How technology, and analytics movement is affecting sport

Sport is a unique and im­por­tant con­nec­tive tis­sue that binds peo­ple to­geth­er. It en­ables mul­ti­ple au­di­ences and gen­er­a­tions to find align­ment. And there’s some­thing that is now be­ing hailed as the biggest in­flu­encer be­hind this glob­al uni­fi­er. Tech­nol­o­gy.

Tech­nol­o­gy has been qui­et­ly trans­form­ing the world of sports for years. It has re­sult­ed in some coun­tries and teams mak­ing steady progress ahead of the pack and has seen oth­ers falling be­hind. It in­flu­ences how ath­letes train and com­pete, how fans en­gage and con­sume con­tent and how world-class venues are con­struct­ed.

Of course, among the chief rea­sons why a lot of coun­tries or sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions have not been able to catch on or per­haps catch up to those who have gone ahead is the fi­nan­cial as­pect when it comes to ac­cess­ing some of the most ad­vanced tech­no­log­i­cal boost­ers that are tak­ing over.

With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and oth­er ma­jor events such as the biggest of them all, Qatar’s FI­FA 2022 World Cup, ap­proach­ing, a mas­sive amount of in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion are pour­ing in­to the sports tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try ahead of these glob­al­ly uni­fy­ing events. Re­cent re­search was con­duct­ed to iden­ti­fy which sports are at the fore­front of the tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion and which fac­tors are hold­ing the in­dus­try back. Fan en­gage­ment tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing live stream­ing and es­ports, are set to make the largest im­pact on sports in the next 12 months.

When asked about which tech­nolo­gies would make the biggest im­pact on the sports in­dus­try in the next 12 months, an over­whelm­ing 78% se­lect­ed fan en­gage­ment tech­nolo­gies, such as live stream­ing, es­ports and con­tent plat­forms. The Top three tech­nolo­gies for in­vest­ment were me­dia and con­tent-re­lat­ed plat­forms; mea­sure­ment plat­forms for da­ta, an­a­lyt­ics and bio­met­rics; and es­ports. Sev­er­al fac­tors were cit­ed for hold­ing back sports tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion, with the top three rea­sons, sim­i­lar to many non-tra­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors, be­ing un­qual­i­fied de­ci­sion-mak­ers, risk aver­sion and cost.

Da­ta and an­a­lyt­ics have trans­formed how pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes train and per­form, al­low­ing elite sports play­ers to dis­sect and im­prove their per­for­mance in ways not avail­able be­fore. The na­tion­al men’s foot­ball team has been us­ing the GPS and heart rate mon­i­tors since 2017 but it has not trick­led down to the oth­er lev­els in lo­cal sport such as the dif­fer­ent clubs and leagues where­by in coun­tries such as Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na and most in Eu­rope and South Amer­i­ca, these de­vices are com­mon among most teams and at youth lev­el.

Crick­et Aus­tralia and In­dia are al­so us­ing GPS. But it doesn’t come cheap­ly. Some com­pa­nies have start­ed at­tempt­ing ways to make these pro­grams more eas­i­ly avail­able to teams or ath­letes at a more rea­son­able cost. But it re­mains a chal­lenge. es­pe­cial­ly in small­er coun­tries such as ours where when it comes to bud­get­ing for sports, the fo­cus and al­so the strug­gles still lie with ba­sic items such as air­fare, ac­com­mo­da­tion, com­pen­sa­tion, venues and even meals. Yes, meals.

Tech­nol­o­gy is not even on the list of many of our sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions or per­haps maybe some­where low down on the chart. So straight away we are trail­ing and forced to play catch up.

With elite ath­letes em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove their per­for­mance through sports tech prod­ucts and new da­ta an­a­lyt­ics ca­pa­bil­i­ties, it was in­evitable that con­sumers would aim for the same. On a glob­al stage. we aren’t on­ly see­ing it with fans who are us­ing the most ad­vanced ways to fol­low their favourite sports but the reg­u­lars are now mak­ing the ef­fort to train just like the pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes.

Though track­ing has be­come an every­day oc­cur­rence at the pro­fes­sion­al sports lev­el — from hy­dra­tion and heart rate to stress lev­el — it’s still rel­a­tive­ly new for am­a­teur ath­letes in the con­sumer mar­ket.

The ex­pec­ta­tions from con­sumers as da­ta and an­a­lyt­ics be­comes more ac­ces­si­ble has chal­lenged sports tech com­pa­nies to un­der­stand how to scale their prod­ucts ac­cord­ing­ly. Com­pa­nies must think about scal­ing to am­a­teur-lev­el play and ed­u­ca­tion, as well as to con­sumers’ fi­nan­cial stan­dards.

“It’s re­al­ly about scal­a­bil­i­ty: how do we im­pact the great­est num­ber of lives soon­er with an ac­ces­si­ble, af­ford­able prod­uct?” said Meridith Unger, founder and CEO of Nix Biosen­sors. Mar­ilou Mc­Far­lane, pres­i­dent of Sport­sTech­Works, em­pha­sized that at the youth lev­el, it is im­por­tant to have fun, but there is al­so a need for mea­sur­able and ac­tion­able da­ta that al­lows young ath­letes to do a mul­ti­tude of things: Col­lab­o­rate with coach­es; Record pain and in­juries in an ap­pIn­form adults re­spon­si­ble for them of any health is­sues; Track hy­dra­tion and oth­er per­for­mance needs and Un­der­stand how they are im­prov­ing.

The track­ing and an­a­lyt­ics that are cur­rent­ly be­ing used on dis­tinct seg­ments, like ath­letes, ap­ply to sol­diers, labour­ers, the el­der­ly and oth­ers, and they can lead to bet­ter aware­ness of per­son­al health.

“We have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make that leap from the ath­lete to gen­er­al health care,” Unger said. Who knows, 20/20 vi­sion in the new year may see our lo­cal sport­ing sec­tor step­ping up its game.

Ed­i­tor’s Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer.