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All professional sports teams today collect detailed data on player and team performance, fan behavior, and sales and increasingly use these data to drive decisions about every aspect of the business—marketing, ticketing, player evaluation, and TV and digital media deals. This includes the National Football League (NFL), which is increasingly turning to data to improve how its players and teams perform and how fans experi-ence the game. Since 2014 the NFL has been capturing player movement data on the field by putting nickel-sized radio frequency identification (RFID) tags beneath players’ shoulder pads to track every move they make. The information the sensors gather is used by NFL teams to improve their training and strategy, by commentators on live game broad-casts, and by fans attending games or using the NFL app on the Xbox One. The NFL’s player tracking system is based on the Zebra Sports Solution developed by Zebra Technologies, a Chicago-based firm specializ-ing in tracking technology that includes the bar codes on groceries and other consumer goods and RFID technology. The Zebra Sports Solu-tion system records players’ speed, direction, loca-tion on the field, how far they ran on a play, and how long they were sprinting, jogging, or walking. The system can also determine what formation a team was in and how players’ speed or accelera-tion impacts their on-field performance. Want to know how hard Eli Manning is throwing passes or the force with which a ball arrives in the hands of receiver Odell Beckham? The system knows how to do all that. NFL players have an RFID chip in their left and right shoulder pads that transmit data to 20 radio receivers strategically located in the lower and upper levels of stadiums to collect data about how each player moves, using metrics such as velocity, speed in miles per hour, and distance traveled. From there the data are transmitted to an on-site server computer, where Zebra’s software matches an RFID tag to the correct player or offi-cial. The football also has a sensor transmitting location data. The data are generated in real time as the game is being played. Each sensor transmits its location about 25 times per player. 54 It takes just two seconds for data to be received by the motion sensors, analyzed, and pushed out to remote cloud computers run by Amazon Web Ser-vices for the NFL. From the NFL cloud comput-ers, the data are shared with fans, broadcasters, and NFL teams. Once the data are stored by the NFL, Microsoft gathers and displays the data to fans using NFL.com, the NFL’s social media outlet, and the NFL app on Windows 10 and the Xbox One. The data are also transmitted to the giant display screens in the arena to show fans during the game. The data have multiple uses. NFL teams use them to evaluate player and team performance and to analyze tactics, such as whether it might be better to press forward or to punt in a particular fourth-down situation. Data transmitted to broad-casters, to stadium screens, to the NFL website, and to the NextGen Stats feature of Microsoft’s Xbox One NFL app help create a deeper fan expe-rience that gets fans more involved in the game. While the data may be entertaining for fans, they could prove strategic for the teams. Data markers for each play are recorded, including type of offense, type of defense, whether there was a huddle, all movement during the play, and the yard line where the ball was stopped. The NFL runs custom-created analytics to deliver visualiza-tions of the data to each team within 24 hours of the game via a custom-built web portal. The sys-tem displays charts and graphs as well as tabular data to let teams have more insight. Each NFL team may also hire its own data analyst to wring even more value from the data. Zebra sees other potential uses for the data. For example, more analytics could identify when a player’s performance is likely to flag late in the game and how to improve training to prevent such fatigue. Coaches could use that information to decide whether to pull out a certain receiver dur-ing the fourth quarter or to rely on that player less in a critical moment. Even now the data are giving NFL fans, teams, coaches, and players a deeper look into the game they love.

These are questions, 1. What kinds of systems are illustrated in this case study? Where do they obtain their data? What do they do with the data? Describe some of the inputs and outputs of these systems.

2. What business functions do these systems support? Explain your answer.

3. How do the data about teams and players captured by the NFL help NFL football teams and the NFL itself make better decisions? Give examples of two decisions that were improved by the systems described in this case.

4. How did using data help the NFL and its teams improve the way they run their business?

Answer 1

1. Some of the systems that are illustrated in the case study are player tracking systems. The data are obtained through RFID chips sensors fitted beneath the shoulder pads of players. The sensors record information about player's speed and acceleration, movement, location and direction. The data collected through this tracking system and technology is transferred to NFL cloud computers through Amazon Web Servers. The data is analyzed and transmitted to the NFL apps, social media pages, Xbox One and display screens in the stadiums. The data is shared with the coaches of the NFL teams, the players, game experts and fans . The input is the data collected regarding the player's movements and team formations. The output is shared in the form of player's statistics, evaluation of individual and team's performance with data and metrics related to their game.
   
2. The business functions supported by these systems are improving the performance, creating interest in the audience and engaging them in the experience, sharing of information for better training and performance building techniques, use of technology for business development and greater customer experience. The software enable collection of vital data regarding the player's performance and finding the ways for improvement through analysis, visualization of data in graphs and charts. It shares the data with the live audience, fans and players developing their interest in the game with better understanding and involvement. This helps in promotion and marketing of the players and the game making the whole experience more entertaining and interesting.
   
3. The data collected helps NFL and football teams to analyze their performance by understanding their movement, impact of their speed and acceleration, the areas for improvement and the tactics used in the game for better performance. It has helped NFL in improving the games of the players, supporting them with information and training to make their performance more strategic and effective. It has increased NFL's role and support in the game and building interest through sharing information live during the game and relevant content through apps and social media pages. Two decisions that were improved by the systems used in the case are regarding the strengths and weaknesses of individual players and placing them accordingly in the game. It also helps to decide when the player's performance is lagging and need for training and coaching to improve it
   
4. Using data has helped NFL and its teams to improve the way they run their businesses by using technology and technique. It helps them to analyze the performance, improve their games, provide better training and coaching for competitive performance, creating interests and interacting with the audiences in stadiums, sharing authentic information and content related to the game with fans through apps and social media pages.