Revolutionizing Indian Sports: Harnessing the Power of 5G Technology for Real-Time Data Analytics

By Yash Bhagwatkar

The global sports industry in the past few years has witnessed a massive transformation. With the competitive level in sports rising constantly, a more professional, data-centric approach has emerged within the sports fraternity. Data and performance analytics, instant player stats, and have emerged as a game-changer. The fast-paced nature of sports has led to sports authorities’ increasing demand for instant data and performance analytics. The ability to analyze data instantaneously provides teams and athletes with valuable insights, helping them to make split-second decisions that can determine the outcome of a game.

The prime reason behind this shift in mentality and the growing affinity towards data analysis is that it provides an extra layer of information about a team or an athlete. Data tracking helps in better analyzing the player’s performance with in-depth information about all the factors that have an impact on the game. The old-school approach of teams and players towards negligence of data and the technological barriers in getting access to precise data provided the inability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent accurately. The inconsistency and delay in data availability led to failure in proper preparation for athletes to improve their game. The sports authorities and the athletes then started realizing the need to keep track of every match, every team, and every athlete. However, to achieve this in a true sense the process of digitisation needed to be streamlined, and the technology available at the time was not efficient enough for the task.

The innovation of 5G technology then became a much-needed push to the broadcast industry, especially sports. All technological advancements always played a pivotal role in delivering accurate data and performance analytics to teams and athletes to improve their game. The advent of 5G technology incredibly fast-tracked the process. The availability of the internet in the past few years has had a huge impact on the sporting world. With newer technologies developing one after another, the upgradation in the world of sports has been constant. However, the 5G technology has expanded the horizons beyond one’s imagination. The transformative technology has enabled the seamless transfer of crucial data existing in huge volumes at lightning-fast speeds, making it a perfect fit for real-time data generation and analytics. This 5th generation of mobile networks has surpassed its predecessors in multifold with unparalleled speed, ultra-low latency and great reliability. Unlike the previous mobile networks, 5G technology is developed and habitual to handle enormous amounts of data in real time.

This real-time goes beyond mere statistics, it works as an insight into the opponents and one’s performance and immediate strategies for the remainder of the game, thus, gaining a massive competitive edge. Real-time data analysis is also proven to help track a player’s health and fitness, drawing patterns of the player’s game to prevent injuries and help players understand the on-ground situation in a better, more assessable manner. The 5G technology helps generate instant data of players in terms of his/her agility, heart rate, and speed when present on the ground amidst a crucial game. With this information, coaches, and support staff get an insight into the player’s health and thus help them in constructing customized training regimes, diet plans, etc. for players to improve their performances and reduce injuries.

Today every major league across the world including India has embraced the 5G technology for real-time analytics. From extremely well-established International leagues such as the NBA, NFL, English Premier League, the Indian Premier League or the comparatively new or developing Pro Kabaddi League, teams and athletes are utilizing the 5G technology-driven real-time data and performance analysis.

The benefits of real-time data analytics cannot be questioned, there remains a crucial question of its implementation at the domestic tiers of sports, the grassroots sports ecosystems. The issue is prevalent to all the countries around the world but especially in India where there is a lack of robust infrastructure, data security, and privacy concerns and to add onto it lack of sufficient if not exorbitant budgets at the local sports associations. As the 5G technology develops and scales further and the sports industry revolves its functioning around it, addressing these challenges and paving the way for seamless data transmission and analysis would be crucial.

The 5G technology innovation has certainly boosted the real-time data and performance analytics domain, taking sports into a more modernized, tech-driven era. As teams and athletes harness the power of instant data insights, the level of competition and performance will continue to reach unprecedented heights. Thus, it is now our responsibility as a sports ecosystem that these innovations and technological advancements do not create a greater rift between the sports at the highest level and the grassroots sports communities but rather evolve in a way that the lowest common denominator gets to avail the technology and improve the standard of sports at the very grassroots.

(The author is Yash Bhagwatkar, COO, SportVot, and the views expressed in this article are his own)