Tag Archives: big data

Business strategy, Data and analytics, Football Business, Technology, TV and broadcasting

The Proliferation of Data-Driven Analysis in Football (Part Four: The Fans)

1 Comment

So here we are at Part Four, the final episode to this four-part series covering big data in football.

So far, we’ve looked at three key players in the burgeoning industry of football analytics and statistics: the scouts, the coaches and the scientists. We’ve seen the ways that data-driven analyses have revolutionized and modernized the beautiful game, and we’ve discussed the ways that clubs, managers and players all stand to benefit.

But undoubtedly, the most important player in all of this—and the player that will get the most enjoyment out of this new big data revolution in football—is the fan.

Because after all, it’s because of the fans that football as a profession (extending to all associated occupations) exists. It’s because of the fans (and the money and consumption power that come with them) that leagues strive to design the best and most marketable product possible, and clubs in turn do all they can to boost performance, win silverware and attract even more fans.

It’s all a beautiful cycle that—overlooking the cynicism surrounding money in modern football—will only spin faster, and the components will only get more closely knit together.

Not only will fans benefit from the better competition on the field of play, but they have also been at the forefront of the analytics movement: They’ve driven some of the newest innovations themselves with their own interests in statistics, and as such there have been whole industries created and extended to include football in their reach.

To best gauge where the big data movement in football currently is and predict how it’s going to further develop, we turn to the fans to best see what we’ll experience next.


A sample of Opta’s offerings, courtesy of optasports.com

Data Providers

It’s hard to really trace football analytics back to one founder, but Charles Reep, a former wing commander, is probably a good person to start with, in the early 1950s.

Reep went about collecting football statistics by himself to suggest that “the key to scoring goals and winning games was to transfer the ball as quickly as possible from back to front,” thereby indirectly starting the long-ball movement in English football. This must-read Forbes article details his monumental role in both football analytics and as such the stereotypical English footballing style.

Over the years, football statistics have evolved into a profession in itself. As we have covered in previous installments of this series, there are now professional statistical analysis firms like ProZone and Opta, who provide data to football clubs, coaches and leagues, who pay for such services to ensure they can remain in control of their performances and results as much as possible, by monitoring their players and opponents.

And through fan interest, more and more statistics and related analyses are being made available to fans for casual enjoyment, either to back up a viewpoint in a friendly bar conversation, or to challenge a friend’s opinion.

At the center of this, again, is Opta. With the expertise and reach that they provide—not to mention their reputation—Opta now supply the data at the heart of many a football statistics website and app (we’ll cover more of those later). As we can see in their official About page, Opta pride themselves on a “consistent and reliable approach across [their] global data collection operation.”

Behind many high-profile platforms, such as Sky’s innovative touchscreen app used by their football analysts on live TV, lie Opta and their statistical work. (Of course, they’re not limited to football either; their rugby coverage has also been met with critical acclaim.) A large number of websites also make use of Opta’s statistics to produce critical analyses and come up with insights and scoring patterns of their own.

This blog entry from AnalysisMarketing has a good selection and review of popular football sites that use Opta as their statistical backbone. Two of them, EPLIndex.com and WhoScored.com, are frequently quoted for their statistics-heavy commentaries and opinion pieces; indeed, their tweets are popular during football matches, though not as iconic as Opta’s own tweets, which have been the subject of case studies and awards.


The Sky Sports touchscreen technology, courtesy of thedrum.com

Fantasy Football and the Future

At the intersection of the Internet, the sports world and a growing fascination with numbers is the phenomenon that is fantasy sports.

For years, American sports in particular have been a huge hit with their fantasy leagues and games that are contested among fans—the March Madness bracket of college basketball has found its way to national prominence, with President Barack Obama a keen fan and follower, and it’s often more difficult to find a young college student without a bracket than another with a set of constantly changing predictions.

While fantasy American football is exploding and becoming a hugely lucrative and exciting industry, so fantasy football has been expanding in its own right, largely and not surprisingly coinciding with the increase in interest in the numbers and statistics behind football.

Fans of fantasy football will know well the three big versions of the game offered by the FA Premier League, ESPN and Yahoo!, and the differences in how they tabulate and score points for each position and each contribution towards the game show emphases on different aspects of the game, and has naturally prompted discussion on the merits of each fantasy league.

When we look at the burgeoning interest in fantasy football as it is, it’s hard not to ponder the potential that the game has for fans, for number-crunchers and for statistics lovers. (Before we do that, let’s also take a moment and pay tribute to Football Manager, the original statistics-loving football fan’s wonderland, still more powerful in 2013.)

Current protocol has it that defenders and goalkeepers score points for clean sheets while forwards do not, that they score more points per goals scored than midfielders and forwards—generally that each position is awarded points based on the player doing what essentially is in his job description on the pitch.

But how tantalizing is the thought—and we wouldn’t be surprised if this movement were already starting—that, with so much data being made available to fans, they would be able to design leagues by themselves among like-minded friends who wanted to focus more on niche attributes?

Would midfielders who tried more defence-splitting passes and completed more key passes per game score more than those who are simply their clubs’ designated penalty-takers? Would defensive midfielders who allowed fewer dribbles past them and achieved a higher tackling success rate be as valuable in the fantasy football world as forwards who scored goals? Would defenders who ventured forward more and played a larger proportion of their passes on the ground be more highly prized than those who simply got points by staying back, defending and keeping a clean sheet?

How these combinations and permutations would be constructed and conceptualized is entirely down to the imaginations of fans—and in the future we could see fans not just asking whether you’re playing the official EPL fantasy league, but whether you’re in the tiki-taka school or the long-ball-merchant hall.

How’s that for a communalization of football statistics?

 

Apps, Casual Analyses and More?

But we’re not done yet.

The natural extension of award-winning statistics-based websites is the mobile app, and we can start our discussion here with the Telegraph’s compilation of “essential” football apps.

One of the most high-profile football data apps is probably FourFourTwo’s award-winning Stats Zone app, which is driven by data from Opta and covers a wide range of leagues across the globe. Its unique selling point, for those who don’t already have it on their phones, is that it allows fans to pinpoint their own areas of interest and can share their analyses over social media and email.

Unsurprisingly, this innovative approach and user-centric design has led to a quick expansion of the Stats Zone app, which has been met with considerable joy from fans all over the world. (That last part was based on pure conjecture, but we suspect that it’s mostly true, even without data to back us up.)

Another product that has seen a remarkable rise within a year is Squawka, which styles itself as a second-screen app, riding on the unmistakable wave of second-screen technology currently taking over mobile devices.

It’s this provision of data visualization and easy-to-manage statistics and graphs that have propelled Squawka to their unique position as a favorite tool both for fans and for advertisers, who see unparalleled screen time due to its continued, undistracted presence on a tablet screen for a viewer. No surprise, then, that Squawka has quickly added commentary pieces and news articles to its burgeoning collection of football information throughout the past year—it launched in June 2012—and no surprise that it’s received significant interest from outside the football industry and from investors excited at a new business frontier.

And it doesn’t stop there. Squawka also looks at trends beyond what’s happening on the pitch. A groundbreaking project with DataSift allowed Squawka to track social media activity on Twitter during Chelsea’s home defeat to Manchester United on October 28, 2012 (less than five months after its official launch). The relative spikes in activity in correlation with key moments in the match provided insight into fan behaviors, and there’s more to come.

The quotes from Squawka cofounder and CEO Sanjit Atwal towards the end of the Guardian piece hint at future potential of data visualization and tracking beyond football: “Does a bit of ultimately unnecessary skill boost online reaction more than a simple yet effective pass? Do foreign players get more abuse for diving than their English counterparts?”

More than just helping stimulate reactions towards 22 players kicking a ball around a stadium, these analytics companies are trekking into unchartered territory: human behavior, social psychology and anthropology.

Ladies and gentlemen: Football, the beautiful game.

This piece first appeared on BusinessofSoccer.com, where I cover business and marketing strategy, globalization and technology in football.

Data and analytics, Football Business, Liverpool, Technology

The Proliferation of Data-Driven Analysis in Football (Part Three: The Scientists)

2 Comments

In this four-part series, we’re covering the burgeoning field of data science in football, with each part looking at one specific player in this ever-expanding market.

We’ve looked at the scout and the coach in previous segments, so let’s dive straight into part three and give the football scientist his due.

We can start with this summary of Arsene Wenger’s time in England and how he’s played a major part in bringing English football up to speed and into the 21st century, and also recall the coverage we’ve paid to both Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers (who, if you’ve followed the series, have shared a few common principles and key figures along the way).

In doing so, we can reflect that football science and its contributions towards a football club are intricately tied in to the big data revolution in football, and came into the sport together with all the statistical and data-driven analyses that we’ve heard about (hence their inclusion in this series).

In Part Three we’ll change focus and give ample coverage to AC Milan and Liverpool and how they’ve incorporated science to help players not only in terms of tactical knowledge and pre-game preparations, but also to maximize their physical potential—and how this is also a way for the clubs themselves to mitigate any unnecessary risks.

milanlab2

Medical Tests

Let’s start with the famous and ubiquitous (during transfer season) medical.

We can turn to renowned resource PhysioRoom.com for a brief explanation of a pre-signing medical, but more insightful is this outstanding piece of football journalism from the Daily Mail’s Matt Fortune, who went through the process of an actual footballer’s medical and wrote a fascinating insider’s tale about it.

We’ll leave it to the experts to tell us what actually goes into a medical, what club doctors actually look for and what kinds of problems they’re keen to avoid—and they vary from club to club—but what’s become increasingly clear over the past few seasons is that the medical has become arguably the most important part of the signing process of a player.

There can be lots of work going into the scouting of a player (as we discussed in Part Two), his strengths and weaknesses, and his potential as a player for a specific football club, but it is the medical department that has to give the final green light before a coach can even start working with the player in a full-time capacity.

It’s in this context that we bring Italian powerhouse AC Milan into the discussion. Their Milan Lab project, which has attracted lots of attention and was a high-profile feature in Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s Soccernomics, was one of the major players and pioneers in European football in terms of its meticulous approach towards football science.

With a state-of-the-art research headquarters at the Milanello sports center, Milan Lab served both the first team and the youth setup, and was in charge of assessing players in all capacities, whether it be in the pre-signing stage, over the course of the season, or in case of injury problems. Its success in applying scientific research and unique methods allowed veterans like Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta to play into their forties.

Milan Lab also told David Beckham, upon his first loan move from the LA Galaxy in 2009, that he’d be able to play under he was 38, according to this feature in FourFourTwo. Evidently Beckham had taken that advice fully on board: He retired at the end of the 2012/13 season, aged 38.

You may have noticed that we’ve talked about Milan Lab in the past tense. Sadly, this pioneering venture was closed in 2010 after presiding over a period of unprecedented medical success at AC Milan (yes, we’re asking the same question you are). But fans of English football, fear not: As of February 2013, Milan Lab founder Jean-Pierre Meersseman has been involved with the Premier League and its clubs in a consultancy role to advise on football science.

Let’s turn our attentions to Liverpool, who in recent years have leapt into the modern era with their advents in data analysis and sports science. Incidentally, they have also been the subject of an “Inside Liverpool” series on Bleacher Report, and their first feature was with Chris Morgan, the Reds’ head of physiotherapy.

Throughout the interview Morgan sheds light on his role and involvement at the club, and his working relationship with the coaching staff. In the context of this discussion, what stands out interestingly is his summary of the two main aims of physiotherapists: “to ensure that the player is rehabilitated as quickly and safely as possible,” and “to learn from the injury.”

Nutrition and Diets

Science’s involvement in football naturally extends beyond physiotherapy and medicine. Before we continue with Liverpool, let’s hear again from Arsene Wenger.

He speaks here on the importance of how the players themselves prepare for matches and view their own careers, with eating and sleeping patterns factoring into this “non-visible,” “outside of training” part. Naturally, diet control has been a hallmark of Wenger’s regime at the Gunners, and it’s a trend that has spread throughout football.

Back to Liverpool. Dr. James Morton speaks in a feature on nutrition in Bleacher Report’s “Inside Liverpool” series, where he reveals the role he plays as a consultant for the club’s nutrition program.

This involves planning both team menus and individualized dietary plans, as well as education programs to staff and players on the importance of nutrition and how it affects their performances and preparation. Players “asking for advice on what to put in their shopping trolley” is a far cry from those days where they would go out for a pint at the local bar after a Saturday match. Sometimes the modern game does away with time-honored traditions for the sake of improvement. Or maybe it’s just the game improving and becoming more professional.

Another football club that has embraced sports science and nutrition is Manchester City, which we’ve already covered at length in previous segments. It turns out that City also employ a nutrition specialist to look at dietary habits and design appropriate nutritional and recovery strategies.

In this BBC Sport report on City’s industry-leading work in the football science sector, we see the benefits of a well-planned diet and also recall the importance of meticulous fitness planning and assessment.

Football Science and Conferences

There are a host of other high-profile football clubs to look at in this discussion, but let’s bring Part Three to a close by considering the possibilities of sports science and its potential to keep expanding its influence in football and look at the resources that are now available to clubs and sports scientists.

In other areas of sports and football, there are high-profile conferences such as the world-renowned MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and football’s own Soccerex Global Convention. Football science is increasingly getting its own due and coverage, with the Science and Football Conference and the World Conference on Science and Soccer, which are attracting high-profile participants both as speakers and as attendees.

And slowly but surely, academia is getting involved as well. The University of Liverpool offers a Football Industries MBA, while institutions like the Sports Business Institute of Barcelona and the Johan Cruyff Institute of Amsterdam provide a selection of football-specific courses and degrees to obtain.

The most interesting (and relevant to the topic at hand) of all, though, has to be the Bachelor of Science degree in Science and Football at Liverpool John Moores University (incidentally a key partner for Liverpool Football Club), which covers physiology, psychology, performance analysis, applied science and nutrition.

As we see more and more examples of football science (and opportunities for people interested in these areas), so we witness the continued growth and evolution of the beautiful game itself into a more data-driven business and sophisticated, learned industry.

But the driving force behind all these changes isn’t club management or any industry regulator; it’s the fans. It’s because of the fans that football has become the high-profile sport that it is, and will probably become the highest-earning sport in the world in the future.

So while the coach, the scout and the scientist are all inevitable components of the proliferation of data-driven analysis in football, we’ll return to that key player at the heart of it all in our fourth and final part in this series: the fan.

Stay tuned.

This piece first appeared on BusinessofSoccer.com, where I cover business and marketing strategy, globalization and technology in football.