Baseball champion carves a new path in Spanish football: “You’re never the expert. You’re always the outsider”
Off The Pitch
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By James Corbett , Senior Correspondent
In the beginning there was baseball’s Billy Beane. The Oakland Athletics general manager achieved global renown in the early noughties by applying data analytics to baseball and achieving success far beyond the Athletics’ financial reach. It made him the subject of a bestselling book, Moneyball, and a film in which Brad Pitt played his role.
But while Beane and the phrase “Moneyball” has assumed a kind of mythological status across the sporting world, the work of Beane’s spiritual successor – Jeff Luhnow – has largely gone under the radar outside baseball.
Armed with a background in engineering and business, and experience at McKinsey & Company, Luhnow found himself uniquely positioned to implement similar strategies. He was signed by the St Louis Cardinals in the early noughties, as they sought to emulate some of the success Beane had brought to Oakland.
But unlike Beane, whose greatest success came in reaching the playoffs, Luhnow was an actual winner, lifting the World Series with the Cardinals in 2011, and again with the Houston Astros in 2017.
Michael Lewis’s book
Now he has brought those talents to football, heading up Blue Crow Sports Group , a multiclub ownership (MCO) group that owns CD Leganés in LaLiga, Mexico’s Cancún, MFK Vyškov in Czechia, and Dubai Elite Falcons in UAE.
Sitting in LaLiga’s offices in London on a broiling August lunchtime, Luhnow tells Off The Pitch that his switch from tech and consulting to sports was heavily inspired by Beane’s innovative approach at the Athletics.
“It wasn’t until I read Michael Lewis’s book ‘Moneyball’ that I thought, ‘I bet there’s more and more interest in people with different types of skills in both the business side and the sporting side,’ which is what I was interested in,” Luhnow recalls.
A pivotal moment came when a former McKinsey colleague, connected to the St. Louis Cardinals’ ownership, reached out to Luhnow. The Cardinals, though already successful, needed to innovate to maintain their competitive edge. Luhnow’s analytical prowess and business acumen were seen as the missing pieces to sustain the Cardinals’ success in the rapidly changing financial landscape of Major League Baseball (MLB).
“He reached out to me because I’d always been interested in sports. Wherever I was, people knew I was interested in sports. I did fantasy baseball. I went to games all the time and I had an engineering and a business background,” Luhnow explains.
At McKinsey, Luhnow honed his skills in problem-solving, strategic thinking and organizational change – skills he adeptly applied to baseball. His approach was not about dictating changes but about understanding the existing culture and processes and then gradually implementing improvements.
By engaging deeply with scouts, coaches and players, he gathered invaluable insights, which he then used to formulate strategies that leveraged both traditional baseball wisdom and new, data-driven methodologies.
“The one thing you have to learn … [is] you’re never the expert. You’re always the outsider coming in. You have to learn how to ask questions and how to listen and how to take their ideas and help them craft a solution,” Luhnow says.
World Series win
“I spent a lot of time traveling around with the scouts. I spent time in the locker rooms after games talking to coaches. What did they see? What did they like? Really just basically interviewed them for months on end until I started to get a feel myself for how things might work.”
Luhnow’s tenure with the Cardinals culminated in their 2011 World Series win. He then moved to the Houston Astros, where his influence was even more profound. Despite initial struggles, his strategies eventually led to the Astros’ 2017 World Series win and a sustained period of success. Luhnow’s impact in baseball was a testament to how non-traditional approaches could yield significant competitive advantages.
Football: A new frontier
In 2021, Luhnow made the move into football, forming Blue Crow Sports. The global nature of the game and the opportunities for innovation within the sport attracted him. Raised in Mexico, football was also a sport Luhnow had a deep personal connection with, making this transition a blend of professional and intellectual challenge and personal passion.
“Baseball has 30 teams essentially. Yes, there are other leagues around the world, but it’s one league sport – Major League Baseball. Football is global. There are leagues and teams all over the world, and there’s just so much opportunity,” he says.
Luhnow also recognised that football, unlike baseball, was still in the early stages of data and technology integration. Advancements in tracking technology, artificial intelligence and comprehensive data analysis were beginning to transform the game, and Luhnow wanted to be at the forefront of this evolution.
“Our original investment thesis was surrounding Mexico, and we spent a couple years looking for a team to acquire in Mexico,” Luhnow explains. In the country of his birth he came close to buying Atlético de San Luis in partnership with Atletico Madrid. That didn’t happen, but he acquired Cancún instead. But establishing a presence in Europe was always the goal.
“Europe is where football is, was born and is really king,” he says.
“My partner Arvind N. and I probably went to about 12 countries to look at different teams, to meet people, to visit clubs, etc., and we focused on Spain for a couple of important reasons.
“We were very impressed with the financial control of LaLiga and the fact that, yes, you can lose money, but if you lose money, you lose the ability to spend on players and it kind of self-corrects back, so that you don’t have this constant pressure to go into debt and mortgage your future for your present.
“The other reason why Spain was attractive to us is we know there’s talent in Spain. We also know that you can bring in players from EU, which widens your net, and you can also bring in players from Africa due to the treaty that they have.”
Madrid focus
This search led them in June 2022 to purchase Club Deportivo Leganés , a small Madrid club with recent top flight pedigree.
At Leganés, Luhnow implemented several changes aimed at modernizing the club. Emphasizing youth development and data-driven decision-making, he sought to build a sustainable model for success. Retaining key personnel from the previous ownership ensured continuity, while new strategies and resources were introduced to enhance the club’s performance.
“We retained many people that were already there because they had done a really good job with limited resources. Really, it was about adding, not subtracting,” Luhnow says.
He dismisses the idea that having Real Madrid, the world’s most successful club, on its doorstep, along with Atletico, limits the potential for growth.
Indeed, Luhnow insists this is an advantage and that one notable strategy comes in leveraging the club’s location in the Madrid metropolitan area. By establishing strong relationships with these bigger clubs, he hopes Leganés can benefit from loan deals and transfers, gaining access to talent that might otherwise be out of reach.
Talent, he adds, is also more likely to be attracted to a cosmopolitan city than somewhere in the provinces.
African strategy
A key component of Blue Crow’s strategy is the focus on African talent. Recognizing the immense and largely untapped potential in Africa, Luhnow invested in scouting and developing players from the continent.
The challenges of adapting young African players to European football are significant, but Luhnow’s experience in international scouting from his baseball days in Latin America provided a solid foundation.
“We’ve been doing that extensively since we started the company, and I think we’re getting better every month at figuring out how to do it. We’re going to continue to go up a very steep learning curve,” Luhnow acknowledges.
As part of this strategy, Blue Crow bought a development team in Dubai as a stepping stone for African players. Elite Falcons acts as an intermediary, helping players acclimatize to professional football standards before moving to clubs in Europe.
This approach aims to bridge the gap between raw talent and the polished skills needed for top-tier European football. Cancun has also been used as a nursery for African talent. He highlights the Guinean international midfielder, Seydouba Cissé, as an example of this focus reaping dividends.
Expanding the MCO
Blue Crow’s ambitions extend beyond Leganés and Dubai. They have also invested in a club in Czechia, MFK Vyškov, recognizing Central and Eastern Europe as another market with untapped potential.
Luhnow points out that the long-term goal is to build a network of clubs that can share resources, knowledge and talent, creating a robust system that enhances each club’s competitive edge.
“You need to have a good balance of how you operate locally and then what centrally are you benefiting these clubs? Is it just money? Is it some sort of marketing synergies?” Luhnow explains. “For us, it’s really about football knowledge and how you implement your strategy.”
Luhnow envisions adding more clubs to the portfolio, but with a measured approach. Understanding each club’s culture and environment is crucial to avoid the pitfalls of remote ownership. By adding one club at a time, Blue Crow ensures that each acquisition is integrated smoothly and contributes positively to the overall strategy.
“We think we can invest more and develop these tools even further with more teams. But it’s not one of those situations where we would ever buy four teams in one year,” he adds.
He also emphasises that new techniques and strategies constantly need to be updated and revived, because if they’re any good rivals will emulate them. Just as the Cardinals hired him to emulate the success of Beane, so others innovated after he achieved success.
“You have to look for new advantages because the things that you did that made you successful in [in the past] everybody was doing them now,” he says.
“So now you have to find what's the next frontier, where can you get the next advantage?”
LaLiga and future aspirations
Leganés enjoyed something of an annus mirabilis last season. They had finished the 2022/23 season just fourteenth in LaLiga 2 and were then ordered to cut their playing budget by a third under the league’s cost control rules. Despite this nightmare proposition, they ended up winning the league title and promotion back to the top flight after a four year gap.
“I think our sporting director did a tremendous job of finding players that fit our budget and putting together a roster… The sum was greater than the individual parts at the end of the day because of how everybody worked together.
“I have to give a lot of credit to our coach [Borja Jiménez]. He had twice gotten teams promoted from Primera Federación [Spain’s third division] to Segunda and both times he got fired from the Segunda team. Both I and our sporting director believed that he had it in him to do what he did last year.”
He adds: “There was some luck involved too.” They avoided injuries and when they came they did so in January when there was a break, and at a time when they were able to add some reinforcements too. Ultimately, it came down to winning games and edging close matches.
Leganés will kick off the new season with the smallest budget in LaLiga. What does success look like at that level? Is it simply finishing fourth bottom and therefore safe?
“I do think that we have to be very disciplined. We have to be focused. We’re going to have the lowest player wages in the league, but we need to get the biggest impact per euro spent on those wages. Now, we have a good core. We’ve got some young players right now that have proven they can play in Segunda, but they haven’t proven they can play in Primera yet.
“We want to put together a roster that can compete, hopefully have some luck, some early points, and you know, Las Palmas last year was never in the conversation of relegation, and Alaves really wasn’t either.
“We’d love to follow that path. That would be incredible outcome for us.”
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