Squawka’s Sanjit Atwal talks Big Data in Sport

Next week sees the bringing together of Chris Schlosser, General Manager of Major League Soccer Digital, John McCauley, Digital Director of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Opta and Repucom.  This has all been brought together by the force of nature that is Sanjit Atwal.

I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Sanjit for a while now and have kept a close on what his company, Squawka.  If you have not heard about Squawka before then read on as Sanjit himsef explains more about who he is and what they do.

 

Hi Sanjit and thanks for speaking to UKSN.  To start us off, can you describe yourself in 140 characters

“Tech/sport/advertising loving CEO of Squawka. Fan of most sports, most food and trying ever so hard to invent self-toasting bread…”

Your company, Squawka, has been in the news recently with your involvement with the new Gillette Football YouTube Channel and investment from BBH.  Can you explain to readers what the platform is and how it benefits football fans?

The Gillette Football Club is a global initiative from Proctor & Gamble to bring the Gillette brand closer to football fans. The Gillette team have been working hard with YouTube to bring many highlights and goals to the platform for football fans to view for free. We at Squawka are powering all stats and visualisations across the Gillette Football Club and we are rolling at more leagues as the months go by! From a brand point of view its pretty groundbreaking and we’re loving being a part of it”

As well as the platform you’ve been working on making more sense of player data so that it becomes more ‘useful’.  Through this you developed the Squawka Player Performance Rating Algorithm.  How did this come about and how do you see it being used?

“When we first started digging around inside Opta’s dataset we realised that there was a tonne of data points that nobody was using. This is mainly because its hard to get across that level data to a regular fan so broadcasters and rights holders tend to omit them. We decided that we would try and figure out a way to use absolutely everything to represent an accurate visualisation of a players or teams performance. 

So, the Performance Score was born! It analyses an individual players performance across the disciplines of Defence, Possession & Attack and gives the fan a view of the game analysed using over 14 million data points.”  

On the 13th Dec you’re hosting an event in New York which brings together speakers from the MLS, Toronto Maple Leafs, Opta and Repucom and is called ‘Big Data in Sport‘.  Do you see the use of data as the next big frontier for sport?

I think there are some really interesting things on the horizon for sport but for us the way in which data is becoming more egalitarian is so exciting. There is drama in data – there are a million more important talking points and, when made digestible, data can truly enrich a fans experience. In ten years time are sports fans going to be consuming more data or less data? Yeah, it’s more…and not just a little bit, it’s going to be a lot more.

“We are holding the Big Data In Sport event to showcase some of the best example of using data and digital to improve all aspects of sport – rights, consumption, organisation and sponsorship.”

Finally, what does the future hold for Squawka?

“Squawka has only been alive for a short period but we have grown X15 since the start of the season. There is so much more to come from the platform in terms of new features. Most recently we launched a share button on every stat across the site and we’ve seen a great pick up from bloggers and general fans sending stats to their friends (although there does appear to be a lot of people out there that are just trying to wind up their friends!). 

We are launching new leagues over the coming months and are planning hard for our MLS launch in March. In short, the future is looking super busy!” 

 

Thanks Sanjit!  If you have not tried out the platform then head across now to www.squawka.com and give it a try.  You can also read more about how their Player Performance Score is being used to map against transfer fees and wages to determine their value as a purchase.  The full article is here.

There is so much to do and find out on match days on Squawka and there is plenty more to come in this exciting sector for football (and sports) fans.  Below are a couple of screenshots to give you an idea of what you can expect from the platform.

 

About author

Daniel McLaren
Daniel McLaren 820 posts

Dan is the Founder & CEO of Digital Sport. Can be found at sports industry events and heard every week on the Digital Sport Insider podcast. @DanielMcLaren

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