How Video is Changing Football: Integrating Game Analysis and Fan Engagement

 

Soccer has long ago turned into a media business with multi-billion dollar turnovers. However, the main share of revenues goes to the leading clubs, leaving the rest of teams with a crumb from such a big pie. The startup BigBro.AI Sports intends to change this situation.  

 

As of 2024, the global value of sports media rights has reached more than $62 billion (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453558/global-sports-media-rights/).  Soccer is the leading sport in terms of media rights value, accounting for 34.4% of the total (https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/11/27/global-value-of-sports-media-rights-nears-56-billion-sportbusiness-report-reveals/). Unfortunately, not all sports organizations can claim a significant part of these funds. The English Premier League (EPL) expects a year-end revenue of $10 billion from the sale of media rights. Broadcasters invest huge sums of money to create a product that attracts viewers around the world. 

 

At the same time, medium and small leagues, tournaments and clubs are often left out of the marketing mix. Amateur and children’s sports only dream of earning their income from media rights without even being able to market themselves. The startup BigBro.AI Sports intends to radically change the situation. Its founder, Tikhon Fiseisky, talks in an interview about how his company is bringing the future closer, where every children’s or amateur club has access to tools for creating attractive content.

Tikhon Fiseyskiy, CEO BigBro.AI Sports

Tikhon Fiseyskiy and Giorgio Chiellini. World Football Summit, Seville, September 2024

 

Tikhon, first of all, I would like to understand: why and when did soccer turn from a “game for workers” into a full-fledged media business?

In 2018, Manchester United executive vice-president Ed Woodward said that the club’s financial performance was not dependent on results on the pitch. Those who ridiculed him seem to have missed the point. Certainly a club’s success on the pitch pushes the whole business forward. But in today’s world you can’t bet everything on wins alone. Media has become the source of money on which the leading top leagues are built – with strong competition and interest from all over the world. 

I don’t just see soccer as a mass phenomenon. For me it is also a business with its own rules. The specifics of team sports are such that the number of prizes is very limited. The winner gets everything. In classical business parameters, if economic success depended only on sports results, no one would invest in such enterprises. So why do we now have another boom of big deals on acquisition of soccer clubs by American and Asian investors? Because soccer is a media business. And no other way around it. It is the active presence in the media space that allows clubs not to depend on sports results. 

We live in the era of video first or even video only, when the video format has become the key way to consume content. I am sure that today soccer organizations – whether they are professional clubs, youth academies or even participants in amateur tournaments – simply cannot afford to ignore the media. Otherwise, they will be out of the game in every sense.

It’s hard to argue with the fact that media focus and analytics are becoming key factors in the success of the sports business. But why do clubs outside the top tier struggle to implement high-tech solutions? 

Today, given the big budget differences “the rich get even richer”. The stratification between clubs that invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in analytical tools and professional staff and everyone else is only getting worse. 

The paradox is that our conversations with representatives of the soccer market confirm that everyone understands that data and analytics are vital tools in the work of a modern soccer organization. And at the same time, the market is still not ready to offer affordable and effective tools. We faced this problem ourselves when we were looking for a solution for video analysis of practices and games in our network of soccer schools (previous project of the founder BigBro.AI Sports – editor’s note). We couldn’t find anything effective at a reasonable price. That’s how our project started. 

Take a look at who has been winning the Champions League trophy for the last 10 years. You will see that the same teams reach the semi-final stage, with rare underdogs. The Super League ideas didn’t come from nothing – the stratification wants to be made official. We at BigBro.AI Sports really don’t like that prospect. We want sports to remain a competition of skill, not budgets. That’s why we strive to give an affordable product that is as good as (and in many ways better than) other offerings in terms of quality. One of the tenets of our work is to give you the opportunity to get the most out of any quality video. 

But it is not only the issue of budgets that hinders progress. We see a certain conservatism in certain parts of the market. Not all teams outside of tier-1 follow a data-driven approach to running a soccer business. They often don’t have a dedicated analyst, this function is taken over by an assistant coach, and the budget for technological implementations is limited. Add to that the fact that any integration requires technical experts on the client side. And my experience is that there are usually even fewer engineers on the team than analysts.

Our goal is to minimize the effort required by a soccer organization to get value from our products. No complex integrations with radar equipment around the field or installing a dozen cameras. We work with any video, returning a useful product – both in analytics and media – in the shortest possible time.  

There is an understandable explanation for this inertia: soccer organizations are not technology companies. Am I right in thinking that this is one of the reasons why many people do not dare to try it – it is technically difficult?

You’re right. There are several technical tasks that need to be accomplished to get results. Primary data collection is the main technological challenge in our segment.  It’s where everything starts. It’s also where a lot of people end up. 

There are several different approaches to data collection. Large event-data providers often use manual detection, where a live person records certain events on the soccer field. Here, technological innovation is centered on the convenience of “collectors”, but I consider this branch of development to be a dead end – technology makes it possible to get rid of manual work almost entirely. 

The second major segment is trackers that collect data on a player’s physical activity. Trackers are placed on the body of athletes and show a full picture of his condition – under stress and during recovery. 

The third segment in which we work is data collection using video. We consider this branch to be the most promising. First of all, it is the most technologically advanced. I believe that in the distance, software wins over hardware. Right now, we see how the development of AI and LLMs accelerates our work many times over. Second, through video, we seamlessly collect both types of data – fitness and event. Whereas the solutions described above require augmentation. And any combination of data from different sources carries the risk of error. 

Answering the question about the data source is where the analytics work begins.

   

Data is widely referred to as the “new oil.” Are they really that important? Sometimes it seems that the abundance of metrics only distracts from finding simple answers.  

I sometimes wonder if we are living in the Matrix. No, I’m not talking about Wachowski-style simulations, but about the fact that everything today is a source of data. Our conversation, the newspaper article and, of course, the video. Technological breakthroughs have allowed humanity to move from blind faith in the existence of this data to collecting, analyzing and applying it. The boom of artificial intelligence, which has been “fed” gigantic amounts of information, is a better confirmation of the trend. Is data the new oil? I would rather compare it to gold and the next “gold rush” to mine it.

What matters to us is not the data itself, but the value it can bring. A video taken at a soccer game or during practice is data too. Our initial idea and our proposal was based on using video more as a supporting tool to analytics. Yesterday I watched a video of a coach explaining to a U11 team player on the BigBro.AI Sports platform the intricacies of his game, reinforcing questions and encouraging the child to self-analyze. Each thesis about the young athlete’s actions on the field is accompanied by a video fragment, where the words are supported by a picture. This is a very handy tool for clarification. Data serves the coach here. 

We talk a lot about data. But when we talk about the audience, the “juicy” picture comes first. So the focus should be on visuals rather than data? Does data help to create a quality media product? 

As I said above, video was originally part of the analytical toolkit. But we decided to free video inside BigBro.AI Sports from the stigma of being an “analytical tool”. I’d like to say we came up with it ourselves during another epiphany, but no – it was pointed out to us by the market. You are absolutely right in suggesting that fans want a vibrant media product. Unfortunately, not all clubs are able to provide it.

We received a clear signal from dozens of clubs and leagues on an effective tool for creating media content. I am glad to say that the BigBro.AI Sports team developed such a product in two months. 

It helped us a lot that thanks to the data we “know” everything that happens in the frame. This opens up a wide range of possibilities to saturate the original picture with effects and data. You can’t even imagine how excited young soccer players are when they see clips of their best moments with animations of the ball flying or the power of the kick. These are very important emotions that lay the foundation of passion for the game.  

Data opens up limitless possibilities for us to identify key episodes of the game. Data allows us to move from seeing a “picture” as a series of static scenes to a story, to a complete story filled with physics and emotion. We don’t just “paint” the video, we fill it with meaning, putting the soul of soccer into short stories.

You’ve emphasized highlights, short videos a few times. Why this particular format? Is it the market’s demand or your internal limitations?

Video now plays a fundamental role in working with fans. We are seeing several global trends in media content consumption that are affecting soccer as well. Clip mentality, supported by the popular formats of modern social media, is the strongest of the phenomena. An acquaintance of mine once said about the reasons for the relative unpopularity of European soccer in the U.S., “Americans are not willing to spend two hours of their lives watching a competition where 2 goals are scored.” It sounds like a joke, but it describes quite clearly the attitude of fans who today expect a high-density spectacle. And then there is soccer, with its popular 1:1 score, and basketball, where the score often exceeds two hundred points. Isn’t that what explains the explosive growth in popularity of the NBA?

Soccer is adapting. I believe that one soccer goal is worth dozens of points in basketball. But modern and especially new viewers aren’t willing to wait an hour for that moment, watching a dull shuffle in the center of the field. That’s why the driving force of soccer in the media has now become highlights, and all over the world as mushrooms after the rain grow media-leagues. Spectacles come first. If you are not in the media, including social media, you lose. To say more, you practically don’t exist. This is not my opinion, this is the demand from the modern fan – he wants highlights, he is not ready to wait for them for a long time: neither when watching the broadcast, nor after it. I’m sure that the world of broadcasting has already come to the realization that highlights should appear in the media instantly. This doesn’t prevent broadcasts from selling, it’s necessary for them to sell.  

Could the inequality that currently exists in soccer and its media part be overcome by technology? Look into the future – what changes await us?  

Soccer has already turned into a media business. It’s just not evenly so far. We are used to watching top-level soccer with a lot of statistical reports and a lot of cameras – that’s the modern media product that viewers around the world buy. They won’t settle for less. But technology at top matches is just the tip of the iceberg. We at BigBro.AI Sports are a bit of dreamers. We really want any local children’s or amateur tournament to be streamed live in the near future. And it won’t just be a dry display of game events – young players and amateurs will get statistics and personalized halites, and viewers will be maximally engaged thanks to visuals and interactive tools. This is exactly what we are aiming for. 

I believe that in the next 5 years, it will be video that will be the main source of data. Here everything will depend heavily not only on the development of Computer Vision and AI technologies, I place a very big bet on the progress of communication technologies and 5G.  All of this will lead to the fact that the delay between an event on the field and the moment when the associated media product reaches the consumer will inexorably strive for zero. This will affect all aspects of the game – both the consumption of content by fans, in which there will be more interactivity, and the management. VAR in its current form kills the spirit of soccer, the emotion of scoring a goal – the decision is taken unacceptably long (by the standards of the modern world) and is often wrong. Technology will allow us to react to the event in real time – the flag about “offside” will either be raised instantly, or will not be raised at all.

The video will be handled by everyone in the soccer community. Already we are seeing interest from leagues – they are pioneering this process. Our contracts with QJ League and StarLive confirm that the leagues want to get the most out of video, both as a media product and analytics. But we go even further and quantify our market not in clubs or leagues – but in players. FIFA talks about 270 million soccer players worldwide. We’re talking about athletes at all levels. And every one of them is part of the media market, be it a superstar with hundreds of millions of followers or an amateur who shares snippets of his game with a dozen friends. We think in terms of players, moving from them to larger forms – clubs, academies, leagues. These are all parts of the soccer media market. I’m sure the individual player will become an increasingly key part of soccer.

What role will partnerships with broadcasters, platforms or analytics companies play in shaping the future of video-based soccer? Will they not hinder this revolution?

I expect a democratization of offerings in all segments of the market. During the World Football Summit, we met dozens of companies that offer media creation tools and/or analytics to clubs. AI tools will continue to develop, so the entry threshold for new players will only decrease – the end consumer will benefit. We have defined a clear strategy for ourselves: we perceive other market players not as competitors, but as potential partners. They all have their own strengths. At BigBro.AI Sports, our strength is turning video into data – we continue to invest resources in this area. I am confident that by keeping the solution relevant and its competitive advantage, we will be of interest to all market players – from soccer organizations to broadcasters. We believe in partnerships that will be beneficial to all. And the main beneficiary of this is His Majesty Soccer.  

Finally, I would like to ask a question: why are you focusing on the bottom of the soccer pyramid? It seems that the key money is at the top of it. 

“Democratization” of services is often misunderstood as a forced sacrifice of quality for the sake of a low price. For us, it’s not a matter of tough choices: amateurs/kids or rich top clubs. We want analytics and content creation tools to be available to everyone. This is important to keep the competitive spirit alive.   

The task of creating a level playing field looks very difficult. Balance can only be achieved with a comprehensive approach – financial fair play is one important part of it. It is a restriction from above. We at BigBro.AI Sports focus on the opposite process – development from below. We believe that this approach will allow soccer to maintain its status as the most popular sport in the world. For us, this is not an empty sound.