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Information in Action: Europe’s Year of Sport

Data is playing a growing role in many sports for performance measurement, health monitoring, and team dynamics. As Europe’s biggest sporting event of the year – the Euro 2016 football tournament - approaches, we look at how data is playing an increasingly important role in improving sporting performance.

If your team is not already using data to help improve results and allow coaches to make critical decisions based on insights from analytics, then you can place a bet that the opposition has already signed up data as their star player.

A Gartner report, Do professional sports differentiate through ICT and digital technologies adoption, by analyst Petr Gorodetskiy, reveals that data is being used to innovate and differentiate team offerings.

Professional sport generated $145bn in revenue in 2015, according to PwC, and to maintain this level of success more attention is being paid to the opportunities offered by information management.

“Big data and internet of things are having broader penetration in optimising regular operations and processes of a professional sports team/organisation within areas such as athlete development, marketing, fan relationship management, entertainment and media,” says the Gartner report.

Performance assessment assistance tools based on harnessing data for insight are being adopted coaches and medical personnel to assess the quality of performance of athletes. They are also being used to assist in tactics and model formation so players are chosen that fit best into team's selected tactics.

Another area is the utilisation of a broad range of activities to collect statistics and data, including trajectories, players' movements, speed, stamina and position. Tools may also be used for collection of various statistics to be made available to fans and spectators in real time on TV, social media, smartphones and tablets.

Germany – world champions of data
It is no secret that data played its part in helping Germany lift the FIFA World Cup in 2014, and with the Euro 2016 football tournament this summer, data will almost certainly help the winning team on its path to victory.

The German Football Association (DFB) deployed data analytics and worked with SAP to develop a Match Insights software system which the team has been using since March 2014. Data captured by video cameras around the pitch could be viewed on tablets or mobile devices to gain insights to enhance team performance and analyse rival tactics.

As a result the team’s speed of passing improved dramatically, with the average ball possession time of 3.4 seconds in 2010 being slashed to 1.1 seconds. The team was also able to gain insights about players’ performance including speed and distance travelled, positioning and number of touches. Insight into opposition performances also permitted targeting weak areas. Data was made available to all the teams, but it was the German team that spotted the potential of analytics.

“Penetration of information and communication technologies in sports is well underway. Many more professional sports teams and organisations realise the value of IT - especially the benefits that digitalisation can bring - creating greater efficiency in both sports performance and business. We see more cases that IT can assist with, and when used wisely, will help with reaching the highest goals,” says the Gartner report.

   

Leicester City - Beating the big-money giants with data
It’s not just national teams making use of data. The surprise winner of the English Premier League in 2016, Leicester City Football Club, has relied on wearable technology and analytical tools for many years.

The club’s players suffered relatively few injuries in their title-winning season due to Prozone Sports’ feed of tracking data, which allowed coaches to gain an enhanced insight into fitness and to tailor training programmes accordingly. Wearable technology, such as Catapult Sports’ OptimEye S5, allowed manager Claudio Ranieri to ascertain the risk of injury to help manage the load on players.

Data is embedded into club culture and players read pre- and post-match interactive reports from the club’s performance team via iPads, and the club has a specialist analysis room in its stadium to access performance data at half time.

“Broad and innovative use of information technologies may become relevant for minor teams, those unable to compete with such giants as Real Madrid or Manchester United in terms of funding, but it may help compensate the lack of money by introducing more efficient management techniques of their current resources and processes,” says the Gartner report, a sentiment that Leicester City would no doubt endorse.

Some sports are more ahead of the game than others, but they are all catching up on the opportunities information management offers.

High-tech sports such as Formula One and sailing put technology at the centre of everything, says Clive Longbottom, founder of analyst Quocirca.

“From the initial design through CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/manufacturing), CFD (computational fluid dynamics) for air and water flows over and around the car or boat; wind tunnel use to test this, and the use of sensors to monitor what is happening while the car or boat is in the race – technology and insights from data has changed the face of these sports,” he says.

Olympic performance for information management
In athletics, data that tracks performance is vital to coaching and with the 2016 Olympics in Rio approaching, there is no doubt that participants will be used to having every movement analysed, fine-tuned and perfected.

“From attaching multiple sensors to an athlete’s body to be able to track their motion and analyse it and check for correct posture, rhythm, and gait, through to monitoring a golfer’s swing, to watching how individual football players move and interact on the field, technology and data is becoming increasingly important across the board,” says Longbottom.

The use of data analytics does not merely involve analysing a player’s capacity to perform a set series of moves – tackle, get up, retreat, tackle, get up, retreat, and so on – which are intensely physically demanding, but also covers their blood pathologies and other physiological phenomena.

Richard Hunwicks, head of human performance at the Rugby Football League, says the sport is among the leaders in analytics. “People still don’t appreciate that the amount of data collected (in Rugby League) is huge, with regard to individual players, the teams, the national side – every little detail,” he says.

We are going to see ever more sporting successes built on the use of information to improve performance and the chance of being a champion – this summer and beyond.

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