Sports Graphics Forum: How data and graphics can be used to enhance storytelling
The role of data and graphics in enhancing storytelling was discussed in depth at yesterday’s Sports Graphics Forum, held in London and sponsored by LIGR.
The session began with Tom Peel, SailGP, director of LiveLine, explaining the unique role data and graphics play for the international racing series.
“There’s a lot of data, and trying to drill through it and actually tell some stories with it is the most important thing. In our world, We’ve got everything from voltages and amps of hydraulic switches on boats and so you have to filter those 3000-odd data points down to something that actually tells a story and makes sense.”
This is even more important for SailGP as there’s no field of play and viewers can’t see all the catamarans at the same time. The team also knew it had to cater to non-sailing fans, so using graphics to explain what’s happening in a clear and understandable way has always been key.
“We use highly precise RTK GPS on the boats, and we can convert that back into real time positions. And so the primary thing we do is set the field of play in AR and VR. But off the back of that, we also are able to do 3D graphics, we’ve got umpiring technologies and race management technology. So everything spins off the central server once you have that level of data.”
Nick Pomeroy, BBC Sport, principal product manager for sport data, picked up on the theme of making sport more accessible through the use of data and graphics and shared how the broadcaster recently released Match Momentum from Stats Perform at scale across its website and app.
“Our job as the BBC is to make content more accessible. Now we could very much use all of the data that Stats Perform Opta provides and put it on the site and just hope it sticks, but I don’t think that would work because of the type of audience we have. We’ve got that element of education, introducing concepts and terminology that some of our audience won’t be familiar with. So, for example, we have tool tips that explain how Match Momentum is calculated. We did a piece with editorial, a deep dive into where it comes from, how it’s calculated. And, moving forward, we want to do something a bit more focused on some of those more complex concepts that Stats Perform provides, but do it in a much more accessible way.
“Traditionally, the BBC has done the basics really, really well. I think over the last 12 to 18 months, there’s been a bit of a shift change from both the product and the editorial side. A lot of the long-form articles that you see will have graphics and embeds and data whether it’s from Opta or from other third parties. I think it’s a testament to how audiences can almost want the competitive edge when dissecting sporting events and stats is such an amazing tool for that. From the product side, we’re probably just leaning into it, probably a little bit behind our competitors. But we want to do a lot more.”
“Data in isolation doesn’t necessarily tell a good story. You need that editorial context, and you need data experts to tell us why it’s interesting”
While graphics have become more informative thanks to the data feeding them, this has created new challenges for graphics operators, as Jodie Butcher, a freelance sports broadcast graphics operator, highlighted.
“When I first started, we didn’t have any data feeds coming in at all, which made our jobs nice and easy. Then slowly but surely, every year there was a new data feed, a new software to use without getting much information on how to use them. It was basically ‘Here it is. It’s in the cloud, just open it up and it’ll work’. I love that we get more data, because it makes my job so much more exciting, there are so many more things that we can put to air, and we can be more creative. But as a graphics operator, it’s not so easy. The rig is the tough part, because we get many data feeds. I work on a lot of tennis, and we can be doing 20 tennis games a day and each needs three data handlers opened. So before you’ve even gone on air, you’ve spent an hour opening all these different softwares just to try and get the data into our computers. It sounds easy, ‘Oh, it’s in the cloud, it’s there, it’s easy to access’, but the way that it’s coming to us as operators isn’t so streamlined. I must say, I like it. I prefer cloud-based software, but it definitely comes with a lot of troubleshooting issues.”
While the panel agreed that the goal of using graphics and data is to enhance the viewing experience, they were also aware that not all stats go down well with fans and too much data can be overwhelming, so what’s the right level to ensure fans are well served?
“I think it depends on the sport you’re viewing,” said Gem Collister, AE Live, web product manager. “So, for me, Formula 1 is all about the data. You want to know what they’re doing behind the scenes, the sport is driven by data, it pulls our picture together. However, there are other sports where to bring more people on or if you’ve got audiences who aren’t as aware of the sport, so things like NFL or ice hockey, having the understanding of why that was a difficult goal or that was a difficult thing to score, you’re going to need to lean on that data to drive another element to that picture and help tell that story a bit better as well.”
Niall Hendry, Stats Perform, VP of AI product applications, highlighted the BBC’s coverage of the Men’s Euros as a particularly successful example.
“There was a passes per defensive action for the Euros and that resonated well, partly because the data is feeding through via an AI drive metric. The data is feeding through, it hits the graphics engine, but there was also a direct line to our data editorial team to give the pundits and the guys on the ground the understanding of why it was interesting, so they can explain it. Data in isolation doesn’t necessarily tell a good story. You need that editorial context, and you need data experts to tell us why it’s interesting.”
The topic of personalisation was also explored by the panel, with the consensus being that there is some way to go before true personalisation can be achieved.
“To orchestrate and fundamentally understand what people want to see, you’re going to have to do a combination of things, like first party data to then allow people to serve up what they want to see,” added Hendry. “But the first forays we’ve got into that are more put a bunch of graphics out in an interactive way and ask people to turn them on and off. I don’t think anyone’s really bridged that gap yet on utilising AI to understand people’s habits and then serving them up. Will it get there? I don’t know. How much control do we all want to give over to that, or not? That’s a debate to have.”