Moses Adedayo
Data are key in the development and growth of businesses and any sector of the economy including sports. Basically, with richer data, Nigeria’s sports industry can be moved from its current level to new heights where it can compete favourably with those in Europe, America and other developed parts of the world.
For instance, with the aid of data, Nigerian sports teams can know who was at any particular game, their in-stadium purchase history, and where they moved within the stadium.
Also, having this specific information will enable more focused sponsor targeting and authentic engagement both inside and outside the Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt or even Benin stadia.
More data also means more creative ways to contract with sponsors and more opportunities to customise the stadium advertising. For instance, with rich data, teams can find out who was at the game, their in-stadium purchase history, and where they moved within the stadium.
Nigerian teams can also integrate sponsor engagement into “thanks for coming to the game” emails based on fan profiles: Consider cross-promoting with ride-share apps or hotel loyalty programs, issuing credits or rewards to users in the stands when the home team won.
Data, which can be collected from different sectors of the economy can promote fan engagement, enhance the live game experience and maintain fan and sponsor participation.
They can also promote potential revenue-generating ideas for boosting attendance, driving engagement, and enrich sponsorship opportunities.
With the support of rich data, sports teams are finding innovative ways to engage specific fans or fan groups. According to the Deloitte report on data and sports development, such information can bring about revenue-enhancing ideas.
For instance, at a basic level, live engagement could allow sports fans to enjoy in-game features, like requesting a song or earning rewards for frequent concession trips.
Furthermore, access to a deeper knowledge of attendees’ profiles could enable more precise fan targeting. For example, by mining past attendance data, teams could drive repeat ticket purchases with targeted promotions or offer personalised discounts for games similar to those they’ve previously attended.
While some sectors of the sports industry may have neglected the importance and power of data over the years, this hasn’t been the case in Spanish football. La Liga President Javier Tebas has outlined the league’s strategy for using data to improve all aspects of the organisation and the enjoyment of the beautiful game.
La Liga has been working with data for several years already, something that Tebas explained is still uncommon in the sports industry during a speech at the World Football Summit in Madrid that was titled ‘La Liga: The Pathway from Data to Artificial Intelligence in the Sports Industry’. “Data hasn’t been used much in the sports industry,” he told those in attendance. “Yet we have a timeline of four years working in the world of data.”
The league’s efforts to overhaul the relationship with data and analytics took a major step forward in February of 2016 with a meeting with Microsoft. Later that year, in July of 2016, a memorandum of understanding was struck between La Liga and Microsoft before a contract was signed in October.
Since then, some of the top professionals in this field have been working to lead La Liga into the future and the organisation has adopted data in every department. “The Department of Business Intelligence and Analytics works across departments,” Tebas explained. “There’s a need for data specialists in all of the departments of La Liga. This is the most cross-sectional department that you need in a sporting organisation.”
That’s because data can be used to give La Liga an advantage in so many different ways. As Tebas told those at World Football Summit: “We have to get used to the change in using data. The data about our fans, the data about our users in the La Liga Fantasy game and other games, the internal data about kick-off times, the data on the stadium attendances, the data on our audience, the data focussed on economic control and more.”
One example of LaLiga using such intelligence to optimise the running of Spanish football comes with the selection of kick-off times. On one hand, LaLiga uses data to define timeslots that make the most sense and it has become clear that having 10 different timeslots across a weekend are optimal. “The more your product can be watched, the more you can secure in the monetisation of audio-visual rights,” Tebas explained, and the fact that there has been an increase in audio-visual income from €840m in the 2013/14 season to €2,111m this season proves this.
“We have a strategy of diversifying the slots,” the LaLiga President went on. “The key is ensuring we’re not overlapping matches. You can’t put one match on top of another one. All of this has led to the increase in international audio-visual rights because it has allowed us to offer live football.”
He also spoke about Mondays and the data that tells La Liga how profitable having fixtures at this time would be were it not for the objections of the Spanish federation. “Right now we don’t have the Monday slot, but have still created 10 slots,” he said. “The time in Europe and Africa when most people sat in front of their televisions is on a Monday night. At weekends, people tend to do leisure activities and go out, although there are some who stay in too. But Monday night is when that number of people tuning in really goes up. It’s a shame that this isn’t understood.”
In line with this, LaLiga uses data to decide which matches go into which slots. There is the Calendar Selector tool, for example, that processes over 70 variables to schedule certain matches at the slots that will boost stadium attendance and TV viewership for the teams involved.
Discussing the different ways in which football is consumed, Tebas spoke about over-the-top media services (OTT) and the fact that there is so much more information to be gleamed from this medium than from TV figures, although data is of course still analysed for these viewers.
On OTT, Tebas said: “You have a lot more data on the users in the world of OTT, such as the numbers of minutes they’re watching you, when they watch you, at what time they watch you, if they stop watching you, if they continue watching you, if they interact through multiple screens, etc. This world is a lot more complicated, but also a lot more accurate.”
As Tebas stressed to the audience, these are just some of the examples of how data can be used to take Spanish football to the next level. It can also be used for data-driven marketing, programmatic advertising, financial responsibility and much more.
In the future, there will logically be even more opportunities to use data and artificial intelligence in the day-to-day operations of LaLiga. One example of data leading to further profitability for LaLiga and for its clubs that Tebas reflected on is that of sponsorship and the desire for relevant and specialised data. “There will be a radical change when it comes to sponsors,” Tebas stated. “They won’t only ask to be showcased, as that’ll become less and less significant. Being on the shirt, on the television and on the advertising boards will lose value and what will have much more value will be your data.”
“We’re still in the initial phase,” Tebas said of LaLiga’s relationship with data, before expressing his delight at what has already been achieved. “Sincerely, I think we’re on the right track.”
- Adedayo, sports analyst, lives in Abuja.
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