{"id":43694,"date":"2023-09-06T11:09:24","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T10:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elixirr.com\/?p=43694"},"modified":"2025-11-10T15:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T15:05:26","slug":"considerations-for-future-proofing-sports-data-and-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elixirr.com\/en-us\/considerations-for-future-proofing-sports-data-and-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"Your game plan for future-proofing sports data and analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The global summer sporting calendar has drawn to a close with the Women\u2019s World Cup 2023. This summer\u2019s tournament follows a record-breaking Women\u2019s Euros 2022, which reached over 365 million viewers <\/a>and smashed previous betting stats, closing out at over 1.5 million online bets placed throughout the tournament. Increased interest in women\u2019s sports also led EA Sports to release their first global FIFA 23 edition with a front cover featuring the top male and female FIFA ranked players, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 and Sam Kerr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This growing interest in women\u2019s football is sure to be beneficial to players and football leagues. Already, UEFA<\/a> expects a sixfold increase in the global commercial value of women\u2019s football (est. at \u20ac686 million annually by 2033). Importantly, this valuation is contingent on continued investment by data-driven corporations including sponsors in broadcasting, betting, and video game industries. But what would happen if these powerful and stat-driven companies suddenly had to contend with new data rules that changed the way that corporates could access and utilize player data?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cardiff Curveball<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like all good managers, Russel Slade, former Cardiff City manager, advocates for his players. Today, Slade is leading a team of over 850 athletes<\/a> (in football and beyond) through Project Red Card, an initiative aimed at increasing players\u2019 rights to data protection <\/strong>under laws such as GDPR (article 4), which demands special treatment when data is classified as \u2018personal data\u2019 (i.e., physical attributes and physiological information). The overarching goal of the project is to protect athletes, whose personal data Slade claims has been exploited and often used to benefit third parties in ways that act against players’ interests. It\u2019s important to note that the Project Red Card campaign isn\u2019t designed to stunt investment into women\u2019s football \u2013 or any sporting group for that matter. Slade\u2019s Cardiff curveball is simply <\/strong>challenging corporates to operate in ways that better benefit the players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the pond in America, leagues including Major League Baseball (MLB), National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL) have started to codify their approach to players\u2019 data rights by placing explicit restrictions on the sale of players\u2019 personal data classifying as biometric, such as data collected from heartrate wearables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although less robust than Slade\u2019s Project Red Card approach, America is sure to catch up, and there are already examples of the States and other countries taking steps towards broader data access and usage protections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putting the players back in pole position<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cBy building in all the intelligence we have to project players\u2026 using stats, the way we read them, we\u2019ll find value in players that nobody else can see.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nPeter (played by Jonah Hill), Moneyball<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This quote from Bennett Miller\u2019s award-winning film, Moneyball, echoes the same sentiment some of our team, who are former athletes, spoke about when asked about data in sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Torii Hunter Jr.<\/a>, former outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels Organization, and analyst at Elixirr, explains how relationships between players and leagues are impacted by third party data analysis. \u201cAs players,\u201d Hunter says, \u201cwe understand that data is important for our personal development. It\u2019s easy to understand when we can see the analysis ourselves. But it gets confusing when we [the players] don\u2019t know who is using our data. Often, players don\u2019t even know if they can say no to data collection. It\u2019s sometimes uncomfortable because of how important it is \u2013 you know? We can be judged and valued on data analytics without knowing how so-and-so<\/em> even came up with these numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, those who own and use the data hold the power, and Slade\u2019s push for expanded data protection would give more power to athletes by making it easier for players, like Hunter, to request information on the third parties analysing him, request inaccurate data to be corrected, better profit when his personal data is used, and even revoke the right for third parties to use his data altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FIPRO<\/a>, the global union for football players, has echoed similar sentiments to Slade and in July 2023, announced the creation of a centralized data management platform, designed to facilitate their athletes’ data control and rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corporates under the cosh<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, which third parties are at risk? After all, many sports clubs and leagues have formalised contracts with third party data and analytics corporates, allowing them to perform analysis on players and use the data for agreed upon commercial purposes. Is it just unauthorised third parties who should be worried?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears everyone is under the cosh. Leading sports analytics firms like SportsRadar Group<\/a> and Genius Sports Limited<\/a>, for example, explicitly stressed how initiatives like Project Red Card could \u201csignificantly alter\u201d the way their businesses collect and use data and \u201cmaterially affect the sports data industry as a whole\u201d. What\u2019s more, even though these companies have existing contractual agreements to access player data, both worry that initiatives like Project Red Card could \u201cimpact the validity and their rights to intellectual property\u201d so significantly, it \u201cmay force [them] to alter [their] business strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To leave a positive sporting legacy, you\u2019ve got to stay onside<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For corporates including SportsRadar Group, Genius Sports Limited, and many more, this means ensuring that data strategies, governance, operations, and infrastructure, are future proofed. Important things to consider as the industry transitions towards a more restrictive data market include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n