Club Brugge's digital and data transformation

Lecturer 8: Thomas Rypens
Role: Innovation and Insights Director, Club Brugge

Live lectures and on-demand content, straight from the industry.

Thursday 29 October 2026

13:00 CET

What you will learn

You will see how one of Belgium's biggest clubs turned data from a technical afterthought into a genuine competitive advantage, and take away a method you can apply at your own club or venue. The lecture shows that this is, at its core, a story about organisation and culture rather than technology, and it leaves you with one central idea: competitive advantage comes from using your resources more intelligently, not from having more of them.

How to move your organisation from fragmented data ownership to one integrated, data first mindset
A practical method for turning strategy into action: start with the problem, then find where data and automation add value, then bring in AI
How to introduce AI and automation gradually, with clear governance and human oversight
How Club Brugge built a single, unified view of the fan and used it to power personalised matchday journeys
How Club Brugge uses AI and multimodal data to strengthen scouting and recruitment decisions

Speakers

About Thomas Rypens

Thomas Rypens has been Innovation and Insights Director at Club Brugge since February 2025, driving innovation across data and fan experience to build a connected football ecosystem. He joined the club in 2022 as Direct to Consumer Director, responsible for all fan facing products and services, including ticketing. Before Club Brugge, he held digital and operations leadership roles at Made Design and Innovation, and co-founded MyPitch, a football focused self tracking app. He is also a board member at ENT.A, Entertainment Associatie.

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