In Focus: DataPowa - Uncover The True Overlap In Football
How much do football clubs really know about their fans?
Quite a lot, you’d think. Game attendance, merchandise buying habits, in-stadium food and drink preferences and a host of other insights can be gained from the data clubs gather about their fans every day.
But there’s still more value to be unlocked. Gaining the data is just one part of the equation; breaking it out of silos and accessing its full value is something entirely different.
Breaking data out of silos
As football clubs have grown in commercial stature so too have their data management challenges. The range of fan touchpoints across clubs has created a multitude of databases that don’t talk to each other, leaving valuable fan insights undiscovered.
These insights can lead to improved fan experiences, which help clubs enhance engagement, increase revenue and create stronger and more profitable partnerships where the sponsor also benefits.
Let’s imagine an average supporter, ‘Fan A’. Based on the data, his favourite club knows that Fan A:
– is a season-ticket holder who attends all home matches
– regularly buys club merchandise
– always buys food and drink at half-time during a match
– accesses the club app on a daily basis.
There’s plenty of data there to build a detailed picture of Fan A and his preferences and behaviours. But each data point is separate. The ticketing database isn’t connected to the other three databases, which in turn aren’t connected to each other.
This means that the club’s ability to understand Fan A and use that insight to build a superior experience for him is limited.
Creating a single fan view
A better approach is possible. Bringing these data points together would create a ‘single fan view’ – a unified profile of Fan A that draws the club’s siloed data together into one bucket, making key insights easier to identify and action and a more tailored fan experience easier to achieve.
For example, perhaps a discount on food and drink could be provided to Fan A when he buys the latest replica shirt at the club’s official shop. Or a ‘25% off’ voucher provided when the fan logs into the app every day for a month.
Club data could even be blended with partner data to gain further insights and enhance sponsorship activations. The possibilities are limitless, and they all add up to an improved experience for the fan, greater affinity between the club, the fan and partnering brands, and greater revenue opportunities across the board.
Making it happen
The best part: the tools to make this happen are here with us now. Datapowa VENN is a secure data collaboration tool that allows sports properties, sponsors and brands to bring together their first-party data without the risk of leaks or breaches.
The platform encrypts all data from the moment it’s ingested, meaning VENN never holds any human readable data – even while it’s being analysed. Governance agreements are created and signed within the system, making compliance easy and outputted customer segments can be easily exported, ready to be uploaded to a CRM or CDP and actioned.
Other approaches such as single sign-on can help too. Single sign-on allows a fan to use one set of login credentials to access multiple platforms, such as the app, a loyalty scheme and a membership profile.
Data from these platforms is gathered under a single login, helping clubs more easily build the single fan view and activate upon the insights.
However, it’s achieved, the era of data collaboration is here and clubs that embrace it stand to improve fan experience and increase revenue.
To find out more about Datapowa or VENN contact the team on hello@datapowaiq.com for a no obligation chat.
