Data is king

Data is King

There’s no doubt that we live in the information age. Both organisations and individuals rely on up-to-date and relevant data to make better decisions. This includes sporting organisations who can use information to help drive greater engagement among players, spectators, coaches, officials and club members.

The benefits of sporting organisations using statistics 

Everyone involved with a sport can benefit from collecting, analysing, and communicating relevant statistics. 

For example, players and coaches can use match statistics for individual players and teams to improve their performance and develop game plans. 

Club members and team supporters always like to know the live scores in matches involving their teams, even if they aren’t physically attending a match as spectators. They also like to know how both their team and other teams are performing via up-to-date competition ladders.

Club officials and referees can use data to ensure that competitions are run smoothly and fairly for everyone involved. 

Sporting organisations can also use general competition data to see which clubs and geographic regions in their sports are growing and which are declining. Indicators of these trends include the number of registered teams and players in specific areas. 

Data can also be used by sporting organisation administrators to identify strong regions, clubs and areas for their sport in terms of competition performances, as well as team and player registration numbers and characteristics. For example, age, gender, and the standard of competition (Under 20s, Under 15s, A Grade, B Grade, etc).

This information can then be used to help plan and organise upcoming seasons and competitions. For example, data can be gathered to show how far individual players and teams are travelling to participate, and where the demand to participate is strongest.

Local, state, regional and national competitions can also be organised based on participant data, and competitions can be held in the most convenient locations and venues for the largest number of potential participants.

Technology also enables sporting organisations to grow their number of participant registrations efficiently by making the registration process less time-consuming. It can also potentially increase revenue, by enabling club merchandise to be ordered online. People who buy merchandise can then be targeted with additional special offers down the track to maximise club revenue.

Specific sport examples 

Examples of sports that can make good use of playing statistics include netball, basketball and soccer. They are all team sports that are played in seasons that culminate in finals for the top-performing teams. 

Success in sports like netball, basketball and soccer also depends heavily on both team and individual player performances. Players, coaches and supporters find a wide range of performance statistics to be both useful and interesting in all three sports. 

In netball and basketball for example, player goal scoring, goal assist, offensive rebound, defensive rebound and intercept statistics are all key measures of performance.   

In soccer, player goal scoring, goal assists, minutes played, and yellow/red card statistics over the course of a season are all useful and interesting statistics for everyone involved and interested in a particular competition.

From a team perspective in all three sports, team home and away records provide and determine competition ladder positions, as do team points scored versus points conceded during the season.

How sports technology can help

Sports technology helps to make sporting data collection, analysis and communication much easier. For example, World Sport Action platforms such as Netball Connect, Basketball Connect and Squadi can help sporting clubs to track and communicate a range of information to players, spectators and club members, including game times, locations, live scores, player statistics, competition ladders and draws.

These platforms can also keep track of important sporting incident information for club officials, such as player injuries, behaviour warnings and send-offs.

The bottom line

Technology is now an everyday part of our lives, and the community sporting environment is no exception.