World Football Summit Madrid 2026: What Did the Attendees Think?

We are a few weeks removed from the World Football Summit 2026 held in Madrid.

Executives, investors, lawyers, coaches, technology companies, commercial specialists and many others spent two days discussing where the business of football is heading. But away from the panels, presentations and exhibition stands, there is a much simpler question.

Why do people actually come?

During The Business of Football Network's time at World Football Summit, we interviewed professionals from different areas of the industry and asked them about their experiences of the event.

Their answers were different, but four themes continually appeared: connections, learning, different perspectives and collaboration.

Coming to Madrid With Intent

For some attendees, World Football Summit is already an established part of their calendar, while for others, Madrid represents their first experience of an international football business conference.

Kimi Onana, Managing Partner at Crown & Shields Legal, was attending World Football Summit for the first time after his interest in football and its intellectual property landscape led him towards the event.

What impressed him was not simply the number of people in attendance, but the purpose behind why they were there.

“You meet people with intent.”

It was an interesting way of describing the atmosphere at the Summit. People were not simply occupying the same conference hall because they happened to work in sport; they had travelled to Madrid specifically to meet others working around the industry.

Onana spoke about conversations where people explained what they did, what they were looking for and how they might potentially work together.

Iryna Saltykova, Mental Performance Coach at Awesomesports Football Academy, had a similar perspective, although unlike Onana, this was her second World Football Summit.

She had returned because Madrid provided an opportunity to meet professionals, exchange perspectives, make connections and potentially identify opportunities to collaborate.

“That's a good place to meet nice people, real professionals, to exchange perspectives, to make some connections and to find some ways to collaborate.”

Two attendees with very different backgrounds and different levels of experience at the Summit, but already there was a common theme: the people mattered.

Networking, But With a Purpose

Networking is probably one of the most overused words at any business conference. You meet someone, exchange details, connect on LinkedIn and then potentially never speak again.

But the conversations we had in Madrid suggested that attendees saw the value of World Football Summit as something slightly more purposeful.

Fernando Almeida Costa, CEO of Football at APOEL FC, was straightforward about why events like this remain important.

“You need this kind of event to make connections.”

But he immediately connected that networking opportunity to something else: learning.

Costa highlighted the different approaches brought into the room by people operating across the industry.

“Each one has a different approach. So, it's important to learn.”

That is an important distinction, because the value of meeting someone from another part of football is not necessarily that they become a client, employer or business partner. Sometimes they simply make you think about the industry differently.

Onana experienced something similar, describing how people were immediately willing to explain what they did and explore how their respective areas of expertise could potentially work together. For him, the shared intention of those attending helped create those conversations.

Football Experience Is No Longer Enough

One of the more interesting perspectives came from Emmanuel Mireku Attah, CEO of Manna Fresh FC, whose relationship with football stretches considerably further back than World Football Summit.

“All I've done in my life is football. Since I was young. I've never done anything apart from football.”

But despite spending his life around the game, Attah recognised that football itself had changed, and that meant he needed to change with it.

“I decided to also educate myself because now football has changed. Without education, it's very difficult.”

That process of education ultimately gave him an opportunity to attend World Football Summit in 2025 and connect with people working across the football industry. In 2026, he returned.

His comments highlighted something that also appeared in Costa's assessment of the event: even for people already operating within football, there is still a need to learn.

The industry continues to expand into areas that would have looked very different even a decade ago, with technology, investment, data, media, performance and commercial development increasingly overlapping. No individual is going to understand all of it, and events like World Football Summit create an environment where those different areas collide.

Different Backgrounds, Same Industry

Perhaps that was most obvious from the people we interviewed ourselves: a lawyer exploring the intellectual property side of football, a football club CEO whose life has been spent within the game, a mental performance specialist and a senior football executive.

Their reasons for being in Madrid were not identical, but their experiences repeatedly came back to the same idea: football benefits from bringing people with different expertise together.

Saltykova spoke about exchanging perspectives, Costa about learning from different approaches, Onana about people arriving with intent and discussing how they might work together, while Attah spoke about continuing to educate himself and build connections within an industry that has changed significantly.

Together, those perspectives demonstrate how broad the business surrounding football has become and perhaps why an event bringing those different areas together can still have value in an age where virtually anybody can connect online.

Does Being There Still Matter?

It is worth asking. LinkedIn gives professionals access to enormous networks, video calls mean a meeting can happen between people on opposite sides of the world, and industry information is available almost instantly.

So why travel to Madrid?

The interviews we conducted offered one answer: because being connected and having a relationship are not necessarily the same thing.

Onana's description of meeting people with “intent” is particularly relevant here. Everyone has already made a decision to be there, creating a reason to introduce yourself, ask what somebody does and potentially continue the conversation afterwards.

Sometimes that conversation leads somewhere.

For Saltykova, that could mean identifying opportunities for collaboration. For Costa, it can mean learning from someone with a completely different approach. For Attah, it is part of continuously educating himself and developing his network, while for Onana, it provides an opportunity to explore where his own expertise could fit within football.

What Did the Attendees Think?

There isn't one answer, and that's probably the point.

World Football Summit means something slightly different depending on where somebody currently sits within the industry. Someone trying to enter football may value access, someone already working within it may value new perspectives, a business might be looking for partners, while an executive might be looking for knowledge.

A specialist might even find an application for their expertise that they hadn't previously considered.

But across the four conversations TBOF had in Madrid, the same words and ideas kept appearing:

Connect. Learn. Exchange. Collaborate.

Perhaps that provides the clearest indication of why thousands of people continue travelling to events like World Football Summit.

The stages bring the industry together, but much of the value appears to come from what happens between them.