City Football Group Sign Worldwide Deal with SAP

[Damocles]

http://www.mcfc.co.uk/News/Club new... Group take the beautiful game into the cloud

SAP SE and City Football Group (CFG) today announced a global, multiyear marketing and technology partnership that will transform the way the ownership group and its football teams operate and perform, from the boardroom to the pitch.
SAP will become the official 'Cloud Software Provider' and a trusted technology advisor of City Football Group and its four clubs around the world, including Manchester City FC (Men and Women), New York City FC, Melbourne City FC and Yokohama F. Marinos.

Khaldoon al Mubarak, Chairman of City Football Group, commented: "This partnership is as important as it is broad, stretching across all entities within the City Football Group.

"In SAP we have found a technology partner that is committed globally to our businesses and one that shares our constant drive for innovation.

"Our common ambition is to create groundbreaking football specific technology solutions and products and I have every confidence that we will be successful."

Bill McDermott, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE said: "City Football Group is one of the most innovative and technology-driven football organizations in the world.

"We are so proud that SAP HANA and our cloud solutions will be enabling City Football Group’s vision for supporting the players and coaches while completely reinventing the fan experience."

City Football Group and its clubs will implement a wide variety of cloud-based solutions powered by the SAP HANA® platform with the aim to simplify their world-wide operations, scale their business, increase productivity and enhance the fan experience.

Another key element of the partnership will be the collaboration to co-innovate and develop new applications to analyze and improve performance on the field for players and coaches.

Business Operations


To further expand globally and improve operational efficiencies across all clubs, City Football Group will utilize cloud solutions from SAP, including SuccessFactors® solutions, the SAP® Jam™ social software platform and the SAP Simple Finance solution powered by SAP HANA, to enhance talent management and HR processes and drive more collaboration worldwide.

Analytics solutions from SAP, including SAP Predictive Analytics software and SAP® BusinessObjects™ business intelligence solutions, will be the center of CFG’s new information infrastructure to put 'information at your fingertips' in order to analyze and simulate all data from ticketing to merchandising to allow decision makers across the organization to make faster and more informed decisions.

Fan Engagement


A variety of SAP solutions will be leveraged to enhance the fan experience in CFG team stadiums around the world, including an interactive digital insights wall at the Etihad Stadium that will bring real-time analytics and insights to fans attending matches.

SAP and CFG will change the way that fans of CFG teams access and consume football data, allowing them to look at the game differently and understand it in the most relevant way.

To provide an even better experience for fans, CFG will use SAP solutions for customer engagement and commerce and customer experience management software from hybris, an SAP company.

Player and Team Performance


Looking forward, City Football Group will co-innovate with SAP on new technological enhancements in the areas of talent management, football performance and human performance for future versions of the SAP Sports One Solution.

As the first sports-specific cloud solution powered by the SAP HANA platform, SAP Sports One provides users with a single, unified platform to manage their individual teams and players efficiently, as well as analyze and contextualize data from different sources and in various formats for new insights for performance optimization.

The partnership with CFG builds on a growing portfolio of relationships throughout football around the world and continues SAP’s strategy of working with sporting organizations that showcase SAP technology.

Last summer, SAP and the German National Team (DFB) co-innovated on the development of SAP Match Insights, using SAP HANA, which enabled the team to collect and analyze player data during training to help them secure their fourth World Cup Championship.

Outside of football, SAP transforms sport by successfully collaborating with a number of well-known sports organizations and associations in ice hockey, sailing, golf, Formula 1 racing, cricket, American football, baseball, tennis and basketball.

Interesting deal, especially the last part about continuing the development of the Sports One system.

 

[Damocles]

380,000 players in our DB ran by our global team now.

 

[petrusha]

Interesting stuff. Are SAP sure, though, that the Marwood Twitter account they reference is genuine?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Bit harsh on Navas calling him a Sap.

 

[Damocles]

Interesting stuff. Are SAP sure, though, that the Marwood Twitter account they reference is genuine?

Ha, pointed that out to them!

I must admit that since talking to Richard Ayers a few years ago, I was surprised in how little information management was done in football and how they seemingly couldn't find a way to use all of the data they had. It wasn't that long ago that they pumped out a whole season's worth of player performance data to the public and said "fuck it, you find something to do with it" though they didn't seem to handle that very well.

 

[aguero93:20]

Better sponsors for the rags surely?

 

[Damocles]

Periscope of the press conference is here:

https://www.periscope.tv/w/aGuhzTkyNzY2OXwzNTMzNDQ4MDZLYYESxpnKjJRChL87iABa4aMMqbtI9iAS6tosndQX

All paraphrased though trying to quote exact words where I can

Soriano: "The CFG is unique, nothing like this has been done before. We are the only football club who is truly global and that presents challenges, it is not easy".

Soriano: "We have a vision for men and women's football and we will bring that to life in Manchester, Melbourne, New York and Yokohama. We will win and we will do it playing beautiful football."

Soriano: "The second point is important. Technology will allow us to play better football. This has been a theory for a long time and managers used to be reluctant about numbers and data, but now I am seeing it on the pitch especially with our coaches, that there is a new acceptance that we need to find new ways of understanding the game, designing the games and constantly finding new ways to win. Everything will help us be more successful and to play more beautiful football."

Soriano: "So what can you expect from us going forward? You can expect us to keep innovating and keep trying new things. This is core of who we are. We will make mistakes but we will also make breakthroughs, pushing the limits of technology, business and football is what makes us special. We will never be afraid to try new things and there is no limit on what we can achieve."

SAP bloke: "I know the City Football Group is the most innovative and technologically driven football in the world. Together we can transform how technology is used in the sports eco-system, from ticketing, merchandising, improving the fan experience and of course on the pitch. "

SAP: "When it comes to the fan experience, we feel that we can help personalise it better. What they do and don't like. And more and more they like statistics, comparing players, debating who is better. We think that we can help add to this, football fans at the stadium can benefit from the organising of this data to get what the fans really want and really want the club to do"

SAP: "We have to use the data to help the players, find their strengths and weaknesses, build up profiles on opposition players. There is lots left to be done here - especially in places like talent identification and injury prevention, capturing the data to show data driven figures that will allow them to understand better in the training sessions to play better at the weekend"

Marwood shows video about City Football Services. City Football Services provided resources solely to Man City but now is providing knowledge and services across the whole group. It focus on three parts - player performance, human performance, talent management. Sounds like it is a knowledge based consultancy department which NYCFC/Melbourne/Yokohama hire to help them achieve the growth City has. They also talk about how they hire world leading researchers to find where the future of the game is going and start developing plans.

Marwood: "We (CFS) represent over 100 staff across the world"

Marwood: "I'll describe some trends to show where we can improve - in performance we've seen an evolution in tactics since the 1800s, things have changed. It is becoming more science and data driven. We are searching now for the next tactical trends, what is the next breakthrough? "

Marwood: "Every season across the group we record over 2000 coaching session and review 900 games to present 450 game plans. This gives 1600 session reports for our players to work through with their digital coach. "

Marwood: "Our current data includes 80 years of biographical data, 380,000 players, 26 full leagues worth of performance and technical data from each game and over 20,000 reports annually by over 40 scouts in the CFG. It's a lot of data."

Marwood: "As players are becoming more expensive it becomes critical to learn most about players as early as possible, allowing us to work smart. Being first to the market and getting the decision right is now the most important thing."

Marwood: "Each season we have 70,000 tests on our players and will treat 250 injuries. When we see MCFC have the least amount of days lost in a season like last year, we know we are working on the right track to truly understand the effects of our training on the players. Using SAP we can record this and spread this across the group and can co-innovate."

Marwood: "3 topics will represent game changers in football - live player tracking. Melbourne will fit live tracking devices during competitive games to their players which will provide a revolution in data to coaches and players. Human science - individual and team applied sports psychology is helping to break down cultural issues and we have a team of people dedicated to this at City. Innovation - we have a designated team of people at City who wake up every day and think "what is the new thing over the next 10 years" and they will innovate faster and smarter than any of our competitors"

Another SAP Bloke comes on and talks more about how it's great. Mainly about how the planning software will help things and how the financial management tools will help organise. They say City will use SAP tech from the boardroom to the pitch. In this partnership SAP wants to see Ferran in their marketing in a few years surrounded by trophies and telling people how SAP helped his business become more successful. They say that a deal like this hasn't been done before but they believe that SAP and CFG share the philosophy of co-innovation and as partners together they will set the benchmark for the world of football (they worked previously with the German National Team).

 

[vonksbignose]

380,000 players in our DB ran by our global team now.

Each individual club in the group is represented on that map by their badge (and the CFG logo in the case of the group's base in Abu Dhabi).

There seems to be an extra club badge over the West Africa region? Does anybody have any ideas what club this relates to, or whether there is another imminent announcement of a new club being brought into the fold?

 

[Matty]

Each individual club in the group is represented on that map by their badge (and the CFG logo in the case of the group's base in Abu Dhabi).

There seems to be an extra club badge over the West Africa region? Does anybody have any ideas what club this relates to, or whether there is another imminent announcement of a new club being brought into the fold?

I thought maybe that was Sierra Leone, where we definitely have a presence, however I think Sierra Leone is actually further to the west than that symbol. Looks like it's in the Nigeria/Ivory Coast kind of area of the map.

 

[Matty]

This kind of thing, introducing technology to benefit the supporters, matchday goers, but also the first team, from player performances, to fitness strategies and player recruitment, is definitely the way forward for modern football. It's pretty exciting to see City actually leading the way in this kind of thing, it can only result in more success long term for City.