By David Gold at Bloomberg’s European Headquarters in London
September 19 – Bloomberg Sports is launching a new football analytics tool that will project results across Europe’s top five major leagues, as well as provide a range of data on football teams.
The application, BSports Football, will launch this autumn and will include predictions of games in the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, France’s Ligue 1 and the German Bundesliga.
The new product aims to provide European football lovers with a similarly engaging application to that which already exists in the United States for Major League Baseball and the National Football League, for which Bloomberg provide in depth analytics.
Extensive analysis of key data and figures on every aspect of the game, including league form, will be a part of the application.
The app will be available both online and on mobile platforms for a price of £4 (€4.80/$6.40) per month, and will provide betting fans with a tool through which to make informed decisions on the outcome of matches.
With in-game projection and analytical updates, the analysis is designed to be up to the minute for those who enjoy a bet, and Bloomberg Sports is collaborating with Gala Coral to provide free access to the tool throughout this season for its customers.
“We saw several years ago the momentum really growing both in the US and around the world in terms of interest in statistics and data,” Bill Squadron (pictured above, second right), Bloomberg Sports President, told insideworldfootball.
“That was true not just of the professional level but among fans of sport across the world.
“Maybe it is because people are becoming more comfortable with data as part of the discussion, it is hard to really know why but there is clearly a greater interest in learning more about the sport, getting under the covers and into the numbers.
“We felt at Bloomberg that created an opening for an opportunity for us to really establish a leadership position as we obviously have a global leadership position in financial statistics and analytics.
“We felt we could hopefully obtain the same position for sports.”
Bloomberg already has a fantasy football app, and Squadron sees the latest development as an evolution of that aspect of its business.
“What we are doing with our football applications is to extend that to projecting match outcomes, scores and goals,” Squadron explained.
“That is a slightly different direction but there is still the same underlying modelling and technology that goes into it.
“We wanted people to really be able to sink their teeth into some critical information.”
Squadron also hopes the UEFA Champions League and other European leagues will be added to the app in the future, explaining that Bloomberg’s relationship with statistics provider Opta could be beneficial to achieving that goal.
BSports Football will be seeking to capitalise on the increasing desire of the public to consume football statistics.
Tactical analysis has become more prominent and teams more stats focused in recent years, helped largely by the innovations of organisations such as Prozone, which provides a wealth of performance analysis data to leading football teams.
Prozone’s football data, which provides up to date analysis to the bench during a match, includes vital information on how far a player has run, how much energy they have expended, in addition to technical information such as passes completed.
This helps coaches and managers to make crucial decisions such as substitutions, as well as positional play and tactical changes.
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