This section of SportTechie, “Sports Tech Wire”, contains original press releases issued by various companies and industry organizations. The releases are reviewed by the SportTechie editorial staff to ensure relevancy to the sports technology industry. For information and access, send your name and email address to info@SportTechie.com
- Almost 400 applied to take part in the first hackathon hosted by a Premier League club.
- OptaPro and ChyronHego provided exclusive Premier League data sets to inspire participants to unveil new insights on player performance.
- Inaugural #HackMCFC champions win £7000 cash prize.
This weekend Manchester City hosted their very first football data hackathon and with over 60 talented applicants taking part the results of the hack have been remarkable.
Manchester City’s #HackMCFC was the first football hackathon to be organised by a Premier League club and interest in the event was widespread with almost 400 applications submitted from over 40 countries across the globe.
The successful hackers who took part in the free event included experts and students from the fields of tech, data and digital product design. With access to world leading performance analysis systems, as well as detailed player and match data provided by the Premier League, OptaPro and ChyronHego, participants were able to take advantage of a range of data sets, previously unavailable, to help them uncover new insights on player performance.
Twelve teams formed across the weekend to take on the challenge of combining Opta and ChyronHego’s datasets to develop new ideas that could enhance movement, passing, running and pressure on the pitch.
The projects presented were impressive to say the least and the talent of everyone involved was undeniable, but there could be only one winner and it was the team comprising of Ben Low, Ben Blackmore, Steven Hassall, Paul Robinson and Lasse Folkersen that walked away the weekend’s overall champions. Together they developed a machine learning algorithm that focused on decision making in games. Its effectivity and potential for future implementation impressed judges across the board and saw them reward the team with a £7000 cash prize.
Commenting on their success following the awards ceremony, the winning team said:
“HackMCFC is a truly unique event. Several of us have been to hackathons in the past, but nothing like this. The quality of the data sets we had access to were unparalleled and the amazing facilities at the City Football Academy made this the ideal environment to innovate in.
“There was an incredible buzz across the whole weekend and having the opportunity to meet and work with new people who had completely different backgrounds allowed us to really push our boundaries. Manchester City is a world class club and it has been an absolute privilege to be involved in such an inspiring event.”
However, they weren’t the only prize winners as there were awards for Players’ Player, Academy Players’ Player and Best Teammate. These awards were participant voted and Kiran Jaswal was named Best Teammate for his commitment and dedication to every aspect of the event and his willingness to support and learn from his peers.
Following the event, Edward Sulley, Head of Research and Innovation for City Football Services, commented:
“We are delighted with the success of Manchester City’s first football data hackathon. Across the City Football Group, we constantly strive to challenge ourselves to develop innovative ways of enhancing player performance and we believe good ideas can come from anywhere.
“The skills and talents this weekend’s participants demonstrated have opened up several insightful concepts and ideas and we look forward to exploring some of these further. Going forward, we want to continue exploring opportunities using this method of open innovation, both here in Manchester and at our sister clubs in New York, Melbourne and Japan.”
David Eccles, Account Manager-Sports at ChryonHego, who provide the world leading optical tracking solution – TracAb, also said:
“It was great to see the levels of interest generated in ChyronHego data; the insights that were extrapolated from the data has proven that we are only just beginning to fully understand the power big data can have on tactical performance and analysis. To see professionals, academics and others willing to camp out for two days to work with the data proves how passionate this industry is about creating outputs that can have a positive influence on the game.
“As a company ChyronHego are always looking at new and innovative ways to help professional teams achieve success and we believe that our data is a very powerful tool that can help clubs gain a competitive advantage both on and off the field. I’d like to thank Manchester City and Play for hosting a great event and I’d like to say a huge well done to the participants, the standard was extremely high and proved that data does have a place in the modern game.”
Ahead of the inaugural event, Ben Mackriell, Head of OptaPro, explained:
“The application of advanced analytics within professional football has progressed significantly over the past 18 months and is an area where OptaPro has strived to help teams begin to understand its value.
“We are proud to work with a club as forward thinking as Manchester City. Having worked alongside them in the ground-breaking MCFC Analytics project, #HackMCFC is the perfect evolution of this. The event offers an exciting opportunity for participants to generate innovative data-driven insights from what is an extremely detailed dataset and is an excellent demonstration of Manchester City’s commitment to driving this growing industry forward.”
The event was held from the 29-31 July at the City Football Academy, Manchester City’s elite training and youth development facility, and included a taster session of City in the Community’s One City Disability programme, as well as a Manchester City Women’s game versus Sunderland.
ENDS
About City Football Group
City Football Group is the owner of a number of football related businesses with global relevance. These include high profile professional football clubs, academies, technical support and marketing companies. CFG’s clubs include Premier League Title Winners 2011-2012 and 2013-14 Manchester City FC, Melbourne City FC of the A-League and MLS Franchise New York City Football Club. CFG is also a minority shareholder in Yokohama F. Marinos of the J-League. The Group also includes Manchester City Women’s FC and 2015-16 Westfield W-League Premiership and Championship Winners, Melbourne City Women’s FC. The common aim across all clubs is to provide the best possible experience and an unmatched opportunity for fans and communities to participate in, and benefit from, football at both a local and global level.
The Group’s support companies – City Football Services and City Football Marketing – operate from a number of offices around the world in support of the Group’s clubs, associate organisations and customer organisations. City Football Services shares footballing IP and “know-how” to recruit, develop, train and win. City Football Marketing creates media, marketing and fan engagement properties to support the commercial development of clubs and their partners.
City Football Group is majority owned by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). ADUG is an investment and development company privately owned by His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. In December 2015, ADUG divested a 13% shareholding to a China Media Capital-led consortium, creating an unprecedented platform for the growth of CFG clubs and companies in China and internationally. City Football Group’s headquarters are in Manchester and it has offices in Abu Dhabi, London, New York, Melbourne, Singapore and Tokyo.
About Manchester City Football Club
Manchester City FC is an English Premier League club whose roots began in East Manchester in 1880 as St Mark’s West Gorton. It officially became Manchester City FC in 1894 and has since then gone onto win the European Cup Winners’ Cup, four League Championship titles, including two Premier League titles, and five FA Cups.
Under manager Pep Guardiola, one of the most highly decorated managers in world football, the Club plays its domestic and Champions’ League home fixtures at the Etihad Stadium, a spectacular 55,000 seat arena that City have called home since 2003. Today, the Stadium sits on the wider Etihad Campus, which also encompasses the City Football Academy, a world-leading first team training and youth development facility located in the heart of East Manchester. Featuring a 7,000 capacity Academy Stadium, the City Football Academy is also where Manchester City Women’s Football Club and the Elite Development Squad train on a daily basis and play their competitive home games.
For more information, please visit: www.mancity.com
About the Premier League
The Premier League is the organising body of the Premier League competition with responsibility for its Rule Book and the centralised broadcast and other commercial rights. It is the most watched and followed football league in the world. Last season more than 13m fans attended matches with record stadium occupancy of 96.3%. Across nine months of the year 380 matches are broadcast to 900m households in 190 countries.
About OptaPro
OptaPro works with over 200 leading professional clubs and national federations, integrating analytical solutions to help fine-tune performance, scout opponents and recruit new talents. Powered by Opta’s in-depth global database, OptaPro has developed a suite of analytical products that integrate Opta data with the latest technologies.
OptaPro sits in the Perform Content division of Perform Group. Perform Group connects the world of sport by producing the quickest, most detailed and most engaging content.
About ChyronHego
ChyronHego is a global leader in broadcast graphics creation, playout, and real-time data visualization offering a wide variety of products and services for live television, news, sports, corporate and government video production. ChyronHego’s end-to-end graphics offerings include hosted services for graphics creation and order management, on-air graphics systems, channel branding, weather graphics, graphics asset management, clip servers, social media and second screen applications, touch graphics, telestration, virtual placement and player tracking.
ChyronHego provide the world leading optical tracking solution – TracAb to many of the major football leagues within Europe; including the English Premier League, German Bundesliga and Spanish La Liga. TracAb is able to capture real-time tracking data on both the players and ball in the 3D space within centimetres of accuracy.
Due to TracAb’s ability to capture the players and ball location 1/25th of every second the data is being used within exploratory areas of tactical analysis; such as understanding cognitive patterns, player decision making, spatial patterns and much more.
To learn more visit http://chyronhego.com/
About Play
Play is a strategic design consultancy that helps companies accelerate innovation and invent magnetic new customer experiences. Play clients range from global brands to early stage start ups. We work collaboratively with ambitious organizations to develop new digital products and services, and design more effective organizations.
To learn more visit http://aplaything.com or call 0161 464 9260
For further information, please contact:
Fraser Walters, Edelman – fraser.walters@edelman.com
T: +44 20 3047 2480 | M: +44 7792 788 483
Iona Stewart, Edelman – iona.stewart@edelman.com
T: +44 20 3047 2198 | M: +44 7890 329151