Insights from Olivia Archanco and Miguel Doménech
Fan-data collection is fast becoming a fundamental tool within a sports property’s digital infrastructure. Giving an indication to its ubiquity, Olivia Archanco, LaLiga Tech’s Consumer Strategy Director, believes that “the majority” of sports organizations will have “adopted technology and data-driven initiatives by 2030” – a movement spearheaded by a “select few technology leaders”.
“The leaders of 2030 will be those who master data sharing and publishing while giving fans the experiences that they want,” Archanco explains. “The drive to understand fans is likely to hatch new marketplaces where multiple clubs, competitions and sponsors access new aggregated data on customer behavior as it relates to different sports, industry sectors or countries.”
Archanco’s thoughts formed part of N3XT Sports’ Digital Roadmap 2030 report, published in October, in which she says that data hubs can become “shrines of our industry”, adding that “data will be crucial” and “a key sports vertical in the near future”.
As digitally mature rights holders seek to consolidate their data touchpoints, properties whose digital transformations are still in their infancy should consider how data gleaned from fan-facing and operations-focused software solutions serve the growth of their business.
“The drive to understand fans is likely to hatch new marketplaces where multiple clubs, competitions and sponsors access new aggregated data on customer behavior as it relates to different sports, industry sectors or countries.”
Olivia Archanco, Consumer Strategy Director, LaLiga Tech
Digital fan touchpoints can boost a rights holder’s fan-engagement levels – however, unless they help support the flow of data and fan intelligence, the organization’s return on investment (ROI) into a sophisticated mobile app, ecommerce platform, and/or over-the-top (OTT) streaming service will be significantly diminished.
Consider then, while three in four sports properties proactively capture fan data, industry research finds that close to half (49 percent) do not collate data via a centralized data hub and three in ten (32 percent) do not review their data objectives.
As outlined in N3XT Sports’ latest digital-products explainer, while augmenting one’s digital inventory helps drive data collection inside sports entities, it is the integration of a centralized data-management capability which provides the glue that binds their digital portfolio and helps decision-makers within the organization to build a future-serving technology stack.
For example, the National Football League (NFL) set the record for data and WiFi usage during the 2021-22 season and Super Bowl LVI, demonstrating the most digitally engaged fan base. According to the cloud-based WiFi provider Extreme Networks, the NFL recorded a 34 percent increase in the average data transfer among users compared to the 2020-21 season, insights used to improve the in-stadia experience.
DATA COLLECTION OPTIMIZES FAN EXPERIENCE AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY
A desire to better understand the fan fuels sport’s dependency on data. For example, when in 2020 the Las Vegas Raiders moved from Oakland, California, to the new, US$1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium in Nevada, the NFL franchise was faced with building a fan base in a new city, and partnered with San Francisco-based consulting firm, Data Clymer, to help build a unique customer database.
This involved the combination of several services as part of a modern analytics stack, including partnerships with: (1) Salesforce to capture customer relationship data; (2) Matillion to extract, transform and load (ELT) data; (3) Snowflake to store data via the cloud; and (4) Tableau to design data dashboards that support data-driven decisions.
According to Data Clymer, consolidating its data platforms grants the Raiders more flexibility to use data and make business decision, while the organization’s antiquated model involved siloed data during its tenure in Oakland and data analysis was prone to latency while the franchise’s data touch points were being managed by third-party services.
Elsewhere, established sports teams and organizing bodies are centralizing fan data to help enhance their business operations and the fan experience. German football champions Bayern Munich adopted the customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Adobe Experience Cloud, to build customer profiles and personalize its marketing and ecommerce strategy to the fans.
In October last year, English football giant Manchester City expanded its digital transformation partnership with SAP to include the services of the software company’s part-owned data and analytics research firm, Qualtrics, which provides the club with feedback from fans about the matchday experience.
“[The] fan experience isn’t limited to the stadium,” explains Brad Anderson, Qualtrics President of Products and Services. “The digital and at-home fan experience is just as important and Qualtrics will help Manchester City to deliver a personalized experience to their fans wherever they are.”
The PGA Tour also entered a multi-year partnership with Utah-based Qualtrics in August to analyze fan, player, and partner feedback, so as to help the golf body improve its tournament experience. The PGA Tour adopts Qualtrics’ experience management (XM) platform.
“Our fans are the heart of what we do at the Tour and Qualtrics will allow us to communicate and engage with them in a more meaningful and relevant way,” says Travis Trembath, PGA Tour’s vice president of fan engagement. “We look forward to working with Qualtrics to enhance the PGA Tour experience for fans as well as other key stakeholders.”
WHAT’S N3XT?
The importance for data-collection at an administrative level in sports can be demonstrated by the digital maturity of football’s top national federations. Every one of the 32 member associations (MA) competing at the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup collect fan and/or stakeholder data in some shape or form.
However, according to N3XT Sports’ first World Cup Data Report, data collection capabilities remain limited for federations that do not collate and consolidate their digital and data touch points via what’s commonly called “a single source of truth”, including a single sign-on (SSO), for example. Download the report to better understand football’s digital transformation and how its national governing bodies are going about the development of their own digital portfolios and data-management stacks.
Miguel Doménech, N3XT Sports Digital Marketing Manager, reiterates the importance for regular fan interactions to generate data that tells the story of a organization's fan base, insisting that the larger an organization’s data lake, greater the insights gleaned for personalizing the fan experience. However, he also stresses the importance for centralizing and consolidating fan data to optimize the entity’s marketing capability, meaning that a CRM that caters to multiple digital and data touchpoints is vital for speeding up data analysis, innovating the fan experience, and expanding the organization’s digital footprint.
“Many federations don’t have a CRM capability yet,” Doménech said in August. “Sports properties are starting to gather more information [to better understand the fan], but there are still many that don’t have any data about their fans. Nor do they know how fans interact with their website, who’s watching their sports online, or even in the venue.”
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement digital strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To learn more about how digital transformation can support the growth of your organization and optimize your data-collection capability, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.