How is SAP Implementing Digital Transformation in the Sports Industry

The nature of sports is both professional and competitive. Now with SAP penetrating the sports arena, we can expect some massive turnarounds in the industry. One such visible change is implementing digital transformation. It helps to capture real-time analytics, and maximize data usage. Moreover, it is also playing a vital role in player management, scouting, health, training, and fitness. So, we can say that SAP has digitized the sports and gaming industry.

Let’s have a peep at a few important statistics-

• SAP has added around 250 sports customers globally in the last three years.
• The current 6.4 million connected things will increase to 21 million by next year with a growth rate of 30%.
• The experts are anticipating a humongous growth in the sports analytics market, from $125 million to $4.7 billion by 2021.
• Around 77.7 million data points are captured and processed during one hour of soccer training.

SAP HANA and Digital Athlete Framework

Did you ever imagine that even athletes and players can get digital? The transcendence of technology is just amazing. They can remain connected with the mountain of sports and player data that is streaming from wearables and devices. But if a sports team wants to leverage the benefits of the digital transformation, it needs to work out on the right set of strategies.

Digital Athlete is all about bringing flexibility and agility. It allows you to stay ahead in the game. However, it is based on two important concepts-

Simplification:

You can do tasks more easily and smoothly with improvement and cost-effectiveness.
Innovation: Here it is about following the five latest trends and looking to improve the performance of the day.

So, What are the 5 Major Technology Trends

Hyperconnectivity

Each player needs to be connected, which offers the best opportunities to monitor and track their performance using a mobile device.

Super Computing

The digital athlete generates an enormous amount of athlete sensor data that can be analyzed and consumed instantly with the help of real-time memory computing.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing helps to simplify and speed deployment at affordable prices. Also, it supports in delivering the growth of new applications rapidly as the value of the digital athlete gets proven.

Smart Word Sensors

It allows you to gather real-time athlete data through advanced, sensors, wearables, and smart devices.

Cyber Security Data

It protects all your sensitive data from cyber attacks and hacking. Securing team data is a must-have priority of every team.

SAP HANA

SAP HANA is an in-memory relational database management system. It processes and stores a high volume of business data in real-time on any cloud or on-premise. It is ideally suited for performing real-time analytics, create and deploy real-time applications.

So far, it has disrupted a wide range of industries and the sports arena isn’t an exception to that. So, let us view how the digital athlete is leveraging the advantages.

The smart sensors, geospatial video, and other sources allow players to take leverage of Big Data. It helps to bring all data signals to do a pre-match analysis and predict the winner.

Act instantly based on the performance of the team. Analyze the key moments of the game and how to improve performance for the next game.
Answer any question without collecting any match data on the performance. Anyone in the team can reply to any question.

SAP is well aware of the important technology trends driving digitization in sports. These trends are going through continuous transformation. It has developed a digital athlete framework that helps teams in executing their game plans and strategies. Digital Athlete framework will offer comprehensive support in every sport such as soccer, basketball, hockey, cricket, and many more. The teams need to implement digitization to gain the upper hand over opponents.

The teams can reap the benefits of the digital athlete not by gathering the most match data but how they are utilizing that data. It means that they need to use this data intelligently. Secondly, they can access the information in real-time to make on-spot decisions. It helps them to analyze their performance and increase the win percentages.

The Four Core Aspects of Digital Athlete Framework

Let’s throw some light on the four key aspects of the digital athlete framework. These include-

• Digital Athlete Core
• Athlete Sensor Data or Internet of Things
• Sports Intelligence
• Unified Team Operations

Digital Athlete Core

It helps in merging and processing all athlete data across different systems and devices.

Athlete Sensor Data or Internet of Things

It connects and collects match data from various devices and athletes while streaming.

Sports Intelligence

It is an important pillar of digital athlete allowing teams to find crucial insights and take quick actions to improve performance.

Unified Team Operations

It is an essential tool that unifies all disciplines together in real-time, escalating athlete performance.

Role of SAP Sports One

SAP Sports One is SAP’s innovative product that digitizes the performance of the game and team management process. It is accessible for a variety of sports such as football, handball, basketball, rugby, skiing, and others. The software also handles various other tasks such as team administration, training, scouting, and preventing injuries.

What Does it Have on Offer

SAP Sports One is ready to provide its extensive support through some of the incredible features such as-

• Integrated Platform for Entire Sports Data
• Secured and Sustainable Data
• Cloud Deployment
• Deep Insights into the Team
• Mobile Applications for Enhanced Collaboration

Let’s analyze how SAP Sports One proves useful in various aspects of game planning.

Team Management

When it comes to managing a team, SAP Sports One will analyze and track the player’s potential and his progress. The team manager gets appropriate information about individual players into informative profiles. The manager, coach, physio, and scouts can seamlessly communicate with the players.

Practice and Training

Practice makes you win more matches. Now the coaching staff can schedule training sessions and plans based on the player attributes and his role in the team. He can closely monitor the progress of the players and their fitness level. He can also create training exercise programs and give players individual tasks to accomplish.

Monitoring Player Fitness

SAP Sports One is an amazingly advanced software that allows you to evaluate the fitness of individual players. You can run diagnostic tests for analyzing the performance and schedule physiotherapy sessions to keep players fit and healthy. You can access the vital medical parameters all on your mobile applications.

Manage Scouting

Every team wants to include the best player in their squad. This is where Scout Management will come into play. It helps you to quickly identify the team priorities and assign scouting requests. The advanced scouting and reporting will help you choose the best squad for the day against any opponent.

Analyzing the Match Performance

Good teams and players always analyze their performance of the day whether they win or lose the match. You can analyze performance insights and prepare for the next game by framing strategy against the next opponent.

SAP is a leader both on and off the field. We have seen how SAP has played a decisive role in enhancing the player and team performance through SAP Sports One and Digital Athlete. But the story does not end here.
SAP is also a champion in engaging the players, teams, and fans using innovative technologies.

Marketing and Engagement

Fans throng into the stadiums and spend hundreds of dollars to watch their favorite team and players perform. So, it’s time to connect with your fans and reward them through personalized multiple channels. You can identify customer management, conduct enhanced analytics, produce high impact reports with analytics, and much more.

SAP also provides a viable opportunity to increase your fan base through loyalty programs and rewards. Take advantage of the latest technologies such as SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Customer Checkout that help you to get across actionable insights in real-time. The SAP Customer Checkout offers the Point of Sale facility to your sales staff to streamline the management of sales, payments, discounts, and loyalty.

SAP Marketing Cloud Solution and SAP Analytics Cloud help in marketing planning and analytics. It is an opportunity where you can send personalized and relevant messages to your fans converting their enthusiasm into revenue. You can leverage the benefit of the omnichannel experience using real-time insights and customer segmentation.

Sales and Commerce

Monetize your fan excitement with SAP sales and commerce solutions through revenue enhancement. The SAP Commerce Cloud Solution and Emarsys marketing cloud help to create omnichannel merchandise sales, and omnichannel customer experience, marketing recommendations, product content, and much more. Customer Checkout offers food and beverage analytics including a Point of Sale (POS) System to enhance commerce management.

SAP Ticketing Event boosts the sports and entertainment revenue through an advanced cloud ticketing software that helps you to streamline ticket sales and management.

The SAP Sports and SAP Entertainment Software helps in strategic demand management and asset management system.

SAP Transforming the Sports Industry

SAP is helping various teams to take the driver’s team both on and off the field. It has brought a major innovation in the game where players can improve their performance through real-time data insights and fitness. It has also allowed the sports industry to surge its revenue growth through omnichannel commerce experience and ticketing analytics.