We’re Putting Athlete Data in the Hands of Athletes. Why Aren’t You?

By Dave Anderson

I’m not one to normally react to academic discussion papers, but recent research that the sports data carrier pigeons carried all the way from Australia caught my attention—not only for the pertinent issues that it raised, but also for what was glaringly left unsaid.

The paper, Getting Ahead of the Game: Athlete Data in Professional Sport, was published by an expert working group put together by the Australian Academy of Science and the University of Western Australia's Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab. Some key takeaways:

• There are concerns over privacy rights, bodily autonomy, labor and human rights.
• The purpose and scope of all the data is unclear to people who work with athletes.
• There’s concern about future lawsuits if data is collected but athletes didn’t get full disclosure—essentially the legal issue that made it possible for former NFL players to sue the league over hidden concussion data.
• The proposed answer to bioethical and legal questions is an independent body to regulate performance data collection.

You know what makes all of those concerns largely moot points? You know what illuminates better answers for everyone? Giving athlete data to the athletes themselves.?

As a former NFL player and self-described player data advocate, I find it astonishing and frustrating that the 79-page report didn’t arrive at the most obvious conclusion: Athletes should be empowered with unfettered access to all of their performance data. And while teams and leagues should have access to the data, there should be no question as to who owns athlete data.

This is speaking to a larger point than just the research out of Australia, but I’ll never understand why some people want to cut athletes out of any conversation about performance data. It’s widely accepted across sports that athletes know their bodies better than anyone—better than the trainers, therapists, chiropractors and doctors who work on them. Why wouldn’t you want to give athletes their data so they can quantify, calibrate, and measure what they’re feeling in their bodies?

Simply creating more restrictions, red tape, and regulations around athlete data is just another form of controlling athletes instead of putting them in control.

We live in the age of “data as oil,” so it’s unrealistic to expect that sports will ever go back to the quaint notion of blood, sweat and tears. Athletes still put in the same hard work, but the components of that cliché are now measured and optimized. To anyone who thinks athletes aren’t smart enough to be a part of the data conversation, weren’t most sports scientists and coaches athletes themselves on some level? And why are you making that assumption about athletes anyway?

There are only a few reasons that make logical sense if you want to deny athletes their information—and it shouldn’t matter if they want it for themselves or their inner circles. You’re either worried you’ll be exposed because the data shows you’re not putting player health and safety first, or you’re insecure about your own role in the data conversation. Simply creating more restrictions, red tape, and regulations around athlete data is just another form of controlling athletes instead of putting them in control.

Data is synonymous with performance. Athletes are their data. They control what happens on the fields and courts, and they should have control over the data they create. Can you imagine pilots having to land planes based solely on conversations with air traffic towers rather than having dashboards, data, and information in the cockpit?

The first step to putting athletes in control is transparency. Every athlete should know how and why their data is being collected. They should be given direct access to all raw data and semantics, and they should be given it at the same frequency as teams/leagues. Control also means the ability to ingest, share, and distribute it however athletes please. It should go without saying, but this means delivering the data in modern ways and not handing them sheets of printed paper. There might be some shared commercialization rules between players and teams/leagues, but all player data should go through players before it goes anywhere else.

There is a difference between athlete data and team analytics, and I don’t believe that athletes should have access to a team’s analytics—which is how clubs interpret data and create algorithms to make decisions about drafts, rosters, lineups and the like. It’s important to distinguish between data and analytics in modern sports.

One quote in particular from the Australian research caught my attention: “There's a huge number of parties touching that information to the extent where no practitioner we spoke to could really comprehend the scale of information collection.”?

You know who can comprehend the scale of that information?

Athletes.

And what was the study’s proposed solution? A regulatory body consisting of everyone but the actual athletes: “Bioethicists recommend an independent regulatory body consisting of data scientists, player associations, regulatory experts and sports administrators to develop best practices.” Forget checking a box by including player associations; it’s mind-blowing that we’re not including all the people who actually practice and compete.

Athletes should have ownership of their data to help them make the most informed decisions about their performance, training, recovery, and health. And they should be able to use it for commercial reasons as well.?

To that last point: An analogous comparison is the residual system for actors. The basic agreement between the unions and movie studios is that somebody who has developed a hit show has the right to share in the continued upside of success. This feels like an elegant solution for athlete data. Athletes get paid to perform on the field, but they should also partake in the residuals from their performance data.?

By the end of the year, I hope that athlete data ownership isn’t even a question or a debate. It's important to get this right, because the sports landscape is rapidly changing. The future of all things, sports or otherwise, is digital. The digital world is built on code, and code is built with data.

Athletes must skate to where the puck is going. There is absolutely no risk or downside to giving athletes their data. But the risk of not empowering athletes with their own data will make their pain felt even more acutely as the digital world gets built up around them and on the backs of their data.

At BreakAway, we practice what I’ve just preached. We’ve spent the past year collecting biomechanics data on hundreds of athletes at all levels of sports, often with teams or programs reaching out to do business with us. We conduct that business by giving athletes their data directly via the BreakAway mobile app, which is designed to ingest any form of performance data from any source.?

We’re putting athlete data in the hands of athletes.

Why aren’t you?

Let’s connect. Drop a comment below or share your thoughts with me at [email protected]