Digital Transformation of Sports Industry: Why it Matters

Competition coming up within sports and the sports industry itself. A lot of sports are starting to struggle more and more with getting as much publicity as possible. During the past years, the competition by getting a larger audience and more views has started to be focused more and more towards one strategy; the usage of digital technologies. The sports industry started to use more and more technologies, there even have been talking about algorithms being able to predict the winner in some forms of sport.

The most important changes during the past years

There have been major changes in the sports industry. With dominating social media such as Facebook and Instagram, many sports programs have been forced to produce content oriented towards a short attention span. Even though the percentage of people looking at sports or sports news has been constantly increasing since the introduction of sports programs, the length of an average sports article has decreased by a lot. The importance of visuals such as pictures and videos has increased by a lot as it is easier for the human brain to pick up a picture or a short video than reading a text.

Social media in sports is vital. Every single professional athlete has at least a Facebook account, but most will also have Instagram, Twitter, and other social media accounts. With such solid social footprints, athletes have become ambassadors and influencers for their teams’ brands. Professional sports teams can leverage their athletes’ popularity to expand viral distribution of digital assets to give their fan communities the perspectives and experiences they’re looking for and are eager to share.

A very apparent example of digitalization in sport is to be found in Golf. During the last year, brands producing beamers such as BenQ or Optoma have invented a projector for golf simulator, this kind of simulators have been designed to give you a very realistic experience of virtually playing golf.

The popularity of this kind of device has been steadily increasing, as the technology is advancing to a point, whereas the experience of virtually doing sports is getting closer and closer towards doing sports in a real-life scenario.

Transformation of sports on a regional level

Over the last years, even very small clubs have started to use social media in order to increase their traffic. Clubs making videos advertising their programs and activities, offering an online sign up to increase the number of people joining their activities. Furthermore, there are plenty of athletes coming from urban or less well-known sports trying to make a living of social media.

One of the big benefits of the digitalization of the sports industry has been the possibility to make a living off sports without being a top-level athlete. Smaller teams starting their own clothing brand, or asking other brands to be in their advertisements in order to increase popularity. There are several ways being opened up by the digitalization of the sports industry.

The digitalization has been bringing major changes in multiple industries. Some years ago, no one would ever imagine seeing a picture of the best rugby team in the world having lunch before their final match. Advertisements containing images or videos of pro athletes are everywhere to be found. With increasing digitalization, there has also been a mixing up between all sorts of industries. Mobile network providers, popular sites like Facebook, Youtube have started to increase use sports as a way to increase their revenue. There are many changes still to come, caused by digitalization, whether good or bad lies also in the hands of us, the consumer world. Our decisions and needs will eventually shape the way the sports industry is going to change within the next years to come.