History in the making: How data enables the media to tell the stories of sport
The ability to capture sports data and react authoritatively, in real time, to expected and unforeseen moments is increasingly important to media organizations.
Who can forget the astonishing talent and achievements of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Rafael Nadal? Their dominance in swimming, athletics and tennis meant that their triumphs, while thrilling, were what sports pundits and fans came to expect. Over the course of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, more than 2700 medals were awarded and nearly 130 world records were broken. The story of every one of those moments was captured by broadcasters, journalists and news agencies for audiences around the world.
As competitions evolve and continue to welcome new sports, this brings wider attention onto relatively unknown competitors. Even in more ”traditional” sports, unexpected athletes are making it to the final phases. When an outsider snatches gold or a newcomer edges into a photo finish, commentators and reporters want to be ready with a story that positions these moments in history.
Enriching the audience experience
A critical objective for major event organizers is to ensure that media — from TV, radio and streaming platforms to news sites and press agencies — have all the information they need. This is not limited to pre-published event briefings, statistics or live results. In the age of 24-hour news, they want to reach audiences quickly with engaging perspectives. With the explosion in social media and potential misinformation, their stories must be accurate and trustworthy.
For multi-sport competitions in particular, it is not feasible for every broadcaster or press agency to bring specialized analysts for every sport or event. So having easy access to relevant, reliable real-time and historical data becomes even more important.
Multiple data sources, one click
Commentators and reporters require a range of devices and tools to consume and sift through information. The value that sports organizers can bring is to deliver a single, trusted source of truth — delivered seamlessly in the right place at the right time.
To do this, organizers must find a way of managing and aggregating large volumes of related information. This comes from a multitude of sources: live timings and results systems, plus a vast amount of statistics, background information and anecdotes about every athlete, every sport and every event — past and present.
During the action, media teams don’t have the luxury of time to search the internet or their own archives. They might use three, four or even five different data feeds displayed on monitors and touchscreens alongside the live video feed. They need information that is fast, available in a click, and easy to navigate.
Context is everything
So how can this be achieved? While aggregating sources of data is the norm, the ability to contextualize information for the user (by connecting the right data sources to the right outcomes) is a crucial business and technical skill.
A single result by one athlete has little meaning, but when it’s contextualized it might become breaking news. Imagine discovering a young unknown who went further than anyone else in history at their age in this event.
Merging sports data into a single source of truth, weighted with relevance factors, is the key to smart data orchestration. Digital platforms are essential to ensure the availability, security and integrity of vast data repositories. Technical integration ensures a holistic approach, with powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to identify and integrate relevant data on the fly.
Sport gives millions of people the chance to share the thrills that competitions can provide, and providing the media with access to relevant, reliable real-time and historical sports data is critical.
Great experiences, any time, any place
Expertise in user experience design is also vital. Ways of working in the media are changing. Media zones at live locations have traditionally provided dedicated sports information systems and terminals. While these still have a role, in recent years, there has been a major shift towards more remote working. Fewer media personnel tend to be based in a host city or at a venue. Instead, technology enables them to be in various locations while controlling and reporting on a live broadcast.
In tandem, we have seen the shift to media personnel using their own devices. This gives them more choice and flexibility about the tools they use, how many screens they want (whether it’s five or just one) and where they work — at the venue, their satellite office, a hotel or even at home.
These trends create extra complexity for sports organizers. Portability and agility are essential to ensure that media teams have a professional workplace environment. The challenge is to ensure the same depth, speed and wealth of sports data — with the same high level of data security — regardless of how and where it is consumed in terms of system, device and location.
Increasing flexibility and integration
We’re also seeing the move away from highly customized, purpose-built systems to web-based content and tools that support flexible and mobile ways of working — either at the venue or remotely from a commentator or analyst’s office. Yet, we are unlikely to see commentators and analysts move completely to mobile phones, as has happened in the fan engagement space.
Even though sports broadcasters are gradually embracing a remote production model, the volume of data that commentators require makes it impractical to use a mobile phone as the sole information source during a live broadcast.
Meanwhile, media players leverage their own fast-growing repositories of sports data. While these are currently separate from the data provided by sports organizers, we will see a growing appetite among media organizations to be able to merge the two. There are different ways of achieving this. While event organizers can provide raw data for integration with a broadcaster’s own data lake, this will be relatively costly and resource-intensive for the media industry. A better approach will be to leverage advances in data aggregation and AI to harness and read all available data, as required, in real time.
Maintaining trust in a changing world
In the coming years, given the effects of social media and concerns about the rise of deepfakes and disinformation, sports organizers can play a critical role. It’s about giving media personnel smart tools to delve into and switch between multiple rich data sources. They can then pivot to what’s happening and distinguish trusted information from rumor, or even fake news. Technical and business expertise is needed to devise and implement an effective data strategy, with AI-powered data orchestration capabilities, to deliver the right outcomes in a well-designed digital environment.
As we saw again in Paris, sport gives millions of people the chance to share the electric thrills and unpredictable experiences that competitions can provide. Data plays a critical role in helping media organizations share and celebrate athletes’ achievements, and to keep the rest of us enthralled.
Posted on: September 19, 2024
Albert Minguillon
Major Events Applications DirectorMember, Atos Research Community
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