Digital Sports: a naive vision of data- Oscar Ugaz

A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a round table at the Euroleague Basketball Summit 2012, an event that brings together the league’s 23 teams to discuss their marketing strategy and business approach for next season. The objective was to discuss digital business and the new trends in the industry. Executives from Bwin, Turkish Airlines, Galatasaray and the director of a global advertising agency were also at the table.

The exchange of ideas flowed smoothly until the moderator asked for predictions. I dared to say something that, from my point of view, is obvious: an important part of the future in our industry will be in the hands of mathematicians and statisticians. A meaningful impact will come from individuals capable of working with large amounts of data, understand them and then extract insightful, relevant and remarkable products and services.

My idea raised substantial opposition from the director of the advertising agency. From his point of view, outstanding products and services can only be produced if numerical approaches are set aside, and if just the creative and artistic thinking prevails. He believes that would be more than enough, if a relevant brand pushes the idea. “And that” he says firmly, “is the end of the discussion”.

Is that really the end of the discussion?

Sports and entertainment are some of the few industries that produce meaningful and powerful relationships with their clients/fans. This type of relationships makes some organizations behave like if they were managing an inelastic demand situation, which creates a culture of specialization in product and service deployment instead of exploring new ways to search and fight for additional sales. That’s the case for some top notch sport properties.

Let’s be honest here, the classic combination of TV rights, match day and marketing (sponsorship/merchandise/licensing) still makes sense. These traditional business models generate big amounts of money for the industry. The problem is that they also create resistance to exploring new options.

In that sense, disruptive innovation in media and the economic crisis has found many properties and sponsors unguarded. Nowadays, fans have new ways to enjoy content. Social media and online video portals (pirate versions included) bypass traditional ways to consume sports content. Meanwhile, many companies are looking for enhanced sponsorship deals that include new ways of activation and they expect not only awareness, but also conversion.