The sporting industry has evolved leaps and bounds, not just in terms of new advancements for the athletes and coaches but also to create the best experiences for fans. We’ve seen the use of data analysis in the popular Hollywood film ‘Moneyball’ but did you know that analytics are also integral for the holistic growth of the entire sporting ecosystem? From increasing revenue, analyzing player performance to prevention of injuries, analytics has become a central component to not just give competitive advantages but enhance fan experiences.
In this exclusive interview with SPOGO, Megha Gambhir, Co-Founder and CEO at Stupa Sports Analytics speaks about the importance of sports analytics, building experiences for fans and audiences, digitizing sporting events, migrating to other sports, driving organic traffic on social media and future goals.
Q 1) How much of a competitive edge does sports analytics give to an athlete or a team? Do you believe it's a must-have in this day and age?
I definitely believe that it is a must have. There is a saying that smart work is as important as hard work. When you are working smart it gives you much more benefits. That is why I believe that sports analytics are important for the players and the coaches because you are getting the precise information and taking that into practice. They can then work on the specific areas that need improvement and also work on areas where the opponent is weak. It's very important that players get objective feedback through sports analytics. The smart training makes the players better prepared for the matches. I feel that using analytics gives individuals a competitive edge.
Q 2) How is Stupa Sports Analytics building experiences for fans and audiences?
So far we have been working on multiple segments. One is related to players and coaches which is performance analytics but the other big area is fans who are watching the game through any form of media. Fans of Table Tennis or many other racket sports that are not as popular as Football or Cricket are in dire need of experiences where they can have a visual treat which not only gives them an appealing experience but also gives them a better understanding of the game. When a Football or a Cricket fan tries to watch these other sports he should not be blank without understanding what is happening in the match. We are trying to bring augmented reality and mixed reality using our artificial intelligence, merging it with the live viewing experiences which can help them understand the game and give them a lot of visual enhancement. It makes it interesting and also makes it easy for the viewers to comprehend the games while watching. That is the kind of experience we are building.
Q 3) How does Stupa enable event organizers to digitize the tournament with automated handling and monetization?
We have built a tournament platform that can manage the entire event starting from registration of players to publishing the results, it can also create the fixtures, analyse the scores and live streaming the event for the audience. Currently many of the sports including Table Tennis don’t have a platform which gives the audience end-to-end solutions, where they can create digital events and perform all the activities online.
With the help of the app, the players will get notified of each change in the event. They can also know the umpires in the matches and get the recordings of matches of all the players from Stupa. The platform which we have created gives out a lot of information so any individual will understand all the aspects of the sport. Even now, many events around the world still use pen and paper for the events. I think we have brought in a more sophisticated platform which enables them to work digitally. Another part we have added to this is to monetize the tournaments by the organisers so that they can generate revenue out of it.
People who are on this platform can watch the live matches, download the videos, get the stats and analytics. This is where a tournament promoter can start monetizing through ads in the live streams, offline videos, and sell the analytics to players and coaches. So the monetizing element can increase the entire trust of the community of organizers and players. Everyone is getting benefited and finally the level of the sport goes higher.
Q 4) With 25% of Olympian table tennis players already using Stupa Sport Analytics, how quickly are you planning to migrate to other racquet sports such as tennis and badminton?
We do have plans to expand it to other sports. It was an overwhelming moment when we realized that 25% of the Table Tennis players at the Tokyo Olympics were Stupa users. Another major achievement was that they won three Olympic medals, now we have 40 plus world rank players who are using our services. We also have major federations like Germany, Sweden, Commonwealth Table Tennis Federation and we are also signing contracts. We feel there is still a left to do in Table Tennis since there are a lot of inhand contracts and we are also currently working on products for the sport.
The kind of technology we have built can be transferable to multiple other sports. Badminton being the rising market in India, we do want to shift into Tennis as well and will be raising funds in the next few months. As soon as we close our funding the next step is to expand the team into Badminton and other sports as well.
Q 5) How does Stupa help spread viral and engaging table tennis content on social media that drives organic traffic?
Table Tennis has a global market in itself as almost 200 million people play Table Tennis which includes the competitive and the amatuer sector as well. The player market is quite huge and even the audience of the sport is huge, almost 1.6 Billion viewership was received last year which is being reported by the WTT. The market is huge, however, the creative content hasn’t come out to give fans some nice feeds on social media and I feel this is the sector we should work on and gain the trust of the fans. What we have started is very creative in terms of covering tournaments, results and properly creating some fun entertaining content. In the last couple of months we have seen the growth of more than 3 million interactions on our Instagram handle so we feel that the creative content has worked wonders and is helping more people to be engaged with the sport more.
Q 6) As CEO of Stupa Sports Analytics, what are some of your future goals? How do you plan to achieve them?
We started Stupa three years ago and the journey has been a very emotional one for us as lots of ups and downs we have faced but I would say we had more highs than lows because this is what we were envisaging when we initially had the idea. Our future goal was to work in a kind of environment where we completely redesigned and redefined the sports experience for people who were with the sport. By using the latest technologies as currently we are working on deeptech, AI, AR and a lot of other stuff as well. Our future goal is to enhance the experience and redesign the sport for the players, fans, organisers, federation etc. We literally want to create a phenomenal experience for them by solving the problems they are facing in the sport in the sporting ecosystem that we have created. We do want to give the entire sports fraternity, be it Table Tennis, Badminton or Tennis, an experience so that they have the facility to solve their problems and help them through our technological advancements.
