Bringing basketball stats to life is no easy feat but thanks to the power of SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP’s leading solution for Analytics, ten finalists did just that at the EuroLeague Basketball SACkathon final round, held recently in Barcelona.
Launched in December 2018, the EuroLeague Basketball SACkathon, a sports data storytelling hackathon, attracted nearly 400 participants across 13 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Students from a wide range of disciplines leveraged SAP Analytics Cloud technology to come up with innovative ways of telling basketball stories using official EuroLeague Basketball data from previous seasons.
Gathering actionable insights about player performance can be a challenge for coaches, especially in the middle of a fast-paced intense game. Using SAP Analytics Cloud, the EuroLeague Basketball SACkathon participants uncovered fascinating insights, such as the fact that 60% of games are won by the home team, while 75% of the games that reach overtime are won by the visiting team.
Sports performance analytics provides players and coaches with real-time information to boost performance while fans can engage with their favorite teams in new and exciting ways.
The ten finalists, broken into five teams of two, were selected based on criteria such as story flow, impact, quality of visualizations, the value of the insights obtained and originality. A jury made up of SAP and EuroLeague Basketball representatives, among them Eduard J. Scott, COO, EuroLeague Basketball and Carlos Diaz, Chief Innovation Officer, EMEA South, SAP, selected the two winning teams:
Team BI SI – Klemen Pozin and Enis Zornic from Slovenia. Their prize: A cash prize of EUR2000 and the opportunity to compete for a seat at the SAP Sales Academy in California.
Team Janusze – Michal Korzen and Slawomir Blazej Bielecki from Poland. Their prize: An opportunity to collaborate with EuroLeague Basketball for three months.
Alex Ferrer Kristjansson, EuroLeague Basketball Brand & Communication Director, commented: “Like many competition organisers around the world, in the past, we have presented traditional statistics captured in-game. With the new possibilities that SAP brings to the table, EuroLeague Basketball hopes to evolve and expand the analysis and presentation of statistics and other player data to our fans, to journalists and to our clubs.”
“No matter what business you’re in, digital innovation is fuelled by data. Organizations that can harness their data to serve customers and improve their business will emerge as the winners in an increasingly competitive digital economy,” added Steve Tzikakis, President, SAP EMEA South. “SAP Analytics Cloud is the predictive analytics technology of choice for SAP customers that want the edge in business intelligence.”
