Sports Conclave 2.0: Harnessing Data for Transformative Sports Consulting and Sustainable Growth
“Data and Technology plays a huge role in the sports industry and it depends on the sectors, organisations and managers on the different ways to approach the problems and harness the data” is the ideal summation of the Panel discussion at the Sports Conclave, with experts and leaders from various domains and organisations opining their ideas and thoughts.
The panelists of the event included, Mr Anirbhan Bhar, Investment Banker at AW Capital, Ms Nupur Gupta, Product Head at Sportz Village, Mr Akbar Akhtar, Manager at PwC India and Ms Subhayu Roy, Global Sales Director at CricViz. The event was moderated by Mr Sanand Mitra, Adjunct Professor, Sports Management at Jio Institute.
The event began with the opening remarks of Dr Palak Sheth, Project Director of Jio Institute, where he emphasized the importance of industry conclaves in a student’s academic journey and how the the panelists’ perspectives is crucial for providing real-time exposure to the influx of technology in the sports industry.
Data's Impact on Sports
The discussion started with understanding how Data has impacted the sports industry in various ways. The panelists discussed a real-life example of doing the valuation exercise for a new IPL team and how the problem statement was broken down to various small problems with data points. They talked about data can help improve Athletes recruitment and training at the grassroot level and how having a data-based framework will help eliminate biases amongst coaches.
The panelists added a different perspective of data-last approach where the problem statement comes first, followed by designing an approach and then data can be used to validate, identify and develop methods in athlete development. They opined that the necessity for businesses today is to make decisions based on actionable intelligence, that is backed by data.
Shift from Data-backed to AI-first Organizations
The experts talked about the rapid evolution of AI and how the tools associated with has led to a shift in sports industry as well. They mentioned that AI can help in predicting performance & Behaviour and improving productivity of some sporting, administration activities. It can also help in predictive analytics, image enhancement and many more.
They cautioned about the pervasive use of AI: One should be careful of using AI as a solution to every problem, without setting the strategy right at the top. It’s always good to do a sense check before any AI tools are used.
AI for Fan Engagement and Revenue Generation
The panelists opined that the fans engage with their teams more in social media and leave a bread crumb of data trail that can be accessed and used by analytics engines and brands for advertising which now majorly uses AI to derive insights. Revenue is dependent on the no of fans and the degree of engagement.
The role of AI in Revenue generation is through various ways: Segmentation of Markets is now done at a deeper level by analyzing digital data of an individual and this helps in hyper-specific targeting of marketing initiatives.
At the young age group level, the challenge still remains with curating data, tracking the sporting journey and acquiring funds.
Post the discussion, the conclave opened to a Q&A session, where students explored topics like injury management, India’s potential Olympic bid, and women’s sports development through the lens of technology and strategy.
Jio Institute in its effort to give a holistic learning experience to students, conducts conclaves, guest speaker sessions and more to bring in the perspectives of various industry experts and academicians, enriching student minds.