Leagues Increasing Integrity Spend

19 Nov 2015 | tshego

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More and more we are living in a data driven society, and the multi-billion dollar business of sports is no exception in becoming data-centric…

From evaluation of talent to mobile engagement with fans, analytics, once seen as “geeky” and an impediment to sports are now not just the norm, but are essential to the overall enjoyment of sports on the professional level, from the Premier League and professional tennis to cricket and the NBA. Whether it is gaming or injury prevention, wearable tech or gambling, the numbers don’t lie; we want more data to enhance our experience.

However with all the data comes the chance for risk and brand damage. We have seen cricket, tennis and football entangled by scandals involving match fixing and the manipulation of data. Recently Japanese baseball was embroiled in its own scandal, and last year Major League Baseball had one club allegedly hijack the proprietary data of another in order to gain a competitive edge. These issues don’t even consider the potential risk involved where legal gambling is taking place

If you are a global sports property with millions, if not billions on the line, you are more concerned about hacking and brand damage than ever before. Perhaps that’s why in the past weeks we have seen a growing number of entities engage with sports integrity monitoring firms that can track and report potential threats in real time from anywhere on the globe, leaving officials at teams and leagues to concentrate on the business at hand, and publicly sending the message that games are being played on a level and uncompromised field.

Early last week Major League Baseball announced a partnership with Sport Integrity Monitor (SportIM), a London-based sports data and tech firm, for real-time monitoring of betting lines. The partnership was made to ensure that the “integrity of MLB events remain beyond reproach in a fast-changing online global landscape,” per a release.

Then later in the week European Professional Club Rugby signed a deal with Sportradar, another of the world’s largest sports data companies, to monitor and protect its information as well. These moves come at a time when the public is more interested and engaged in the daily goings-on of global sport than ever before, and will serve as the latest examples of wide scale measures elite sports are taking to prevent issues from happening that can bring irreparable financial and reputation damage to some of the world’s biggest sporting institutions.

“‘Big Data’ means “Bigger security challenges,'” said Ray Katz, a longtime sports marketing executive and professor at Columbia University. “Given the explosion of data and analytics, leagues must regulate themselves with more exacting standards with respect to security and privacy, as well as “fair play” much more in line with those inherent in the credit card and banking industry, and as it relates to access to information and ability to act on that information, like securities exchanges. Perhaps the time has come for licenses required for these great sports organisations who function as monopolies or oligopolies in order to ensure retention of public trust.”

While not directly connected, the integrity issue has been amplified because of the challenges the world’s two leading fantasy sports companies in the United States (both of whom have either obtained or will obtain gambling licenses in the UK) Fan Duel and DraftKings have come under. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department and FBI are probing whether daily fantasy sports businesses violate American federal law, and daily fantasy sites DraftKings and FanDuel were banned in Nevada and are being challenged in other states as well. Some of the issues arose when employees of both companies disclosed that they were using “inside” information to enhance their positions in daily fantasy play, getting analytic data to construct their teams before the public had access. Even though it’s not illegal, many questioned the ethics of such actions, leading to a question of credibility for an industry growing in leaps and bounds.

Gambling on MLB is already regulated by legal sports books in the state of Nevada and is gambled on around the world in legal betting parlours. But this partnership with SportIM, who work with the Premier League, the Football Association and others, offers additional security: the software monitors millions of live and pre-match odds across multiple sports in regulated and unregulated wagering markets.

“It shows that MLB has a strong grasp and understanding of the risk and the opportunities that are being presented to the market,” SportIM chief executive officer Mark Locke said in a statement.

It also will be interesting to see if many of the other elite properties, especially those based in North America, follow the MLB lead with a proactive spend toward securing global integrity more than currently exist. Of the five professional sports leagues in the United States (including Major League Soccer), it can be argued that MLB may have the least global presence at the current time, but they were the first to take this step.

“Baseball has been burned before with gambling scandals as far back as 1919, so it is always on the mind of leadership,” added another veteran marketer, Chris Lencheski.

“Does it make sense that a league like the NBA or the NFL, which have put down global roots in terms of a yearly presence of games do this now? Of course it does. It’s like insurance to the common man. You pay now hoping that you never have to use it, but it gives you peace of mind knowing that when a rainy day comes, someone is looking out to make sure you have an umbrella.”

In the cases of professional sports, that umbrella could be worth billions, and sports leagues appear to be lining up to make the purchases.