Sports live data: A future of challenges and opportunities

Today’s sport industry revolves around a single group – fans.

They demand their content providers to push the boundaries of what is technologically possible; to make it feel like they are a part of a sport event, as opposed to simply watching it. Their experience must be unique, timely, relevant, and seamlessly engaging.

Technological advancement carries many opportunities, yet it’s increasingly necessary to quickly adapt and deliver an innovative product in the face of rising competition. Especially in soccer, match data collection, its distribution and monetization have had a big impact on the way fans consume the game.

As sports entities have progressively adapted their strategy to be more content-focused, we have witnessed the birth of ‘newsrooms’ across the sports sector. The aim is to create original, eye-catching and genuinely ground-breaking types of content to feed the many digital touchpoints. Today, I can see sports federations, leagues, or media in general, wanting to focus on ‘data rooms’ too.

Live data captured and analyzed in real-time, needless to say, is a huge step in this direction. Think of data used to aid the recovery and rehabilitation of injured athletes. Or teams who can optimize their team’s positioning on a pitch and reduce running time, ultimately conserving energy by running less. Finally, think of the fans themselves. Those who consume sport in any form are part of an experience that is enriched and made deeper than ever by the exploitation of data. Unlocking the power of these insights, along with others, is critical for the success of the sport.

Here at Deltatre, we are working tirelessly with sports organizations to optimize new solutions and services to address these opportunities. Our focus is ‘glass to glass’ and the role data has to play across the entire ecosystem from content creation to consumption. It’s not just about building dashboards, but rather how taking insights and applying them against clear business objectives in fan engagement, performance management and monetization growth.