Thanks to Harriet Eastham from Southampton Football Club, one of the clubs playing in the English Premier League, for sharing her knowledge and insights on data and sports business.
If you missed the conversations on the #ama channel, you can read the transcription here including the followup questions from other members.
Q. seancallanan: I'll kick things off what has been the focus of your role? Is it on field data or off field data that is the focus of your role at Southampton?
A. Harriet Eastham: Firstly, thank you for having me – I've really enjoyed reading all of the other AMA's so I'm really grateful that you asked me to input this week!
I sit within the commercial department so my role is all off-field. Ultimately the data analytics team sits centrally to support the sponsorship, digital/media and retail teams. Due to this, I really enjoy the fact that no two days are the same as there are multiple projects to work on to help increase commercial return for the club.
Q. Olivier Spaeth: How are your commercial and data team organised ? What kind of tools do you use to help you deal with the data?
A. Harriet Eastham: I like to think of our commercial team as an umbrella – the sponsorship, media and retail teams are the spokes in the structure, with the material holding it together the CRM and Data Analytics department. There's a lot of overlap in the data that each uses e.g. ticketing data and demographics are useful to the sponsorship sales pitch, but then also vital to the content strategy for media. We currently are in the process of pulling together the various data streams into one pot in a centralized data warehouse (no small task!) so are actively reviewing the tools that we use to make this the most effective process as possible. In order to visualize the data we use tools such as tableau and Power BI – this is the golden egg in terms of ‘buy in' from departments where data hasn't always been front and center in the past for them.
Q. dgmackay: How do you benchmark your data with other clubs in the league? Is there any sharing of data across Premier League clubs to track the overall performance of the league across a range of metrics?
A. Harriet Eastham: Sorry for the delay, busy day! @dgmackay In terms of social we use a range of tools that pull in public data such as engagements, video views etc such as CrowdTangle – there's a clear correlation to commercial revenues versus the size of your digital following. Therefore, we collate the competitive set and benchmark on a regular basis how we are performing. I'd say in terms of sharing data between clubs it's more rare as it's a competitive league but it would be good to see more collaborative sharing between teams to ensure the league as a whole is as strong as it can be.
Q. liambednarski: @Harriet Eastham I'm interested in how Southampton have utilised the EPL Final esports competition into its commercial strategy. Have there been any surprises from this form of content affiliated with the club?
A. Harriet Eastham: I'm a subscriber of the FC Business magazines, I find it really insightful with the feature interviews that they do. As well as this, on a day to day basis I make sure I keep half an eye on SportsPro Live, I find that I'm sharing round with the team lots of their articles in order to spark inspiration. From an event point of view, the Sports Data Analytics World Series brilliant. There are so many bright minds in one place and has been a valuable networking source.
Q. andrewwaltonx: @Harriet Eastham thanks for being accessible – a few questions for you.
What publications and events do you value as having a reputation for gaining new ideas and knowledge within sport.
Would you value a consolidation of data sets generated from other premier league clubs to improve fan engagement?
A. Harriet Eastham: I'm a subscriber of the FC Business magazines, I find it really insightful with the feature interviews that they do. As well as this, on a day to day basis I make sure I keep half an eye on SportsPro Live, I find that I'm sharing round with the team lots of their articles in order to spark inspiration. From an event point of view, the Sports Data Analytics World Series brilliant. There are so many bright minds in one place and has been a valuable networking source.
Thanks again to Harriet Eastham for taking time in doing the AMA. Connect with Harriet on Twitter @HarrietEastham, LinkedIn and Slack @Harriet Eastham
Learn more about Southampton Football Club on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and LinkedIn
Thanks also to all who participated in the discussions and asked their questions. Watch out for the next Sports Geek Nation AMA.
If you wish to be a Sports Geek Nation AMA guest, please send @seancallanan or @joliegee a message in Slack.
