Oslo/Lisbon, 2 June 2021 – Xplora Technologies AS ('Xplora') today announces a new partnership with S.L. Benfica, Portugal’s most successful football club with more than 50 million global fans. The agreement builds on the parties’ shared vision of keeping children and families active.
Xplora has a history of successfully promoting kids' activity through partnerships with strong global brands such as Sony Playstation and Paramount Pictures, and the recently announced agreements with UNICEF and the United Nations. For the first time moving into sports and teaming up with a major international football club, Xplora unlocks a potential of mobilizing more than 50 million Benfica fans around the world.
“Establishing a partnership with a global sports brand such as Benfica is an important step towards our vision of enabling children to experience how their everyday activities can make a positive change to the world. Benfica, as an eclectic and diverse club who addresses fans from multiple age ranges, shares the importance of this, and it will be truly exciting to explore the opportunities the partnership will give us in our key markets by accessing a huge base of active and loyal Benfica fans”, says Sten Kirkbak, CEO of Xplora.
More than 400,000 families worldwide are using the Xplora service. The Xplora platform rewards activities and incentivizes children to be more active, and new and innovative solutions will build on this by combining football activities with elements of gamification
“Introducing the Xplora platform to football and other sports will create new opportunities for innovation as well as increasing the Xplora community base to new users around the world in large scale”, Kirkbak says.
S.L. Benfica, Licensing and Merchandising Director, José Simão, voices his excitement about the Xplora partnership, stating: “We find a strong match between the beautiful game of football and the powerful Benfica community with how Xplora encourages children to play, in order to move the world. Together we can create fun and safe solutions that will keep families active. Benfica has been leading the digital transformation in sports in Portugal and partnering with a strong and promising brand in the industry of mobile communications such as Xplora, aiming to impact young kids in a positive way, as the club constantly aims to target, strikes us as a very exciting challenge for the next times to come”.
About S.L. Benfica: S.L. Benfica, commonly known as Benfica, is a professional football club based in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 1904, Benfica is one of the most successful football clubs in the world. The club has won 80 domestic trophies, including a record 37 Primeira Liga titles, and a record 26 cup titles. Internationally they won the European Cup, today known as the Champions League, back-to-back in 1961 and 1962. Benfica has more than 230,000 registered members and over 50 million fans worldwide. The club has a gross media value of 404.4 million euros, with a social media following of 8.74 million. Currently Benfica has 150 licensing contracts with more than 3,000 licensed products, and a universe of 6 permanent Official Stores, a dynamic Online Shop and around 200 pop-up stores that help placing the vast universe of official products into the market.
About Xplora Technologies: Xplora is a platform and services company and an industry leader in the market for children’s smartwatches. Xplora was founded to give children a safe onboarding to the digital life and a better balance between screen time and physical activity. Xplora's vision is to enable children around the world to experience how their everyday activities can create value and make a positive change to the world. The company is headquartered in Norway with operations in leading European markets.
