While cleaning and consolidating multiple sources of user information is an important step, there will come a point when a sports organization or rights holder will decide how to segment the types of data at their fingertips. Several of N3XT Sports clients have created member portals to manage athlete and stakeholder data, while others are focused on enhancing the digital fan experience and personalizing their direct-to-consumer (D2C) products based on unique user behaviors.
For some organizations, this presents an opportunity to combine every user via a centralized information system no matter whether they are a one-off fan or an athlete currently competing in one of their elite competitions. At the heart of this, several sports properties see the chance to build a digital “community” featuring both athletes and fans – many of whom also participate in the sporting disciplines they also love to watch.
World Triathlon, by way of example, is undergoing a thorough data migration process, with the support of N3XT Sports, that looks to bring together its athlete, fan, and stakeholder data. Speaking on the rationale behind this decision, alongside its major events, N3XT Sports Chief Operating Officer (COO) Hisham Shehabi explains that the International Federation (IF) is creating a digital community that “embodies the triathlon lifestyle” and its different disciplines, drawing on all its user data to inform its D2C strategy and drive commercial growth.
Data consolidation, as outlined by our Chief Executive (CEO) Mounir Zok in his 2024 outlook, makes it easier for sports properties “to inform their ongoing business decisions” while improving their customer relationship management (CRM) capability. Across our client portfolio, the process of data consolidation, including the migration of siloed data to a centralized information system, also presents an opportunity for competition organizers to augment their data-capture via different user experiences (UX).
As outlined in our International Federation Fan Data Guide 2024, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) leverages its My World of Cycling fan reward platform, which invites cycling fans to participate in online quests and quizzes, so as to earn points and the change to win UCI prizes. As part of the UCI’s ongoing digital transformation, N3XT Sports is helping to develop a new, scalable information system that consolidates all of the federation’s competition, athlete, and sport data – while also engaging more people in the cycling community.
Adrien de Cheveigné, the UCI’s Head of Digital Transformation, says that data will grant the federation unique insights across its cycling communities and present its users with the ability to personalize their digital experience, including via its My World of Cycling platform. “By developing a centralized information system,” Adrien says, “we are able to ensure that every race event, result, and ranking is accounted for, while also managing our fan relationships – many of whom are cyclists themselves – within our database, so as to offer them a unique proposition.”
PLAYER-FAN IDENTIFICATION OFFERS ADDITIONAL LAYER OF INTELLIGENCE
Community building is becoming a popular avenue for IFs and elite sports organizations undergoing digital transformation. By way of example, The International Tennis Federation (ITF), which owns one of the most diverse digital portfolios within the Olympic Movement, grants subscribers their very own ITF World Tennis Number (WTN) as part of its registration process and is used by more than 1.7 million tennis players around the globe.
Its role is to make it easier for players to find an opponent of a similar ability, to monitor their own progress, and enhance the ITF’s CRM capability by helping the federation to connect fans who play tennis with its D2C products, competitions, and digital content.
Elsewhere, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) is also growing its audience this way. Among its data-collection touchpoints, FIBA 3×3, the organizing body for 3×3 basketball, collects player data via its dedicated Play platform, which welcomes users to create a profile “visible to the 3×3 family around the world” and participate in local events.
As properties discover new ways to reconfigure their operational systems to generate more value from their data, for some, data ownership has become a key feature within their technological development strategies and means that it is no longer enough simply to expand their D2C portfolios without first understanding how they connect an ecosystem of fans, athletes, and stakeholders, while also serving to improve dataflow.
“Whenever we’re building something new for a client, our aim is always to help them to better understand how digital adoption fits to their existing operations and ways digitalization enhances the management of multi-stakeholder projects,” explains Lara Ammar, N3XT Sports’ Vice President (VP) of Project Excellence.
“For the federations among our growing Olympic client base, it’s vital that the solutions they implement enhance their wider operation. In doing so, the integration of digital touchpoints, such as mobile apps, not only act as vehicles for collecting fan, athlete, and stakeholder data, but to consolidate multiple data points and a foundation for digital expansion.”
WHAT’S N3XT?
Our team at N3XT Sports continually assesses the digital transformation of the sports industry and opportunities to modernize the sector. As the opening ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics draws ever closer, IFs and other sports bodies will be examining how they can maximize the unique exposure the Summer Games presents their respective sports and to grow participation in each of their disciplines at a regional level, as well their digital fan base.
Data consolidation and user personalization will play a critical role in the modernization of the Olympic Movement in the build-up to and post Paris 2024. Although our research shows a disparity in the levels of digital maturity across the sector, as outlined in our Olympic Digital Transformation Report 2023, it also highlights the opportunity for federations to consolidate first-party user data by connecting with fans who participate in Olympic disciplines, either professionally or recreationally, and offer an alternative avenue, digitally, for peripheral fans to participate in sports at a local level.
“With the summer’s Paris 2024 Olympic Games around the corner, we’ve entered a strategic moment in the Olympic Movement’s digitalization,” says Mounir. “As the industry steps up preparations during an Olympic year, our team continues to help federations enhance their digital infrastructure and fan-data collection ahead of the global gathering.”
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.