Personalisation in sport

Alexandra Wilis of Wimbledon and Nick Pinks of Covatic chatted about what personalisation means for sport.  Alex talked about how Wimbledon wants to remain relevant for as many people as possible, whatever their engagement with the tournament and tennis. She discussed the importance of both the technical side to personalisation, efficiency and how it needs to match up to the emotional, delivered through giving sport meaning and relevance. She touched on how Wimbledon is “making it easy to follow players” so fans can feel ”more immersed in that players’ success or failure and tap into that celeb feeling.” This “helps players become more famous and create more personal connections with the sport”. Personalisation can extend to helping those fans find new players to follow all year round.   Nick Pinks, CEO of Covatic, told us “you need to build a positive relationship between a user and the platform they’re using” to be allowed to personalise their experience. HE pointed out the danger of building segments and models from your most engaged fans as they’re often the wrong traits if you want to build a bigger audience, who are most likely to be composed of people who are not as avid as your top fans. Nick spoke about the importance of protecting user privacy and of how important that is to buy consumer trust and allow brands the right to take things further.