During the Six Nations annual international rugby union competition at the beginning of 2013, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) launched a data toolset into the
public domain.
The TryTracker
is a platform which provides real-time data about rugby matches, as well as predictive
analytics about what the outcome of games.
This predictive data analytics platform, created
by IBM, is part of a wider RFU strategy to engage with rugby fans and in the long term, educate
spectators about the sport.
“The England team is the hook, but it’s a fundamental shift all about the culture, it’s about
putting rugby back into the centre of what we do as an organisation and using our values as a real
differentiator,†says Nick Shaw, head of digital at the RFU.
The technology being implemented by the union aims to combine the top players on the pitch, with
the grassroots of the local club, to educate users and to generate interest in the sport.
Capturing data about the game will enable the RFU to “demysterfy what rugby is aboutâ€, while the
TryTracker can also be
used to teach rugby tactics to individuals. Â
“It’s key to get the educational bit right,†says Shaw. “And to try and get as many people
involved in the game.â€
The RFU is currently working on three big IT projects with IBM: installing a customer
relationship management (CRM) system, rebuilding the RFU.com website as well as its mobile
application.
Shaw says the new website will be tailored using a CRM platform. If a user wants to play touch
rugby in Manchester, he wants the system to tell the end-user, rather than firing out sporadic
messages that are irrelevant to them.
He says the CRM system should be fully integrated within a year, compared to most CRM systems
that can take up to two years to build.
Additionally the England Rugby mobile application is going to be rebuilt over the coming year.
The app, which is currently only available on iOS, will be reengineered to also include Android,
and to facilitate the TryTracker data toolset.
The main challenge for the RFU is capitalising on all of the data that it is sitting on.
“We have so much data that sits in different places,†he says. “We need to understand our users
and the customer.â€
But it is not just customer and business data that needs to be understood, match data is
incremental for a sporting association, and the RFU has utilized this for TryTracker.
The sports data company Opta, collects data from games
such as missed tackles, pass completions, line breaks, yellow cards and that data is then sent to
IBM which then breaks it down and hands it back to RFU to showcase in its TryTracker
data set. This all happens in  around 20 seconds.
“It tells the story of what is going on on the field,†Shaw says.
But there are some sensitivities around particular data sets, such as player’s heart rates. They
could potentially monitor and showcase their heart rates, but this would need discussions with the
team and management first.
It is not only the real-time data which is important. Historical data, dating back to 1997 has
been collected for provide insight to the  predictive analytics part of the application,where
Shaw says it provides 95% accuracy when predicting outcomes of games. It does this by analysing the
historical data sets and spotting trends to why teams win.
Shaw says that it’s important to build conversations around this data, and he works closely with
editorial teams, and includes the commentary and highlights to tell users what it all means.
The application is also tied into the Tournament Hub – a portal for the website which changes
depending on the tournament which is being played. “The last thing we wanted was a fragmented
approach,†he says.
“We had record levels of traffic during RBS Six Nations even though we launched it in a soft
manner,†Shaw says that they began work on TryTracker in November 2012 and launched it three months
later and saw a 20% increase in traffic.
“We want to be seen as innovators in digital,†says Shaw. “But innovators for a reason.â€
Related Topics:
Business intelligence and analytics,
IT for leisure and hospitality industry,
IT for media and entertainment industry,
Business intelligence software,
Article source: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/rugby-league-sydney-roosters-storm-13th-nrl-title-123711519--spt.html
Rugby Football Union uses analytics to educate and engage with users
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