How can data be used to increase competitiveness in sport?
(Open) data and analytics in sports is becoming increasingly popular
across the European Union. The rise of technology and access to data
has led to a greater ability to drive performance, decision making and
engagement in the world of sports. For example, to determine the value
of athletes, track their progress, or enhance their health and safety.
Therefore, data analytics can support decision making to improve
competitiveness.

In recent years, data has been used within several sports. For
instance, football teams and organizations, are leveraging data
analytics to optimize player performance and health monitoring. Clubs
can collect data on players during training and matches, which can be
further analysed to gain insights in their performance.  Over 600
datasets around football
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?query=football%20&locale=en&page=1]
can be found on data.europa.eu. This information can be used to decide
who to acquire and how players should be deployed to maximise
performance. 

Another example is tennis, where the use of data and analytics has
only recently risen. Tennis, a sport commonly played by individual
players, faces certain challenges in its application of data
analytics. What translates to more wins varies widely based on a
player's strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies under pressure. The
sport is highly unpredictable, making it difficult to use data to
truly beat an opponent. Despite this, analytics can be used to
personalise key performance indicators for the respective athletes and
provide them with better foundations for winning matches.

There are also initiatives and programs being launched across Europe
to encourage the use of open data in sports. For example, the
EU-funded project “Sport Data Hub”,
[https://www.europeactive.eu/news/vision-european-datahub] a
sector-wide digital transformation project that aims to create a
centralised platform for data sharing and collaboration between sports
organisations, researchers, and other stakeholders. The resulting data
will be aggregated, cleaned, standardised, and reported for maximum
value and impact.

Overall, open data and analytics are contributing to greater
performance in sports across the EU. The EU open datasets are playing
a crucial role in promoting and supporting these efforts. Interested
to see more of open sports data available in Europe? Explore the
data.europa.eu sports
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?query=football%20players&locale=en&page=1]
dataset.

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Publication Date/Time
2023-02-14T23:00:00+00:00
Examples on the use of open data and data analytics within different
fields of sports to increase performance