Data-Driven Innovation in Football

Speaker A: Welcome to the Power of Data, the podcast by Dun and Bradstreet. Data is everywhere and there is more created every second of every day. Join us to hear ah from leaders unlocking the value of data. Hello and welcome to the Power of Data podcast. I'm Susan McKay, Chief Marketing Officer at Dun and Bradstreet and I'm here today with Rich Cooper, who's the data and insight manager at ah, AFC Bournemouth, the Premier League football club. We're delighted to have you here Rich. Welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, now when we think about data and we think about football, we think about data that fuels football performance when it comes to players, um, shots on goal passes, tackles, et cetera. Uh, but there's also a business side to the data that fuels the customer experience. And I just want to be clear with our audience up front that we'll be talking about the latter today, um, not the former. Um, and I know that people would be very interested in how you ended up in this type of role. It's quite unique. Uh, so maybe we can just start with um, you telling us a little bit more about your background and how you ended up in the football industry.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I mean as a, as an 18 year old I'd never thought for myself to end up in the world of football. I think if I step back it was a series of circumstances. So at school, um, at A levels the thing that I found myself thriving on was actually A level computing. And um, I remember learning how to build like databases and things like that and did really well in my project and that was the first time probably in my school life I actually thought there might be a kind of path for me M so I ended up doing that at A level computing that then led on to doing a degree in it. Um, I still wasn't really sure what I wanted to do at that point but it felt like a good thing to follow on from the computing side of it. So I did a four year degree and the reason that led me to Bournemouth actually was uh, in the third year you had to do a placement year and I wasn't the most organised at that point in my life as a student. And I remember looking at there's a jobs board with all the placement opportunities and the last job that was left pinned on there was one in Bournemouth and it was working for an insurance company and so really I had no choice. That was my kind of destiny. Um, and I ended up taking that job as like a year long placement student and this was the time showing my age. But it was the year of year 2000. And yeah, so I went in a job basically doing year 2000 testing and a bit of database stuff, um, and ended up being there for five years. Um, and that was my first kind of proper job essentially. And I remember really enjoying it there. Moved up to the head office. I was like a senior data analyst at the time. And then randomly while stuck in the car park, there was an accident on the, on the, on the motorway. None of us are g. And I was thinking to myself, there's some plant, some of the plant that I see about traveling. So the next day I quit my job and, and I went traveling for a year which was the quite a nice breaker there. And afterwards I came back, then I got a job at uh, JP Morgan investment bank.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Did that for five years. Really honed my data skills and experience. Um, and again did that for five years and then I had another calling to do something different and then I pivoted and I went to work at an insurance company. Uh, and that was looking at financial crime data.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So that really piqued my interest about spotting trends and patterns, trying to identify criminal behavior. And I loved that role. That was a 10 year role. And then, uh, but that role became redundant and I didn't work for five months. I was looking for a job. Funnily enough actually you used um, a Dun and Bradshaw product at that time at DB and Hoover's ah, database. Uh, we could search companies and research companies and reach out to companies. And so I did this big job search. Couldn't find anything for five months. And then one morning I was offered five jobs in one morning after not having a job for how many months. And I had to choose between financial services, uh, all the kind of sensible jobs. And then I was offered the AFC Bournemouth job and I had to make a call and it was more of a, I guess a head versus a heart. But because I was a supporter of AFC Bournemouth M at the time.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And it was a couple of down the road, I just felt I could do something different. I actually went for that job and that was uh, near about three and a half years ago. So yeah, that's been my journey to date.

Speaker A: Amazing. So I started out as a data geek, which I guess you could say is gold dust these days. Ah, maybe he wasn't in those days. So you're a football fan. It must have been an amazing few seasons for you watching Bournemouth come to the Premier League, hold their space, be way out of the relegation zone. Can you comment as A fan?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I supported the club for 20 years. I wasn't originally a Bournemouth fan, I wasn't originally from Bournemouth, but as soon as I moved to Bournemouth and I started going to the games, I got sucked in. So, um, I started supporting the club in League two. Um, and it's been a real interesting journey observing that from afar and then when you get the chance to step inside that and understand how football works, it's been a really interesting journey. I joined the club in the championship and we went up that year. So it's been a really interesting insight to say to see how it works on the pitch and off the pitch. And the thing I love about data is that you're working with every different department and you really have to understand how the club works operationally as well to be able to work with data. Um, so, yeah, it's been great. I don't think you could have probably foreseen a position where we've had our highest points finish and some of the football we played this year has been the best I've ever seen. And I always remind people, remember this because we're at a real pinnacle at the moment and with the new training, the center, uh, and everything else and the direction the club were going, it's just really exciting times at the moment. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing. Really nice to be a part of, I'm sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been brilliant. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit then because a lot of our listeners will be um, from the corporate world, so they'll be interested in um, how data obviously can fuel their customer experience, improvement and optimization of that. So how would you think that football clubs might differ from your traditional companies when it comes to data usage?

Speaker B: Yeah, having worked in a corporate world for 20 plus years, it was interesting um, going from that world into a sports world. And the main difference is the corporate world is very much more established. So the systems are quite established, the processes are more established. You have quite big teams, you have compliance teams, audit teams, you have data teams, you have operational teams. And everything for me is around fine tuning, uh, things. They say things don't change much when you come into the world of football. If I'm honest, it was quite a bit of a bit of a change and it took me a while to adjust. Um, but the main differences are football. The world tends to be more reactive, more responsive, more agile. So in the corporate world you could maybe spend six months to a year planning for a change of system or an event or something. Else like that with football, one day something can happen and then you suddenly have to pivot and work towards that. And it could be anything, could be a new player signing, it could be suddenly a change of system, it could be a new product that's come to market that needs to be launched, it could be a ticket that we need to sell for a game that's just been put on for three days notice. So it's very much being able to pivot and react to what's happening and not be as forecasting 12 months, two years in the future essentially.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Um, so that's kind of the backend system. What about when it comes to the fans and the spectators, how do you make sure they're getting the best possible experience?

Speaker B: Yeah, we spent a lot of time over the last couple of years investing in systems, uh, and people. I mean the club has grown significantly since my time was there when I, when I first joined. Uh, there's maybe one person in marketing, a couple of people in commercial. So as with the evolution of the club, we have, we have put resource into it in terms of a customer journey. Um, it's understanding where all the touch points data there are and trying to piece all that together and um, and trying to understand all those different data sources. And I'll give you an example, but we do a lot of survey data. We're trying to understand how people respond to the promotions we're doing or the games they're coming to. There's like an annual premier league survey, there's a club survey. Sometimes if you're doing like a women's game, we'll do uh, surveys there. So there's a mixture of data sources. Um, the survey data is quite organic. Um, and it's trying to piece that together with our system data. So we have information about ticketing purchases, we have information about retail purchases, we have information about what time people are renting the stadium. Uh, the challenge is joining all that together.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And in a corporate world you might have big internal data tech teams, um, harvesting all that data, uh, having a big internal data source with us. It's trying to experiment a bit more data and work out what works. Um, and it could be like we have lots of social media data, we understand where our fans are, um, but essentially a lot of it is experimentation, pivoting, um, and just seeing what works and what doesn't work.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it sounds like you're getting a lot of quantitative data, but you need to overlay that with some qualitative data around the fans experience and what they'd like to see more of and so on.

Speaker B: Right, exactly that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so how do you ensure the kind of, through the collection and analyzing process that the data is accurate and up to date?

Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny when people think about data, sometimes I think about all the fancy stuff. Um, in my career and especially at the club, a lot of our time and effort is spent making sure data's right and clean. And fortunately we've got a very small team, there's two of us, but we've got both got a very high attention to detail and making sure things are right. Um, and the issue is sometimes when you're having system data, data isn't always put in correctly or there's data missing. So there's a lot of our job is cleaning, checking, making um, sure that it's all been put together right. There's a lot of kind of stuff going on behind the scenes to make sure that the outcomes are based on good data. Um, so yeah, I mean we're going for a big ticketing, um, migration at the moment and a lot of that is you're taking system data from one system, putting it to a new system and making sure that is good and clean and not using uh, poor quality data. So there's a number of things we can do.

Speaker A: Yeah, including I guess third party sources as well to enhance your data and fill some of the gaps you mentioned.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, and there's lots of different third party data sources we can use to enhance our current data systems. I think sometimes the challenge in the football world is there are ah, so many external data sources, so many companies that want to get into football. Um, and my m, my emails are full of sales pitches, companies promising that they can do this and the other. And a lot of the time it's having conversations with these companies and other clubs and going okay, for this budget, what's going to be our biggest return? You know, we could spend loads of money on different systems but actually what's the marginal gain? And it's understanding one year we may use one system, the next year we may use another system. Um, just to be, yeah, just to work out what works best for the club.

Speaker A: Testing and trying until you get to the right output.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of agility there.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, excellent. And so your competitors must be doing a lot of this, I imagine. I don't think it's unique. Uh, to Bournemouth, um, how much collaboration do you have between your competitors? Do you see this as A competitive differentiator or are there things you can share?

Speaker B: I think one of the things I really love about working in football is the collaboration side. Um, on the pitch, obviously there's, um, competition you mentioned before around. There's the data, the football side of data, and then there's more, the commercial operations side of data. I think it's fair to say on the player side, they're probably not going to be collaborating on data because there's a big competitive edge in terms of our world. We're not necessarily competing for fan base. You support your team, you know, you're not unlikely to support, have two favourite teams. So it's a really, really collaborative space. Um, and one of the things that works so well is the ability to talk to other football clubs and for them to be really, really open about what they're doing and, you know, just some tangible examples, like we have a WhatsApp group with different clubs and somebody might say, we're thinking about this new system. Have you used it? What do you think? Or we've got this particular problem we're trying to solve at the moment and actually what always constantly surprising is how willing other people are to help each other. We've hosted other clubs, they've come down to our club, we've talked through our systems and our data and we've shared our pain points. What works? Well, we've bought products based on other clubs endorsing those products, um, which has been really, really key actually. Um, and there's been other examples. So it's a really good, really nice community. Everyone's really helpful, um, and everyone's really willing to give up the time. Um, and again, it helps. We go to Premier League, um, forums as well and there might be a specialized commercial one, a data marketing one. And again, the encouragement is to collaborate and share ideas together.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So why don't we turn that on its head? Because it's great to hear that there's collaboration amongst the clubs. You might expect that if it's kind of a non compete area. But can data and Data Strategies actually, uh, act as a differentiator? Can it give you a competitive edge if you get it right?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. I think on the commercial side, I think, let's say we're trying to attract new sponsors or partners. I think it's really important. Bournemouth is a club, we have a smaller fan base, um, but we definitely want to be different in terms of being quite creative and play on the fact that we're the location we've got and actually we all got some fantastic staff who can create packs or digital stories to really give an edge over other clubs as well. So I think that differentiator is really important when it comes to commercially and attracting new partners.

Speaker A: That's good. That is good. And that is pretty interesting actually. Um, so if I think about this, then in a way, as a smaller club, you need to be more agile. How do you innovate to kind of take advantage of the fact that you're smaller but you're growing fast?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think.

Speaker A: And you've had a great season.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I think, um, funny enough, we talk about setups at different clubs. There's a corporate element to this, but when I came to football, there was less red tape, there was less, um, the time scopes were less in terms of getting things done. When I speak to people at some bigger clubs, they have sometimes more of a corporate setup and there's more decision makers, whereas we tend to be smaller where we are. Um, and there's pros and cons of that. One of the pros is that we are very agile. And, um, it's always surprised me and really kind of been a great sign. But if we want to do something one day, everyone's very quick to support and get on board. And actually, um, everyone's very close together. We're not in different buildings, we're all in the same building. And it might be a collaboration between marketing and retail or commercial or the media team, and people can get to it really quickly and we just test stuff and we make decisions really quickly. There is a lot of, um, autonomy within the club. You're trusted to get on and do your job. Um, and there's a lack of kind of politics and red tape. And then people are encouraged to experiment and try new things. So there's a real kind of collaborative creative culture at the club and I think that sets us apart and we can do things really, really quickly, um, in a supportive way.

Speaker A: Can you give me some examples of where you're using data to really, um, help progress innovation at the club?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, when I first joined, um, we sent out an awful lot of emails and some, uh, of these weren't particularly well targeted, let's just say. Um, and I realized we had a lot of contacts on our email database that weren't maybe as engaged as they should be. So it may sound simple, but one of the things we really wanted to do is look at marketing preferences and understand our email, um, customer segment base better. So, yeah, we set about, we did a lot of analysis on our email volumes and traffic and understanding who these people were. And we essentially created an email preference center, uh, where people could choose what kind of information they wanted to hear about. So that could be retail, that could have been ticketing, that could have been other things as well. So that was a real collaboration piece with marketing, had a commercial element to it because, um, we could tell we had a lot more of an engaged email database than we had it before. Uh, and that's worked out really well. Our email volumes have gone down, our engagement's gone up, and actually the marketing team has been able to send a lot more specific, uh, content to the people that really want to see it as well.

Speaker A: That's great. And as a marketing person, you can imagine that's music to my ears.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Um, so customization, personalization is definitely the way of the future. And I think technology, AI, data analytics are really allowing us to do a lot more of that personalization. Um, do you see technology and AI kind of playing a role in the future of where you see data headed at the club?

Speaker B: Yeah, AI is a really interesting 1m at the moment, and I speak to a lot of clubs and I speak to a lot of companies around what products there are out there, where different clubs are going. I think the way I'd look at it is you have to build the foundations first and make them solid before you can really make the most out of AI. And when I say about building solid foundations, having a real core data set, knowing your customers, feeding into one central place, your retail data, uh, your ticketing data, uh, your turnstile entry data, uh, your website data. So I think the key thing for me would be AI to build a good data warehouse first, um, because AI is only going to be as good as the data you feed into it. I think there's two elements to AI, I think from a club perspective, I think is about making data more accessible. One of the things that we realize is we probably want to take away a lot of the emphasis on data teams to provide answers to people. One thing I've realized working at the club is people are really curious about data and they have lots of questions. But at the moment, we're the barrier where there's two of us in the data team and it obviously takes us time to respond to requests and generate reports. Whereas in an ideal world, the data would all be there so that anyone can ask a question about the data in a kind of easy to use question tool. And it'd be the AI that can make the most Sense of the data. Also, what I tend to find in the world of football is people know their stuff. Um, and I'm often asked about what bit of data did you tell someone they didn't know? And actually that can be quite a struggle because I found the people at the club are incredibly knowledgeable about what products sell, what email campaigns work, you know, ticketing information. The big challenge will be the unknown unknown. So it's about answering questions people didn't think was a question and giving an answer that kind of really genuinely surprises them and that can be unchallenged in football. So that'll be on the club side and I guess from a supporter side. Again, it's about making data more accessible and they can ask free text questions. And, you know, football fans are very passionate around knowledge and information. And what time's this kicking off, what do I need for that? Or when's the last time we won this? And then there's players data. So there's. There's so many elements that could be put together m with the right tools. But I think generally speaking, clubs are resourcing at the moment, building their data sets before overlaying with any AI. At the moment, some of the bigger clubs are doing a lot of stuff with AI, but probably the smaller clubs aren't there yet.

Speaker A: But you're absolutely right when it comes to fans, I mean, football's like a religion, isn't it? So it's absolutely essential for the data to be right, because if they make the query using a natural language model or, uh, an AI chatbot and what comes back isn't 100% accurate, then you've already lost trust, haven't you?

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: So it's building those front ends on a data warehouse where you're very confident that the back end is accurate, compliant, trustworthy data. Right.

Speaker B: And I think the general point, not just about AI, but other tools, is about running before you can walk. And actually having that integrity is critical. Uh, data quality, um, ensuring that's right first before having too many boltons, that at the moment it's quite difficult to give you a tangible benefit. I think that's the other thing. I think in terms of a club, if you're going to invest money in something, you need to try and understand the so what or the tangible outcome of that. And I think that's quite difficult at the moment with AI.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So the more and more there's the request of, uh, you know, where's the business case? What's the return on investment on this? How can you justify the cost. Um, but it's moving so fast that if you don't move with it, the danger is you'll get left behind.

Speaker B: Exactly. And I think a lot of companies are very. One thing I've noticed that many companies want to work with football clubs. And again, it's trying to choose the right people to work with at the right time. Um, and it's just like coming back to getting your basics right first.

Speaker A: Yeah. Reliable, valid, good, strong data. Um, okay, I've got one question for you, and that's just about surprises. Have you ever been surprised by something that you know, either was in the data set that you didn't expect? You talked a little bit about the unknowns. Ah, I think that's maybe where we are in terms of a critical juncture of the role that data is going to play in the future when it comes to AI, there are a lot of unknowns. Right. So can you talk to some experience you have of either being surprised or where you expect to be surprised in the future? Maybe, yeah.

Speaker B: And maybe I'll counter that to start with that, uh, a lot of our time is spent validating hunches or, you know, like, uh, and I say the, the people who run the different departments know their stuff. Um, and quite occasionally people come to and say, look, we think this is true. Can you confirm this? And I say, m, the vast majority of the time we are, uh, providing data that does confirm things, and I'll give a good example of that. But, um, Alice and my team just spent a good number of weeks, um, on a project on turnstile entry data. Uh, and it's a very thorough piece of work looking at three years of turnstile data. Every, every person that's come in over three years, she knew about it. And we cut it, she's cut it down, she sliced it down by genders, age, distance from ground, season ticket, non season ticket holders, um, away fans, different types of game, premier league fans, non premier league types of fans. And the funny things that we sort of joked about was there wasn't any major surprises other than saying that people are generally coming to the stadium later because of all the stuff we're putting on outside the stadium, like the entertainment, stuff like that. So there's a lot of times we're trying to reinforce a perception or the supporters might say, you know, we're coming in later, or we're seeing this or that. So sometimes good, having the data to back that up. So in terms of the unknown, unknown stuff, that's something that we are uh, trying to look for that golden nugget that people don't know about. But sometimes it's the more simple things that are surprising. And part of my job is every week or I'm looking at new memberships coming in, building up these patterns of seeing, oh, our uh, membership base was 100% UK based four years ago. Now we're starting to get more global fans coming into our normal standard membership. We've got a global membership, this is for our UK membership fan. And there's one particular country that stood out and I don't know why, Chile. I, uh, thought as much as I can try and analyze, I thought, actually I'm going to give myself permission just to get in contact with this person from Chile and say, you're from Chile, um, you've just bought a Junior Cherries membership. What's going on there? And actually sometimes you're just looking at data all the time and you see this anonymously, you just think, I just want to ask the question. And I contacted this fan and it turns out that their son had been playing FIFA and he'd chosen Bournemouth as his team. And then since that time he'd become a big fan. And it actually got to the point where I met him and his son, he coming from Chile and came to the Bournemouth game and I ended up just taking him around Bournemouth in my car and just really getting to know this name that I saw in the data. And it kind of reminded me the power of the kind of global potential that club has got. We're seeing a lot more American fans or generally global fans. Sometimes that's more to do with the players we've got. Sometimes it's to do a documentary on tv, other times it's their son playing FIFA and picking a team. And I remember driving him around to Sandbank, said to me some was in the back and he knew more about Bournemouth than I knew about Bournemouth. He knew all the players names, knew all the reserve team players names. And I think it was just a reminder for me about humanization of data. And it's very easy when you're doing a data job, data job, to see lines and rows and numbers. But actually there's loads of stories behind that data and I think that's probably really crucial with data and storytelling actually. It's not just about the totals and the amounts and what are the stories behind the data. And I think there's probably, uh, a time going forward now where we're really going to try and use data as a bit of a storytelling piece. As well, to bring that to life. Uh, and I think that's going to be one thing I'm really going to be focusing on as well. Yeah.

Speaker A: Now that's exciting. But just tracking back quickly because we talked before about personalization. I don't think your average, uh, Junior Cherries fan club registrant would expect to get a phone call from somebody.

Speaker B: Yeah, they were surprised in the club

Speaker A: business operations to say, why have you signed up? Um, and then that leading to a trip to Bournemouth. So that's pretty unique.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it was just a lesson to me actually. Just if I see stuff that looks different, just do something with it and actually understand the story. And I think, um, there's a lot more stories out there and I think it's just finding those people. And you know, the people I've contacted have been, number one, really amazed that I've contacted them. But number two, just being really passionate about the club.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I sometimes forget, you know, we have lots of very, very, very passionate fans out there all across the world. And yeah, they're more than just a number on the screen. They've had a journey, they've had a story. So, um, yeah, it's just reminded to me is that as a fan myself, it's really important we pick out these, these different stories around the world.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's where you're talking then, the intersection between um, the back office and the front office.

Speaker B: Right, exactly, yeah.

Speaker A: The data and actually the customer experience of the fan. Data experience, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's very exciting. Um, one last question then. M thinking about the future and looking at the data and looking at the trends. What do you think's next for the club?

Speaker B: I think there's in terms of strategy for football, having spoken to other clubs and for our club, it's touching back on that personalization bit is that over the years we've had a small stadium and we tend to have similar behavior. We have a proportion of season tickets holders who have been seasoned holders for a number of years. Um, our fan base is quite steady. We've got lots of people that want to come to more games. But actually it's the personalization bit that's going to be really crucial. So bringing all that data together and building a, uh, centralized place where we can understand the journey of a supporter. So we know, obviously we know they're a seasoning holder. We know that they can buy, they like buying stuff from the shop. They know that they like to come to the ground at this particular time at some point, maybe a loyalty system where, you know, we can see what food they like. And again, it's not from a Big Brother perspective. It's all around personalization and m offering people things that they want to have or would like to have. And actually, just from a marketing perspective, we're starting to tailor things even more. And you could bolt on some AI stuff, some predictive stuff there to say, well, actually, you bought these products, maybe we think you'd like these products. So I think that's definitely the way forward in terms of offering fans offers or more stuff that's personalized to them. You know, some fans that will come to a game at a certain time every week, and we know this through the data. And, um, they don't buy stuff from retail. They don't buy food and drink. There's other stuff that want to buy stuff, but they just don't know it's there, or we may want to offer them a discount or those kind of things. So, yeah, definitely the future is more personalization, understanding our fans better, uh, and offering them products and services that, uh, kind of fit with them. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: So ultimately using data to make smarter decisions, which is what this podcast is all about.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: So, Rich Cooper, thank you very much for joining us today. It's been fantastic.

Speaker B: No worries. Been great. Thank you.

Speaker A: Really enjoyed it.

Speaker B: Cheers. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. Find out more about how Dun and Bradstreet can help your business be better. Contact us@marketinguknb.com and remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts.