It is one thing for sports organizations to ingest and store thousands of datasets within a centralized information system. How data informs the entity’s business decisions thereafter requires, not only a diverse digital portfolio and technological infrastructure to manage large quantities of data, but the capacity to augment and visualize the data in creative ways, so as to discover unique trends within user behavior and track team and business performance.
As sports organizations and rights holders continue to take greater ownership of fan, athlete, and stakeholder data, digital and IT departments are placing more onus on how they share information with their internal stakeholders. Data visualization, and the use of data dashboards, are commonplace inside organizations investing time and resources into data analytics, helping transform how data is leveraged by decision-makers within their leadership teams and across departments.
Data visualization is also a powerful tool for segmenting fan and stakeholder data. Our digital transformation team has designed, implemented, and managed customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for several of our clients. As part of this process, N3XT Sports utilizes data intelligence dashboards to measure their audience growth and user commercialization, while our Project Excellence team provides ongoing training across our clients’ technology stacks, including how data dashboarding can be integrated into their wider operations.
Within the Olympic Movement, our data-management service spans other verticals, too, from the performance of owned direct-to-consumer (D2C) products, including mobile apps and over-the-top (OTT) streaming services, to their management of digital and social media content strategies. For example, the International Basketball Federation and FIBA 3×3, the organizing body for Olympic 3×3 basketball, have focused on growing the short-format game’s social media following in the build-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
FIBA 3×3 grew its social media audience by 88 percent to 1.6 million through 2023, with TikTok its predominant growth driver. N3XT Sports is tasked with delivering a dedicated content strategy for the channel, generating bespoke data dashboards to highlight user behaviors and FIBA 3×3’s most engaged fans.
Elsewhere, N3XT Sports oversaw the development, integration, and launch of United World Wrestling’s (UWW) dedicated UWW+ streaming service and keeps track of audience analytics across the federation’s fan-marketing funnel. Meanwhile, our team is also leading the digital growth strategy adopted by the International Federation of SAMBO (FIAS), including the creation and execution of a paid-media strategy designed to amplify the governing body’s audience reach and engagement leveraging targeted advertising and data-driven insights.
Additionally, N3XT Sports will collaborate with FIAS to establish a new CRM system which enables the federation to personalize its communications, streamline internal operations, and foster stronger relationships with stakeholders, for which our team will adopt the use of data analytics and visualization. The partnership also includes a re-design to the governing body’s OTT streaming platform.
DATA DASHBOARDS | 5 BENEFITS FOR USING THEM IN SPORTS BUSINESS
Data visualization should be a key component within an organization’s growth strategy. Although there are multiple avenues in which data dashboarding can augment decision-making across every department, it’s important for a sports property to first outline its overarching business goals and digital strategy, so as to fully understand the types of data and information they require to meet their objectives. These might include:
- Audience growth and how a sports organization goes about acquiring and retaining subscribers via its digital platforms and social media channels. Our team offers data management and audience analytics across the N3XT Sports client portfolio, highlighting opportunities for sports bodies to drive fan engagement and audience growth with the support of data dashboards.
- Commercial planning, including the development of monetization strategies within the fan-marketing funnel. This covers our clients’ various data streams, across web analysis, mobile app performance, and the monetization of D2C fan experiences such as live-event video-streaming and personalized in-game activations.
- Operational performance of sports-organization business units and employee productivity. N3XT Sports is helping its clients enhance the employee experience (EX), notably the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) which operates its own employee portal. Data visualization is essential to measuring workforce and business performance within any sports property, as well as for a custom-built CRM capability.
- The creation of powerful content marketing campaigns derived from a deep understanding of the fan. In the build-up to major competitions and during the retention period post-event, data dashboarding enables sports organizations to leverage the relevant audience data and extract insights for building personalized fan-marketing campaigns, including their ongoing performance and returns.
- Sponsorship and stakeholder engagement. Data visualization is important for keeping rights-holder partners up to speed on campaign performance and fan engagement. Data dashboarding also provides prospective partners and sponsors with a unique insight into the makeup of a sports organization and their different audience demographics.
Data visualization is proven to drive business growth and operational efficiencies inside sports organizations. Our team champions the use of data dashboards across our wide-ranging digital transformation projects, presenting our clients with instant and up-to-date insights into audience analytics and operational performance across multiple verticals.
Just as user data helps sports organizations tailor their fan, athlete, and stakeholder experiences, augmenting data has become a staple within the modern rights holder’s toolkit. Granting organizations with such a simple yet instrumental resource is transforming how the industry not only collects data, but also how it inspires thought leadership and innovation throughout the sector.
WHAT’S N3XT?
How sports organizations ingest and govern first-party data is undergoing a dramatic shift as they explore new ways to personalize their fan, athlete, and stakeholder experiences. Whereas the digital maturity of the sports industry varies, with disparities in technology adoption evident throughout the sector, our proprietary research demonstrates mixed levels of data management, too, and a correlation between the levels of investment in an organization’s digital and data touchpoints and audience retention.
In order to maximize business growth, sports organizations and rights holders should first devise a clear data strategy that analyzes the performance of their digital products, social media channels, and CRM. For those at the beginning of their digital transformation journey, this might be as simple as introducing a subscriber newsletter into their content offering, or outlining the organization’s “digital matrix”, including how their digital portfolio and social media strategies capture fan data. At the other end of the spectrum, artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling digitally mature and data-rich sports properties to automate their data processing, making it quicker and easier for employees to query data within a centralized ecosystem.
Whatever their digital maturity, N3XT Sports is helping sports organizations to enhance their data-collection capability and data governance. As the industry’s capacity for data management deepens its ability to personalize the user experience (UX), data visualization will only become more important to the rights holder; heightening both its understanding of the end user and how their appetite for its respective brand or sport can generate commercial opportunities and open the door to new fan-stakeholder relationships.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, 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.