FIFA and the Barça Innovation Hub have issued a standard format that will govern the storage and transfer of match and practice data generated by teams.
The landmark proposal will allow clubs and suppliers to more easily exchange and compare information in a single, unified format in order to optimize their use of technology and unlock sharing capabilities.
The deal was announced last week at the FC Barcelona football club’s fourth-annual Sports Technology Symposium by Johannes Holzmüller, head of sports technology at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Barça Innovation Hub, the tech and innovation heart of the FC Barcelona sports organization in Spain, helped FIFA create a standard format to unify this data, which up until now has been stored in different formats by each club. Data from electronic performance and tracking systems can now be exchanged and compared in a standardized fashion.
“Clubs have a lot of data that comes from different suppliers and sources” Holzmüller said. “And it is very important to compare this data. That is why we have developed a standard format with the Barça Innovation Hub that makes it possible to control, interpret and compare this data in a more simple way.”
The new format was developed following a mandate issued by the International Football Association Board, an independent organization comprised of FIFA and the four British football associations that oversees the rules of soccer. FIFA has been working with the Barça Innovation Hub since its inception two years ago to build these new formats.
“We still have to make improvements, but this is the first time that we have had a global data structure accessible to everyone to share information,” Holzmüller said. “It is a totally pioneering initiative.”
SportTechie Takeaway
As sports teams and leagues collect an increasing amount of data about players, the new FIFA standardization attempts to unify what has long been a fragmented data environment. By building a structure that will enable all of these teams and leagues to better share and examine their data, the hope is that the entire soccer industry will start to operate in an open-sourced fashion. The goal, according to sources at Barça Innovation Hub, is to work with other teams across FIFA’s umbrella to elevate the sport through increased technology and analytics.