Exclusive: How Data Can Create A Sporting Advantage
In an exclusive interview with Ministry of Sport, Talisman CEO, Dharpan Randhawa, discussed how the role of data in sport has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and gave recommendations of how sports can embrace new technology.
INTERVIEW, SPONSORSHIP, TECH IN SPORT by Joshua Hodson
In an exclusive interview with Ministry of Sport, Talisman CEO, Dharpan Randhawa, discussed how the role of data in sport has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and gave recommendations of how sports can embrace new technology.
Talking about how sporting organisations have evolved quickly since the onset of the pandemic, Randhawa, who spent almost four years as McLaren Racing’s senior vice president of Asia-Pacific before joining Talisman, said he saw a gap in having data as the centrepiece of decision making.
“I’ve been working in sport for many years across Formula One, tennis, golf, and football, and one of the things I noticed about 2020 was that we saw about a decade’s worth of disruption roll in to eight or nine months,” Randhawa told Ministry of Sport. “I knew there and then that everything was going to change forever in the sports world. “There was an unprecedented amount of change happening, disruption across fans attending live events, rightsholders were scrambling to demonstrate value for sponsors and everyone was questioning the model.
“There was a lot going on and one thing I thought would remain as the most important piece of the puzzle was data-driven decision making.