69 XTREME Sport and Data
“Our company hosts an annual programme, where we invite 15 industry leaders to sit down at a table to try and solve common problems. The leaders’ debate is then published to our website as research,” reports Ruggiero. They found that performance technology could help the athlete, if used the right way, because imagine if the data generated leaks into the hands of another team during transfer season? If that data is negative, then the athlete would not want to share it. If that data is positive, then of course the athlete would want to share it, but that decision should be theirs. Ruggiero adds: “We’ve been looking at this data outside of performance, because it’s also really valuable for fan engagement. Would it be interesting to see all the players’ heart rates? Would you bet on it?
“In the US, betting is a relatively new revenue stream – it’s this idea of being able to sell athlete data to help others obtain more accurate odds. But if you’re going to use this data to predict odds in a game, it better be accurate or else people will lose money.” The leaders will be back around the Sports Innovation Lab table again soon to discuss the next generation of sponsorships, to talk about how brands are spending millions of dollars to connect to the next generation consumer and how they’re using technology to drive and measure engagement. Ruggiero believes that sponsorships are becoming more sophisticated and cleaner in terms of what the accuracy of those sponsorships should look like. “If you think about the whole ecosystem of the next
generation venue; how you pay, how you enjoy and experience the game, that’s all changing. Ticket companies will sell digital tickets. Venues will use biometric data to enable fans to enter safely. There will be a tablet in your seat, which you would use for betting, and there will be an official provider for that.” She continues: “There are huge new sponsorship categories that are evolving overnight, and you don’t want to leave money on the table just because you misidentified and gave away a technology category that you didn’t understand, because you’re a sports team. “With our research and understanding, we’re sophisticating the market on what these new categories are, both from a sponsorship perspective and from a delivery one.”
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