Juventus Creator Lab: a novel strategy for football media

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Image credit: Juventus FC official website

Over the years Juventus FC has had to endure substantial challenges on and off the field, however, they are making a robust return in the digital space. The club’s digital team is working diligently to establish new, stable revenue sources through the Juventus Creator Lab, initiating partnerships and launching new online platforms.

It is evident that the Italian giants have not been very forthcoming about their vision, strategy, and future plans for the club in recent years.

Considering the pressure they’ve faced after being docked 10 points by the Italian football federation’s appeals court, it’s understandable why they’ve been less communicative. This penalty resulted from an investigation into the club’s transfer activities.

The legal case remains unresolved, as the club maintains they have operated within the rules. Additionally, several executives were banned from football due to their involvement, leading to the appointment of a new executive team to bring stability to Turin.

One of the newer executives at Juventus Football Club is Mike Armstrong, who became Chief Marketing Officer in September 2021. The Canadian leader brings a diverse background in technology, having worked with Google and YouTube, and in advertising, with experience in fast-moving consumer goods brands like Kraft Foods and AB-Inbev, as well as in an esports start-up.

The Juventus Creator Lab is the birthplace of Juventus’ digital products, a fresh creative approach inspired by LA-style creator houses and gaming studios, designed to cater to a global fanbase.

The Juventus Creator Lab is designed to enhance accessibility and foster a closer connection across all areas of Juventus, including the men’s and women’s first teams, Next Gen, legends, esports teams, and even the innovative animated kids’ series dedicated to the younger fanbase, Team Jay.

With a rich background in corporate America, Armstrong objective is where the overarching aim has always been clear ever since he joined: to outpace competitors in growth while simultaneously enhancing profit margins.

This mentality is what Juventus and the entire football industry needs, a defined objective of consistently generating revenue to fund the development of a football team capable of competing with the world’s top clubs.

Armstrong talks about the instability within the industry via an interview for Off The Pitch, which he acknowledges as a fundamental aspect of sports. Success or failure in qualifying for competitions can cause substantial revenue fluctuations.

“For me, this is the approach we need to pursue. Players are always crucial, but they come and go, and their presence can be unpredictable. So, I believe all football clubs need to explore ways to make their business less susceptible to volatility. In my case, along with my colleagues, we confront a reality where players serve as key distribution drivers due to their social media followings,” he explains.

“However, recently, out of necessity, we decided that we had to develop a business model capable of ensuring substantial revenues even when major players departed the club. With this goal in mind, we’ve witnessed a significant transformation in our approach and operations, and we believe we’ve made considerable strides in recent years.”

With an annual revenue of $741 million, Juventus has faced difficulties in their digital operations after the departure of key social media influencers such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel Di Maria, Leandro Paredes, and Paul Pogba.

To determine the type of content creator you should become, it’s essential to understand your audience. Armstrong recognised that with 90 percent of Juventus fans living outside Italy and 40 percent of them being under 24 years old, the club needed to significantly rethink their approach.

They have achieved impressive milestones with 60 million followers on Instagram, 30 million on TikTok, and 7.5 million on YouTube. Armstrong mentions that they have exceeded initial expectations, and he anticipates substantial revenue growth from sponsors in the coming years.

A clear indicator of their progress is the addition of 2 billion more video views last season compared to the one before, and an overall increase of 159 percent in video views across their ecosystem over the past two seasons.

Simultaneously, they initiated several partnerships, including one with Celine Dept, a rapidly growing digital sports creator with 43 million followers. Juventus also partnered with 433, one of the world’s leading football communities boasting 115 million followers, and Wave Sports + Entertainment, which has over 130 million followers across its various accounts.

The difficult part for Juventus, as with all other clubs, is making sure they create content that connects with all their fans.

Looking at all this from a football landscape in Australia, it seems too good to be true to have a physical laboratory of where a clubs digital products are born, this would greatly benefit the Isuzu UTE A-League men’s and Liberty A-League women’s to enhance the clubs around the country not only on social media platforms but also both in a traffic and engagement aspect to be seen by global brands.

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Beyond the Pitch: Miyuki Kobayashi on the Real Challenges Facing Japan’s Women’s Game

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Image credit: JEFUNITED

Last week, Soccerscene spoke to pioneer of women’s football in Japan, Miyuki Kobayashi, about the game’s development in Japan and the intersection between sporting and social change in the country.

 

Talent, quality and recent silverware

After Japan’s recent AFC Women’s Asian Cup victory in the final against Australia, the women’s national team solidified its standing as the No.1 team in Asia.

Throughout the last 15 years, Japan’s women’s national team has grown into a formidable opponent, boasting a World Cup trophy, an Olympic silver medal, as well as three AFC Women’s Asian Cups.

The talent is undeniable. The quality is unwavering. And the team shows no signs of slowing down.

But these victories and trophies on the world stage wouldn’t be possible without the leaders behind the scenes – none more so than Miyuki Kobayashi, former WE League Board Member and current JEF United Ladies Scout and Academy Chief.

 

Laying the foundations

Kobayashi has led the charge for women’s football in Japan, promoting not only a sport which values success, but one which empowers female footballers across the nation.

“At university, not many girls were playing and we didn’t have an official team. I went to the US and the environment was so different,” Kobayashi explained.

“That opened my eyes – women can play. That’s how I started the women’s soccer league when I came back: to make an environment for girls to play.”

Thus, accessibility and opportunity became driving factors behind Kobayashi’s work, not only for those on the pitch, but for those in the dugout.

“I got involved at the JFA (Japanese Football Association) to promote women’s football. We wanted to create the opportunity for women to be coaches.”

“They are coached by men all the time, so even when the top players leave the football world, they never think to be involved.”

Furthermore, as a former coach of JEF United Ladies Youth and General Manager, Kobayashi was intent on employing as many female coaches as possible. It was not merely a personnel change, but a challenge to widespread social attitudes.

“When I started to employ female coaches, the girls’ parents asked why the coach wasn’t a man. But gradually, we started to make it equal – they didn’t talk about the gender, but about the quality of the coach.”

 

The mission to empower

In 2011, the same year Japan’s women won the World Cup, the domestic league was yet to become professional. Known as the Nadeshiko League, players would work during the day and train in the evenings.

The transition from an amateur to the current professional league required time, resilience and a change in perspective.

“The sports world in Japan is more traditional – it is dominated by men,” said Kobayashi.

“If you want to make the environment even, or (want) more women to come into the (football) world, you can change the mind of the players.”

Since 2021, the WE League has embodied a sense of growth and positive change for the women’s game. In name and nature, it looks to empower players, coaches and all involved in the industry.

“I was in charge of mission achievement for women’s empowerment. We wanted to educate the players, to inspire girls and women who watch the game.”

However, the drive to empower women in football was not without backlash and challenges.

“Some people don’t like that word: ’empowerment’. It’s too strong for them. Some women really appreciate it, but it’s not easy to change the mind of society through football,” Kobayashi admitted.

 

Growing and attracting talent

Although WE League clubs are accelerating youth development and expanding pathways across U15, U18 and first team football, Kobayashi acknowledged that the overall product must improve to bring foreign players to Japan and entice homegrown talent to stay.

“Most of the national team players go to Europe or North America. I don’t say it’s a problem, but from a young age, girls who can play in the WE League want to go abroad,” Kobayashi outlined.

Indeed, when looking at the starting XI in last month’s AFC Women’s Asian Cup final, only one player – Hana Takahashi – plays in the WE League.

But the key to attracting domestic and international players to the WE League, is aligning financial investment and industry attitudes.

“The reason why women’s football has developed in European countries is the social thinking – you have to be equal and have the same opportunities as men in football. The Japanese way of thinking, especially in the football world, is not that at all,” Kobayashi continued.

“When I speak to people at Spanish clubs, women’s football is not a charity, but an investment.”

“We have assets. We have good, young players, but we’re exporting them, so we need to import too.”

Indeed, Spain is a perfect example of what can happen when investment becomes intentional, not optional. Back-to-back UEFA Women’s Nations League titles, 90% television viewership increase since 2016, and record-breaking crowd numbers reflect what can happen when the industry aligns in vision and commitment.

Japan has the players to compete against any nation in the world. Purposeful investment, combined with its overall quality of players and style, could transform the WE League into a true, global powerhouse.

 

The vision for the future

Moving forward, Kobayashi hopes that girls progressing through JEF United’s academies develop confidence and resilience, whether as players or people.

“We want to make the girls – even if they aren’t in JEF United – continue playing football and continue to be leaders,” Kobayashi said.

“Some of them have a dream to be a coach or a leader off the field too, so that’s one of the attributes we want to develop.”

This resilience, reflected by the club’s ‘never give up’ philosophy, is testament to the vision of empowerment championed by Kobayashi across the women’s game.

Even in the face of social obstacles and a lack of financial investment, perseverance and hard work is at the bedrock of women’s football in Japan. It is not just that these values exist, but that they are consistently manifested on and off the pitch, which can show future generations that football is a sport for all – men and women alike.

 

Final thoughts

There is no limit to what the WE League and the national team can achieve if given the resources it deserves. All the ingredients are there: individual quality, a distinct playing style, football philosophy and ambitions to grow.

By following the example of industry leaders like Kobayashi, women’s football in Japan can hopefully continue to make waves of impact – in the sporting landscape and society as a whole.

The Future of AI Motion Analysis: From Biomechanics Research, to the ISS, to Juventus Forward

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Image Credit: Juventus

In the fast-evolving field of sports technology, KineMo’s trajectory in early 2026 reflects a piece of a wider movement- one powered by AI, single-camera biomechanics, and a drive to democratise motion tracking across sport, rehab, and even astronaut training.

For Australian club administrators, physios, coaches, and technology partners, KineMo’s recent engagement with Juventus Football Club and the European Space Agency offers both a reflection and a challenge on where athlete monitoring and performance development are heading.

In Turin: Juventus’ Bet on Startup-Led Innovation

The whirlwind started in Turin. KineMo was announced as part of the inaugural cohort of the Juventus Forward innovation program, a next-generation initiative positioning the iconic Italian club as a hub for open innovation in elite sports. The launch event put KineMo’s founders beside Juventus legends and leading sports strategists, confirming the club’s intent to overhaul performance workflows by welcoming global tech startups directly onto the stadium floor.

As part of the initiative, Juventus Forward embeds startups across athlete development, content creation, and guest management, with the club’s staff collaborating in a “live fire” model that lets technology address complex problems in athlete health, rehabilitation, and skills progression. KineMo’s mandate within this environment is clear: deliver scalable, on-demand 3D functional movement screening from ordinary mobile video, no matter the athlete’s level or setting.

For Australian football, especially at NPL or A-League level, this open-access model holds specific appeal. The legacy of expensive, marker-based lab systems has left grassroots teams and independent physios excluded from best-practice movement analysis, a gap that often translates into missed talent, misdiagnosed rehab, and higher injury risk. KineMo levels this by bringing a clinically validated platform, only requiring a phone and no wearables or calibration. The technology delivers peer-reviewed kinematics across a 33-joint skeleton in 3D, turning club footage, rehab videos, or match film into actionable data for coaches and medical staff.

Expanding the Ecosystem: Milan, Irish Tech, and Global Collaboration

KineMo’s Italian tour continued in Milan, where the team joined other standout Irish sports tech businesses for a market mission tied to Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026. The event, led by Enterprise Ireland, gave KineMo direct access to Olympic officials, ministry representatives, space medicine researchers, and leading kinematics academics.

What began within Trinity College Dublin, as a research thread exploring rugby head injury assessment, now breathes a spectrum of disciplines. The KineMo core AI, capable of extracting force and joint movement from video, is being iterated for use cases in yoga, pilates, gym, remote physiotherapy, and broadcasting. These are not just lateral moves; they’re part of a grander vision to break the silo of high-performance motion tracking and return it to the everyday athlete, rehab professional, or remote coach.

ESA BIC Ireland: Space Medicine Meets Sport Science

Perhaps most symbolically, KineMo recently joined the ESA BIC Ireland incubation program, making its single-camera motion platform part of European astronaut screening, in-flight exercise monitoring, and post-mission rehabilitation. Partnering with the European Space Agency moves KineMo’s AI out of the sports hall and onto the International Space Station, where every movement pattern is a data point in keeping astronauts safe and healthy over long-duration missions.

ESA’s Space Medicine Office described the collaboration as an advance in “resource-efficient assessment of pre, in and post-mission astronaut movement patterns.” For KineMo, and by extension, for every coach or clinician monitoring movement in football or rugby, it’s both validation and opportunity: if the tech is good enough for space medicine, it’s likely robust and adaptable enough for club athlete care.

The Science: Validated Motion Analysis at Scale

KineMo’s published work reinforces its credibility. Trials using multicamera setups for contact scenarios and single-camera video for common strength and rehab exercises showed error margins comparable to gold standard lab outputs. Applying open-source pose estimation and proprietary learning algorithms, the platform can lift 2D joint markers into 3D space. Tests with Vicon systems and mobile phones returned small errors in knee angle and torso metrics, confirming the tech’s accuracy and reliability out in the field.

For sports like football, where injury patterns, return-to-play decisions, and load management are all contingent on movement quality, KineMo’s model enables clubs to run mass screenings, establish robust kinematic baselines, and maintain objective tracking throughout an athlete’s career. For Australia, whose geographically dispersed talent pipeline often makes in-person testing unfeasible, remote video-based motion analysis could spell a revolution in player welfare and recruitment.

The Road Ahead: Integrations, Gamification, and Scaling

Looking ahead, KineMo has positioned itself to integrate directly with partner platforms, offering longitudinal tracking, remote consults, gamified skill monitoring, and population-level screening for youth and senior athletes. Its ability to quantify and visualise movement is already influencing rehabilitation protocols and talent frameworks in European football, but also in allied sectors like healthcare, broadcasting, and at-home fitness.

For Australian football, the lesson is clear. Open innovation isn’t just for the Champions League. Its application has become increasingly relevant for every club, physiotherapy clinic, and federation seeking efficient, scalable athlete monitoring. KineMo’s rise signals a new era where peer-reviewed, lab-grade movement analysis is as close as your smartphone.

Clubs willing to invest now in these solutions will not only improve athlete health but will be at the forefront of a transformation. Objective data will be what underpins all key decisions about player recruitment, return to play, and long-term athlete development. The next decade of sport will belong to those ready to act, test, and iterate and it’s up to clubs in Australia whether to embrace the change or fall behind.

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