The proliferation of data in sport, and its use in facilitating new narratives has created a more sophisticated sports fan than ever before. Expectations continue to rise, fueled by rightsholder and broadcasters desire to engage and retain their core audience in addition to exciting the transient fan – giving them a reason to care and to stick around for the long term.

The challenge of better connecting with fans, facilitating deeper and longer lasting interest, driving strong broadcast viewership and unlocking incremental commercial value is perpetual. At Twenty First Group we partner with rightsholders and broadcasters to leverage our engineering and analytical capabilities to meet their audience and commercial objectives. 

TFG’s Intelligence Engine houses proprietary IP and powerful simulation capability providing partners with the opportunity to exploit their investments made in data collection services by adding advanced insights and enhanced storytelling capability downstream in the value chain. 

We were delighted to collaborate with long term client Sky Sports to launch the Strike Meter at The 150th Open Championship. The pursuit of simplifying and contextualising a tee shot with a 0-100 rating, belies the data science and engineering feat of ingesting launch monitor data on impact (think ball speed and launch angles), running it through TFG simulation models to predict the performance outcome and sending a single data point to the graphics solution for integration in the live broadcast. There is then the small matter of ensuring all of this takes place in less than 1.5 seconds, prior to the ball reaching its apex – ample time for the commentary team to build narrative.

Augmenting live sports broadcasting with the integration of real time performance insights is integral to celebrating the brilliance of athletes, magnifying the jeopardy that makes sport the most compelling form of unscripted entertainment, and the basis for new inventory to commercialise.

Twenty First Group is proud to support the most innovative sports organisations, we are deeply committed to helping our clients get ahead and stay ahead.

By Dan Zelezinski