The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) and SciSports, a data intelligence company, partnered to launch eQuality Index, a data-driven initiative to make the Dutch football grassroots competitions more equal.
N3XT Sports, as the presenting partner of the Outstanding Innovation Initiative of the World Football Summit Industry Awards 2020, got the chance to talk to Rick Koetsier, Data Intelligence Consultant at KNVB and Johan Vuegen, Head of Projects at SciSports to learn more about this innovative initiative, which was shortlisted for the Awards.
THE IMPACT OF DATA-DRIVEN SOLUTIONS
Digital transformation, as illustrated in a previous piece, is a necessary enabler of success across the sports industry. Within the overarching digital transformation topic, data plays a key role and has become a key aspect for every sports organization across all departments. Each department within a sports organization, whether fan-facing or partner-facing or player-facing, gathers, analyzes and distributes data. In grassroots football, data-driven decision making can unlock players’ performances, scout new players, and create holistic 360º views of the players. In an age of digital experience innovation, this data-centric tech infrastructure within a football organization is crucial. It generates value on and off the field of play.
KNVB’s data-driven initiative with SciSports has enabled 67% of grassroots clubs in the Netherlands to create more equal and balanced competitions than before, thanks to the co-developed Equality Index. The use of the index by the clubs has achieved several key results, including the following:
- 33% decrease in the number of games with a big goal difference
- 52% decrease in the number of leagues where the champion wins all games
- Reduced the average goal difference by over 10%
WORKING WITH THE ECOSYSTEM
Partnerships between sports organizations and tech startups, such as the KNVB and SciSports, are growing in popularity across the industry. This is happening because the rate of innovation and solutions discovery has accelerated, allowing for faster deployment of solutions by agile entities such as tech startups. Sports organizations on the other hand have strong ecosystems, an existing testing lab composed of assets such as players, matches, venues and others, as well as a pathway for startups to grow commercially. This makes it beneficial for sports organizations and tech startups to partner on co-creating solutions.
To face the challenge we had, we wanted to partner with a company that is flexible and faster when it comes to decision-making. Thanks to this partnership, now we have implemented a flexible and scalable product in our ecosystem.
Startups offer flexibility, a proactive mindset and rapid development of solutions as well as the ability to respond quickly to future challenges.
We invite you to watch this 15-minute Q&A session with Johan Vuegen, Head of Projects at SciSports and Rick Koetsier, Data Intelligence Consultant at KNVB to learn more about this initiative, how their working relationship started, what are some of the short and long term goals, the learnings that both organizations acquired by working together and what’s N3XT for them.
For more information visit: https://www.scisports.com/equality-index/
Our team at N3XT Sports works closely with sports organizations and tech startups to generate valuable new solutions and accelerate the rate of modernization and transformation. To learn more about our services, please reach out through the form below.