I’d like to believe, that most of those who are reading this story are well aware that while sports are immensely popular due to the entertainment aspect, the sporting world cannot be overlooked regarding what a large scale business it really is. So much of what goes into a franchise, its staff, and especially its athletes all revolves around how these individuals will help their team, staff, and franchise continue to grow.
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Up until now, fans and business buffs alike have only been able to see how well a franchise is performing based on numbers, percentages, quarterly reviews and what we overhear about our favorite teams’ on Sportscenter during our lunch breaks. However, the time has come where those who are fully invested in their franchise’s growth and development no longer have to wait to get results, and can see exactly what they want to see, whenever they want to see it.
Introducing Brandtix, the sporting industry’s first ever all-inclusive SIP (Sports Index Platform), that uses live feeds and the most up-to-date technology in order to asses a real-time brand value for today’s athletes. As interesting as this sounds, the first question I asked myself (and many of you may have asked yourselves already) was, “what factors are involved when assessing this so called ‘brand value’ for an athlete?”
Brandtix technology takes information that we know about current performing athletes from outlets such as Opta, the leading soccer data provider, and combines these statistics with more than 100 social variables both on and off pitch. Although soccer is the main sport of focus for Brandtix, the company is looking to expand their horizon to athletes that grace other fields, tracks, courses and courts around the world. Using a well designed approach that includes, player and team performance data, social statistics and sentiment as well as powerful algorithm indexing, Brandtix manifests these variables to calculate a real-time value for athletes to provide information for professional sports teams about their commercial gains.
Jon Rosenblatt, former Head of International Marketing for FIFA at EA Sports and the current CEO of Brandtix, discusses the steps he and Brandtix adopted when creating their product.
“We know there are other indexes out there, however we are the first ever comprehensive index that takes on pitch and social variables and gives a real time score,” explains Rosenblatt.
“The algorithm that builds the index platform is really what sets us apart. We use many types of methodology to help identify the next global stars of the football world.”
Using statistics on and off pitch truly sets a new precedent for how we as sports fans view certain athletes. For many, an athlete’s value deals directly with their performance on pitch and the correlation between improvements versus diminutions. However, Brandtix provides assessments of what an athlete does off pitch, calculating that into the real-time value. Using this approach, the quality of the athlete is weighed in addition to the quantity of the numbers they produce, making it accessible to fans to view any news about an athlete that may stir positive or negative controversy within the club. One of the major allurements to the success of Brandtix thus far, is the finalization of the spectacular mobile app. The direction of the app will be a go-to-athlete insights mobile experience for the DFS and betting communities, and encompasses the most up to date information as well as a live feed on specific athletes one may wish to view.
As Rosenblatt explains, “I think the way we are surfacing the data is so interesting. The app allows you to select a specific league, team and player you wish to view. The information changes rapidly depending on playing time and hits that occur during that period. Connected with Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, viewers are able to see charts and graphs depicting social status, playing time, popularity, etc. You can also drag and drop specific players and names to see comparisons between them.”
The main dashboard of the app displays a live-feed ticker of the top twenty performing players at any given time, as well as those players’ overall index scores and performances. Adjacent to the index scores and performances is a live feed of which players are currently “trending” all over the globe, and data showing the rise and fall in percentages, almost like a stock market ticker for athletes.
Directly below the ticker are bar graphs, showing top new fans on the app, as well as surging players based on performance and exposure. And finally, a detailed graph at the bottom of the dashboard examines a social leaderboard of fans and the athletes in which they choose to follow. With names such as Ronaldo, Neymar and Messi highlighting the index, fans will be drawn to the technology of the app, as well as the appeal of unlimited knowledge literally at their fingertips.
“Football is continuing to increase across the world, and we are right in the very heart of it,” says Rosenblatt.
“We want to be where Messi was at the beginning. We have built an amazing culture, and the ambition to help identify who’s going to be hot and who’s going to not. We want to create resonance across the board.”