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Big Data meets the US’s Biggest Sports event of the year
Big Data is expected to play a significant role where you might not expect it to...in the Super Bowl this weekend.
A perhaps less known-about use of big data has been talked about recently. The American Super Bowl. Super Bowl 50 will be played on Sunday 7 February 2016 and will be notable, amongst other things, for its use of Big Data.
It is expected that Big Data will play at least a twofold part in the events of Sunday’s big game. Prediction and advertising.
Collecting sports data in order to predict a winner is not new, but big data is expanding the amount of data we have on players and their abilities. Innovative analytic technologies are allowing pundits to draw up complex algorithms, using real-time data, to predict the outcomes of specific player matchups.
This has been done in the past with varying degrees of success, however as the amount of data created, through IoT enabled devices in stadiums and on players, increases, the more accurate these predictions will become. After all, that is one of the main benefits of Big Data in general, increasing predictive abilities.
Whilst predicting the winner of the Super Bowl will be important to some, it is the commercials which often receive just as much attention. Big Data allows advertising companies to take huge amounts of unstructured data, such as the discussions on social media platforms, in the run up to, during and after the game, to release highly targeted advertising campaigns.
This stands to benefit companies both large and small. Those companies that can afford the billions it costs to have a TV advert during the game can learn a huge amount from what people are talking about online, and smaller companies can target the people that are online themselves. Indeed data from last year’s Super Bowl suggested that most online activity surrounding the Super Bowl took place after the game. This may lead to companies re-thinking their advertising campaigns and targeting those people going online after the game.
The use of Big Data in high-profile sporting events proves just how varied its value is and the range of solutions and insights that Big Data technologies can provide. And it’s not just American Football where Big Data plays a role as techUK reported in June at Wimbledon and during the Rugby World Cup.
In 2016 techUK will be continuing its work in identifying the value of big data across sectors of all shape and size. Members interested in getting involved with these sessions should contact Jeremy Lilley.
