World Football Summit

Today is a special day for me, and everyone that is and has been part of World Football Summit. It marks five years since we opened our doors for the very first time and started a journey that I believe is still only just getting started.

Since that first summit at Duques de Pastrana on the 27 and 28 October 2016, World Football Summit has consolidated itself as one of the world’s most important platforms for the global football industry. If you told me then that we would have achieved as much as we have in the ensuing five years, I wouldn't have believed you.

The idea of WFS came about a long time before our opening night. It began back in early 2015 when our then employee and still great friend Marcos Pelegrin - currently LaLiga’s Managing Director for South Africa - had the initial idea of organising a summit for the football industry in Spain. More than a year and a half went in the execution of that first edition, and it was far from easy to do so for a small company that had no contacts in the sports industry. But it was the sheer determination that drove our project, as well as the support of some key players who believed we would pull it off.

Of so many people that played a crucial role in our 2016 bow, I'd like to thank Julio Senn, Javier Sobrino, Carlos Espinsoa de los Monteros, Javier Gómez, Rayde Luis Baez or Gregorio Cebrian. You all played significant roles in delivering that first event and I'm proud that we still have such great relationships today.

The success of that first edition enabled us to build on that success and allowed us to secure a partnership with LaLiga that helped us to grow internationally and is one that we have continued ever since. I cannot thank Cristina Sanchez, Lorena Leiva, and Oscar Mayo at LaLiga enough for their help then and down the years. Oscar was also an enormous help in supporting our WFS Asia debut in 2019 that took us to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, while Retrominds, led by Mohan Rajanatram made a strong bet with us that year and Ivan Codina was crucial to making the summit a success thanks to his vast number of contacts in the region.

Thanks also to all our advisory board, many of them friends we’ve made along the way and true supporters of our project. David Garrido – the best host our summit could ever imagine – Chad Biagini, Carlos Cantó, Iris Cordoba, Noella Coursaris, Ornella Desirée Bellia, Hicham El Amrani, Jurgen Griesbeck, Ebru Koksal, Kike Levy, Patricia Rodriguez, Luis Vicente, Mounir Zok, thank you for everything.

A lot has happened in the last five years and WFS has now organised 12 events, given a voice to hundreds of speakers, brought together nearly 20,000 attendees, partnered with over 200 companies, and built a global community of over 70,000 people.

We've proudly partnered with the likes of Common Goal, Women in Football, Facebook, Santander, Grupo Prisa, Cruyff Institute and the legendary Ronaldo Nazario, among a whole host of people and companies that are too many to name here.

We've also survived a global pandemic that tested the character of the company and resolve of the industry like nothing else before. When the pandemic started, we were about to start what would have been our most important year, with four events on three different continents. But things change, and so have we.

We've since organised two highly successful online and transitioned into our hybrid debut at the Wanda Metropolitano in partnership with LaLiga champions, Atletico de Madrid. There's no going back from here, and this format will form all our future events. That starts with us bringing WFS Europe to Sevilla from 27-29 September in 2022, and Sonto Mayise, we will see you for WFS Africa very soon! Cancelling our summit last year in Durban was heart-breaking for all of us, but, as we said then, WE’LL BE BACK. And when we will, it will be to build a lasting legacy for the football industry in Africa.

Getting to this point would not have been possible without the remarkable team we have built over the years. I want to thank each and every one of you for contributing to our success, and to three people in particular, who were there in that first edition and whom I still see every day at the office.

Our production director Emilio Gonzalez, who in that first edition managed to produce an event with a shoestring budget and has produced every subsequent event, while making sure we continue to punch above our weight. Next is our director of partnerships, Cristina Morena, who in these years has changed job, come back, gotten married, and managed to have a beautiful daughter, while still keeping us all organised, without missing a beat. But, of course, the biggest thank you - because WFS would not have been possible without you - goes to my partner Marian Otamendi, whom I met now more than 20 years ago whilst working in the Ivory Coast. There, we built a friendship and 14 years later we have built a company and project that we are immensely proud of.

We cannot wait to be bringing WFS Europe to Sevilla from 27-29 September in 2022. Our summit was born in Madrid and our company is and will continue to be based in Madrid, but taking our flagship event, and sixth edition, to the beautiful city of Sevilla is a challenge we are so looking forward to start working on. We're extremely grateful to the city Sevilla, led by its mayor Juan Espadas and Sevilla City Office director, Antonio Jiménez. Such institutional support by a city that has sports as a pilar for its promotion will be an enormous backing for our project, and that’s why we are aiming to celebrate our biggest event to date, projecting 2,500+ on-site attendees and 1.000+ tuning in online.

I'll see you all in Sevilla, if not before, for a massive celebration of these past five years and the many more to come!