Game of margins: how sporting organisations are winning with analytics

Victory on the sports field relies on a mix of brains and brawn, with successful sporting organisations making the most of their data to improve performance.

What’s this got to do with running a small business? A lot.

Data analytics is becoming a powerful tool at all levels of sport, from grassroots organisations like Football NSW through to sporting giants like the NBA’s Orlando Magic. While they play different games, the one thing they all have in common is they’ve been able to improve their revenue streams and engage with stakeholders by learning how to make the most of their business data.

Football NSW is the state’s governing body for association and indoor football, responsible for 650 community clubs. Until recently it was still dependent on spreadsheets to cope with the unwieldy amounts of data that comes with managing 227,000 players, 12,500 coaches and 4500 referees across the state.

Turning to SAS Visual Analytics to understand that data has provided Football NSW with greater insight, helping it attract and retain participants, manage referee numbers, communicate with sponsors and liaise with local, state and federal government regarding investing in sporting facilities.

Sport is more than a numbers game but gaining an in-depth understanding of members and their involvement with the football community helps the organisation better engage with them, says Football NSW chief executive officer Eddie Moore.

“Having this type of data available, and then being able to take it to our audience, whether it is a government official, sponsor or our own members, is very powerful,” Moore says.

“You don’t need to have technical skills to be able to use it – within minutes of its implementation, we were able to produce a visual representation of the analysis.”

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Football NSW had been spending considerable time each month reworking spreadsheets but the larger your data gets the harder it is to see patterns and gain insight using traditional methods like spreadsheets and cross tables, says SAS Head of BI Marketing A/NZ, Travis Murphy.

“The usefulness of your data is limited unless you can put it in context and make it more personal to the stakeholders that you’re trying to communicate with,” Murphy says.

“Once they could see how every participant in New South Wales fit into the big picture, visualising on maps and drilling down with ease, they found that their data was actually a powerful business asset rather than a monthly chore.”

Meanwhile learning to listen to data has helped Orlando Magic sit among the top revenue earners in the NBA, despite being in the 20th-largest market. It accomplished this by using analytics and data management platforms to study the resale ticket market to help it optimise tickets prices and reduce churn among season ticket holders.

“In the first year, we saw ticket revenue increase around 50 percent. Over the last three years, for that period, we’ve seen it grow maybe 75 percent. It’s had a huge impact,” says Orlando Magic vice president of business strategy Anthony Perez.

Treating its data as a strategic asset and using predictive analytics allowed Orlando Magic to derive much more value from limited revenue pool, says SAS’s Travis Murphy.

“Data isn’t just numbers on a page, here it sells memberships, keeps the seats filled and makes an amazing difference to the bottom line,” says Murphy.

“Once you see the value of the analytics and senior management sees the value then it can become a strategic differentiator which drives innovation and delivers wins on and off the court.”