"We are knowledge oriented and have a burning desire to see our clients succeed" - Interview with Philip Jackson, CEO of Sportstec Limited

If there's one element of sport that has grown exponentially along with the global growth in demand for sports, it is sports analytics. Teams across various sports and countries look for the ultimate competitive edge and hence turn to analytics for it.

Sportstec is the world leader in providing exactly this sort of advantage to sporting teams. And at the helm of it all is New Zealand’s Philip Jackson.

Philip is the Managing Director and majority shareholder of Sportstec Limited, a global company delivering technologies (developed in-house) for the performance analysis market. The company has offices established in NZ, Australia, Malaysia, USA, Canada, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and UK, at the same time establishing a distribution network in 22 countries around the world.

With over 9,000 clients worldwide, Philip has created the leading performance analysis company in the world.

Managing some key customer accounts for the Indian arm of Sportstec is Venugopal Rajagopalan, Manager-Sales & Training - Sportstec India.

Venu is responsible for business development and training at Sportstec India Pvt. Ltd. He is also responsible for helping high performance teams and coaches develop and enhance their sports performance. Being a sports enthusiast, he decided to chase his dreams and move into the sports domain where he could utilize not only his knowledge about sports and his analytical and writing skills, but also his business acumen.

We caught up with Philip and Venu for a brief interview:

Philip Jackson, Managing Director, Sportstec

How did the idea of Sportstec come about? Can you tell us a little bit about how the company was founded?

It came about in 1999 as a result of some work with the Otago University for their rugby program. So it started with that - our aim was to try and provide sports performance analysis for various sports - cricket, ice hockey, you name it - and we wanted to be the best in the world at it.

At the time, there wasn't a similar product in the market; there was one, but it was I think in Australia and restricted to the country. So we wanted to cater to a more global clientele.
So we started off in New Zealand where people are just absolute sports nuts. There is a major obsession with sport in the country and it worked well for us.

What was the first product that you developed?

The first product we developed was for field hockey umpires in Australia. There were other products available, but they used to function on a more linear basis. Ours was the first non-linear offering and it helped improve the umpires' decision-making and communication with the players to a great degree.

Sports is a field that has gradually evolved over the years with newer additions every decade. The advent of television has changed many things and there are increasingly more and more stats that the fans can see and process. But an often unseen part of the sport is the statistics that improve performance for the teams. How was this market when you entered (valuation and size) and how do you see it progressing?

I think from the time we started off, to what it is now, the industry has grown by a 10 factorial multiplier. The technology has become cheaper, meaning not the software that we provide, but the hardware necessary to use and run analytical software has come down. So that's something that has helped the industry grow.

Sports analytics is big; to give you a small example, initial research in America showed that the sports market there was 10 times larger than the automotive industry! Now that is some serious size. So that's the thing - there is huge demand for sports analytics right now in both established as well as emerging markets.

Stats can roughly be divided in two - you have your retail stats and your coaching stats. The retail stats are the ones that you guys see on television and the various websites. The coaching stats delve a little bit deeper into the elements that a coach wants to see, and that's the demand we cater to.

So yes, the scope is huge for that industry.

What is the broad scope of operations of Sportstec?

Sportstec aims at providing top-level assistance basically and our vision is to be able to provide a learning tool. We want to help the coach be a better coach, help put a pilot through the paces with our pilot training, and similarly for the fire service and other industries. The company vision is about nurturing constant improvement in our clients.

Which sporting domains do you currently cater the most to?

We have a huge list of clientele in domains like rugby (all major rugby playing nations), field hockey, basketball (28 teams out of the top 30 NBA teams), football (almost all European and English premier league teams) and also other sports like volleyball, netball, cricket (West Indies, New Zealand, New South Wales), tennis (Tennis Australia, Roger Federer, Andre Agassi).

Can you name some of the top teams that have enlisted your services?

We have on board the American National Basketball team, All Blacks Rugby, West Indies Cricket Board, Manchester United, Hockey India. We have tied up with some of the major football federations in the world like Brazil, Portugal, Spain. So you know, we could have a potential World Cup winner on our hands. We have about 28 of the 30 NBA teams in the United States on our client list as well.

You have mentioned a few organizations as corporate partners. Who are your main corporate partners and how have they helped support the venture?

We have stats provider Opta with us. They're one of the best in their field and they are a really crucial partner as our chief stats provider and also they provide us an integration system which helps combine the data that we capture with their analytical insights.

There are two elements to game statistics - there is the game element, and then you have the coaching analysis. On average there are close to 200k/300k data points that are collected in a game and these inputs to the coaches help greatly in performance analysis. Teams can then take the ones they want and discard the ones they don't want.

And likewise, as far as education partners are concerned, who are the major partners and what sort of knowledge transfer have you benefited from thanks to these alliances?

We have tied up with numerous universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. These universities help in performing a cause-effect performance analysis. So not only do they help from an educational standpoint, but they're also offering courses on this particular subject. So they are actually providing the industry with specialists who come out of these universities fully prepared to understand the analytics and the technology being used. And the sports field now wants people who come in ready so that there isn't a great deal of time spent on educating them on the nuances again.

Venugopal Rajagopalan, Manager – Sales & Training, Sportstec India

What are the various products that you offer, if you can offer a brief run-through of each of them?

SportsCode, our basic product, is being used by volleyball leagues Europe, in Four Nations, Six Nations rugby, NBA teams in the US and also by other major teams in field hockey, tennis, football and cricket across the world.

Then there is Sportstec Exchange: This basically provides the knowledge repository to a team immediately after a game as against perhaps four days later if you were to make a DVD and send it across. This is our workhorse product, one that doesn't get too many eyeballs, but is very effective. It has a web-based stream share option.

Then you have Studio Code which is a capture, code, analyse tool.

There's SportsTec Player - which provides quickly engaging reports in minutes.

Coda/iCoda - Powerful data collection tool, non-video though.

Trak Performance - Manual tracking system where you can entirely focus on one player. You can use it to check and correlate a player's heart rate and peak performance level for example.

Do you organize events to spread the word, not only for promulgating your own product, but also from a standpoint of championing your industry?

Yes, there is something called the Global Sportstec Innovation Conference (GSIC) which this year is happening at the Tower of London. It is funded by us and organized by us. It is about the industry informing the industry on latest developments and having an appraisal of how things are progressing. We will be having personalities like Les Reed, who is a coach with Sunderland football club, Gary Gold, a former Springbok assistant coach, and then we have another sports researcher from Turkey who has developed a particularly effective scouting department to look at the opposition team using which his team has gone on to win the Turkish championship.

We noted from your website that Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski of Duke) is one of the coaches that have taken up your products. He is one of the most renowned coaches in the basketball circuit in the United States thanks to his work at Duke and with the US National team, and he's been known to be masterful at implementing process-based programs for improving his teams with the help of analytics. How has the experience been working with him, and can Sportstec be considered a huge part of how he has been able to sustain his success?

Oh absolutely! Coach K is a very special member of the Sportstec family and was one of the earliest adopters of our products in the basketball world. The product has helped his support staff a great deal with their coaching. One of the key things he's done with the US national team is build accountability. The US team was earlier all about a collection of superstars who just went out and won you a game based on their individual talents and were rarely questioned when they didn't perform. Now, Coach K can identify and highlight a particular aspect of a player's play and highlight to him exactly where he needs to improve. He has used analytics to bring these superstars around and instill responsibility.

And as for his school, Duke partners only with the best. And for them to select us as the best performance analysis provider out there is just a huge endorsement.

What is your USP that you reckon differentiates you from other similar service providers?

Sportstec globally has the most passionate set of people working towards delivering the best performance analytics tools available. Our products are the best in the world; without a good product, there is nothing. We are knowledge oriented and we have a burning desire to see our clients succeed. And I think our clients recognize that and hence favour our partnership.

Coming to the India connection, what are the clubs and teams that you work with? And what sort of set-up do you currently have in place in the country?

We have a direct operation running here. It is 100% owned by Sportstec and we've been here for about one-and-a-half years now. We are not using resellers. Here, we are still in our infancy stage, the market is just getting established right now. About five years down the line, we will look at adding distributors to better get our product around.

As far as clients go, we have Hockey India (HI) on board; they use SportsCode, iCoda. We have the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and also some of the clubs from the I-league, including the champions this year, Bengaluru Football Club (BFC),  as well as Dempo and Salgaocar sports clubs. Apart from this, we had about four teams from the six participating in the Hockey India league using our products. Ranchi Rhinos, the winners of the inaugural edition of the tournament, were proud users of our SportsCode product.
In this history of technological advancements, one innovation or value addition has constantly spawned off another. Looking ahead, what innovation or spin-off do you think analytics in sports can spawn in the coming years? (Or other advancements in the way we see and understand sport)

I think the filtering down of data points, so as to arrive at the most crucial one in no time is something that the industry will move towards. Right now, there is a lot of information that you get from our tools and it takes time for the coaches and other end users to skim through it. So perhaps, in future, the tools will be equipped to tell you, say if there are a 100 insights that you garner, what the top 20 or the 20 most important insights are. Then of course there's 3D reconstructive video and all that too.

All Square at the Bernabeu

Real Madrid had to settle for a 1-1 draw in the 1st leg of their Round of 16 clash against Manchester United in the UEFA Champions League. Sir Alex Ferguson fielded a surprisingly attacking XI with Robin van Persie, Wayne Rooney & Danny Welbeck all getting a start along with Japanese international Shinji Kagawa. Phil Jones after his stellar display in containing Marouane Fellaini on Sunday partnered Michael Carrick in midfield.Rio Ferdinand & Jonny Evans made up the central defensive pairing. Jose Mourinho went with French youngster Raphael Varane in central defence along with Sergio Ramos and started his trusted midfield trio of Mesut Ozil, Xabi Alonso & Sami Khedira. Karim Benzema started up top flanked by Cristiano Ronaldo & Angel di Maria.

Off an early opening, Fabio Coentrao signaled an early warning as his right footed shot struck the upright and rebounded safely away from goal. United soaked up the pressure and on 20 minutes took the lead through Danny Welbeck as he connected off Wayne Rooney's corner to head past Diego Lopez in goal. Welbeck had an impressive all round game for the visitors, running at defenders playing off van Persie, pressing when not in posession and as well as chasing back to defend. Madrid equalized 10 minutes later when Cristiano Ronaldo rose magnificently, hanging in the air, to head in an Angel di Maria cross. Both sides fashioned more openings in the half; Welbeck went close to grabbing a second for United flicking a van Persie cross goalwards only for Real keeperLopez to tip it behind while Di Maria & Ronaldo both went close with a couple of sizzling long range drives. Playing in front of a packed Santiago Bernabeu, the home team started like a house on fire playing at a very high tempo and taking the game to United early. 

United managed to wrest some amount of control in midfield in the 2nd half, but Madrid continued to pepper the Red Devils' goal with Khedira, Ronaldo, Di Maria & Gonzalo Higuain all bringing out a save from David De Gea. Spaniard De Gea was outstanding for Sir Alex's team pulling off a string of saves to keep United in the game, one of them an acrobatic clearance off the line with his right leg to stop a Coentrao effort. On the break, United fashioned some sporadic openings. On 73 minutes, RvP latching onto a through ball from Rooney broke into the box and struck a powerful right footed shot that cannoned off the crossbar much to the Madrid supporters' relief. Seconds later, van Persie received an aerial ball over the defence from Jones, but fluffed his finish from 10 yards out allowing Xabi Alonso to make the clearance. 

 The draw means that United have a valuable away goal and go home to Old Trafford level on aggregate. Madrid meanwhile will have to score and try and make the game as high scoring as possible. "It's very special to play against them, I have a lot of respect for them", mentioned Ronaldo in his post match interview adding, "They are a very strong team defensively. We played better and deserved to score more goals". Sir Alex Fergusonpraised the effort put in by his players while acknowledging the value of a draw, "It's a difficult place to come, but the players have dug in and got a good result". The return leg is at Old Trafford in the first week of March.

Juventus Punish Sloppy Celtic to take Strangle hold in Round of 16 tie

Juventus completed the perfect 'Italian Job' as they got the better of Celtic 3-0 in the 1st leg of their UEFA Champions League Round of 16 clash at Celtic Park. Celtic manager Neil Lennon started with Gary Hooper up front with Kris Commons in tow while also starting Nigerian central defender Effy Ambrose who had just returned from the African Cup of Nations. Antonio Conte went with Martin Caceres in place of the suspended Giorgio Chiellini to partner Leonardo Bonucci & Andrea Barzagli in a back 3 while Alessandro Matri & Mirko Vucinic started up front. Celtic egged on by a boisterous home crowd made the early running playing a high-tempo game. Juventus were content on sitting back, soaking up the pressure and playing on the counter. They punished Celtic in the just the 3rd minute of the game, as Matri ran on to a high ball, outmuscling Ambrose to prod the ball towards goal. Kevin Wilson cleared the ball off the line, though replays showed it to have crossed over. The clearance fell to Claudio Marchisio who blasted Juve into the lead. Celtic kept up the pressure and had most of the ball, but lacked any real cutting edge to get past a rock solid Juventus defence. Kris Commons & Victor Wanyama were restricted to taking long shots which Buffon saved with ease. Juventus on the contrary, looked dangerous everytime they got on the ball with Andrea Pirlo directing traffic. He set Vucinic through on one occassion with a delightful through ball and the Montenegro forward rounded the keeper but his cross was cut out by the defender. Celtic's aerial balls into the box too didn't have much effect as the Juve back three of Barzagli, Bonucci & Caceres were equal to the task. The home side had 10 corners in the game to the visitors' 1, but could not capitalize as the Juve defence had a stellar game man marking each Celtic player and were first to every ball that came in. The game slowed down a bit in the 2nd half and on the hour mark, defender Ambrose had a chance to make up for his error with a free header at goal. His effort though was a weak one and it enabled Buffon to save with ease. Juventus then scored their 2nd in the 73rd minute when Lichtsteiner cut in from the left to feed Matri who found Marchisio with a first time pass with the outside of his right boot. Marchisio cut back on to his right foot to beat Scott Brown and unleashed a powerful shot to grab his & Juve's 2nd of the night. The tie was well and truly in the Italians' grasp and Mirko Vucinic added further insurance 6 minutes later when Ambrose, who had a night to forget, got caught in possession by Marchisio who stole the ball and played a beautiful through ball to Vucinic who hit a first time finish to make it 3-0. Juventus became only the 2nd team to beat Celtic on their home ground in European competition, Barcelona being the other.