Talent is the competitive edge in sports. But how do you reward the people who create it when value takes years to materialize? Sporting CP saw this clearly: their company-wide incentive model didn't fit the roles that drive long-term value creation. They recognized pur'ple could help them design something different, and we agreed — the problem was real, the opportunity significant, and the solution urgent.
DEFINING
THE CHALLENGE
The value was real. The timeline wasn't.
Sporting CP is a multi-sport organization. But their competitive edge in football flows through three critical roles: youth coaches, youth scouts, and professional scouts. These are the people who identify young talent early, develop their skills over years, and shape the players who eventually step onto the first team or are sold to other clubs. This talent pipeline is where the club creates lasting value.
It was obvious the company-wide bonus system wouldn't work for these roles. A scout who identifies a young player today won't see the value of that decision for some years. A youth coach invests in developing fundamentals and mindset, but the payoff happens when that player moves to the professional level or beyond. A professional scout evaluates players for acquisition, but the return on that investment might come through performance gains, trophy wins, or eventual player sales that takes time to materialize. The timeline doesn't fit annual cycles.
Sporting CP saw it clearly: this wasn't an HR problem to solve. It was a business problem that demanded a different approach. They brought in pur'ple to design it.
shaping a solution
together
From "what did you do this year?" to "what are you building?"
The starting insight was simple but powerful: stop measuring what's easy to count in a year. Start measuring what actually creates value.
Working alongside Sporting CP's Executive Committee, Academy and Football Directors, and Head Scouts, pur'ple mapped where value really flows. A scout's recommendation. A coach's development work. A player's progression through the Academy to the first team, based on performance, and potentially to a sale. The timeline was multi-year.
reaching impactful
results
From cost line to strategic tool
People who excel at identifying and developing talent now have a reason to stay. They see their work recognized over the timeframe that matters. More than that, they understand the connection between their decisions and the club's financial sustainability. A player well-developed or well-chosen isn't just better on the pitch. It's an asset. It strengthens the balance sheet. The people in these roles already knew this intellectually. Now the reward structure makes it tangible. They feel the fairness in it.
The incentive system became a strategic tool, not a cost line. It signals to people in these roles: your contribution is understood. Your work compounds. You're building something together.
Most importantly, it aligned three different roles around one shared definition of success: creating talent that strengthens Sporting CP's competitive position. Long-term thinking stopped being a nice aspiration. It became how the club actually pays for talent. That's not just better HR. That's strategic coherence.
"We knew the problem: incentives built for annual cycles don't work when you're building talent over years. What pur'ple did was articulate what we already understood and design a system that reflected our reality. A tailored model that speaks to how our coaches and scouts actually think about their work. The system feels like it was made for us, because it was."
Francisco Salgado Zenha, CFO