Wintersemester Course

Digitalization in Sports

The winter-semester 2020/21 is in full swing! This week I will start my course "Digitalisaten in Sports" with ISEM master students at  University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. I am looking forward to an interesting three-day-course with international master-students from 6 different countries.
Digitalisation has invaded all areas of society, with sport certainly no exception. The corvid 19 pandemic has accelerated this development over the past six month tremendously. Digitalisation has transformed fans’ relationships with their club or athlete, shrinking the metaphorical gap between the spectator and what’s happening on the field of play or training pitch. For players too – both professional and amateur – it has augmented performance, pushed boundaries and removed barriers.
Sport is accessible pretty much anywhere at any time on some sort of digital platform, meeting the demands of the consumer, generating interest and I believe slowly confirming that the sports industry is a big market and developing rapidly. From a marketing perspective it's all about delivering more content and beeing closer to the action.
World Rugby for example, the world governing body, use technology to allow fans into the control room of international matches. Referees' microphones and cameras installed in the TMO's studio give fans previously unparalleled access to the inner-workings of the officials' high-pressure adjudication decisions.

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However, there is much more about digitalisation in sports as there are many more opportunities for it's application; from marketing and media, to performance, health & fitness to managing sports organisations more efficiently.
Digital technology is improving enterprise performance in game-changing ways. According to a recent Harvard Business School report, digitalization—the integrated use of analytics, big data, the cloud, the Internet of Things (“IoT”), mobile, and application development—is driving change at unprecedented rates.