2023-10-22 08:43:00
Before, football was an 11 against 11 sport. Now those numbers have skyrocketed almost to infinity: if in the 2018 men’s World Cup in Russia 130,000 data were collected on a player per match, in Qatar and Austrialia that figure was collected. It increased to eight million data.
Data that is collected only during matches, so clubs, players, hobbies and organizations involved in this industry must also manage others: training (with the team or individuals), social networks… If we add the information related to the ball, the state of the grass, the climatic and environmental conditions… The result gives us true Big Data.
Data exploitation
However, commercial exploitation is still in its early stages, as evidenced in the World Football Summit. Alexander Bielefeld, global director of policy and strategic relations at FIFPRO (International Federation of Professional Footballers), assured that the problem is that “we do not connect with the competition. We do not have a data sharing ecosystem that allows us as an industry to explore data and provide value to both a player and the industry. We should connect all the data we have with AI in order to make machine learning do its job. “I think what’s needed now is the geeky part.”
But after the last World Cups there is some progress on what to do with all this amount of information.
“We are currently collecting very advanced volumetric biometric data from players,” detailed this same expert. “We use them to refer, for example, to explain automated offside,” so that in the Qatar World Cup you could see “the recreation of the player’s body on the screen to explain the referee’s decision.”
Meanwhile, several football clubs already have “quite good” data analysts, according to experts. It should be noted that many of these analysts who have been hired by clubs had no previous experience in professional football, but they stand out for their long experience in data analysis.
Whose data is it
Managing all this data is no small matter. As we have seen, much of the information being collected comes from footballers, which raises new questions such as who owns the data, what uses other parties can make of it (such as game developers and immersive experiences), whether there should be mechanisms to transfer data when the professional changes clubs and if the use of all this information should be contemplated in the contracts, such as image rights.
Not in vain, one of the possible use cases for the data is related to video games, which are increasingly more real and accurate. As explained at the World Football Summit, soon it will be possible to see the pulse that a player has when he takes a penalty, with the aim of giving more realism to the game.
Everyone in the industry is aware that the immense amount of information that is being handled is wanted by many people, “but they have to have the consent of the player,” according to the footballers’ union. This spokesperson warns that, if almost eight million pieces of data were collected per player in each Australian World Cup match, “many of them may be public, but there are others that have to do with the athlete’s health or are more personal”, so, according to his vision, “we have to set limits” and force the player to give his consent. “The athlete must know where all his data is,” he argues.
The case of Kevin De Bruyne is paradigmatic, since he hired the services of a data analysis company to, based on the study of the player’s performance, as well as his importance for the team, and comparing his salary with that of other midfielders, his club, Manchester City, acknowledged that he was significantly underpaid.
Other data
The collection and processing of information in the world of football also has other applications on the field of play. One of the problems to be solved for there to be a greater impact is that the industry itself has not really developed any standards or safeguards on how it wants to treat innovation and technology. “I think this is the big frontier that we are currently discussing with FIFA and other stakeholders: how can we integrate technology in a way that really benefits everyone in the ecosystem, from the players to the clubs to the fans,” said Alexander Bielefeld.
It should be noted that, globally, the sports technology market is valued at $21 billion and is expected to reach $40 billion in a few years.
One of the main issues they are trying to address is what information the data collects, especially as far as footballers are concerned. Secondly, there is the question of for what purpose they are collected. “I think that many players are not fully aware of what is then done with that data,” denounced Maherta Molango, CEO of Real Mallorca and former professional player.
Thirdly, “and I think this is the starting point”, there is the question of on what basis the data is collected. According to Molango, when he was a professional player “he signed a contract with a small data collection clause linked to the payroll, date of birth, name and basic information. It was never thought that this data would be commercialized or that the data would include, for example, how you sleep or how you recover, etc.,” he explained, as a clear example of the opportunities, but also the risks, associated with this new industry.
LaLiga also becomes Tech
Spanish football is no stranger to this trend and, according to the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, this competition is “probably” one of the two most advanced in the world.
«A few years ago, the fan wanted his game to be as similar as possible to the reality of the game. Now, with all the technologies, what we are looking for is that the live broadcasts resemble the video game as much as possible because many things are done in it and there are many statistics. Without abandoning classic broadcasts, LaLiga understands that there is another audience (not necessarily younger) that likes viewing in streamer mode. “The audience level of this second screen is growing surprisingly,” says Javier Tebas, who recognizes that “it is leading us to new audiovisual experiences in sport, just like in cinema.”
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