Data analysis in the Bundesliga

Bayer 04 Leverkusen relies on football analytics and data visualization

3.6 million data points and 1,600 game events are collected per match between the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga. They are evaluated by experts such as Marcel Daum, game analyst at Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Because a soccer club is not only a living sports culture, but also a highly professional commercial enterprise. Data and the Associated Football Analytics have long been a decisive and value-adding component for both the club's gaming and business success. That is why every game is translated into data and analyzed.

How fast does a player run? Or the team? Not only the professionals' steps, but also the ball's movements and every single game situation are recorded in detail in all Bundesliga games. For example, if a player sprints from the edge of the penalty area to the center circle, the program calculates the player's position and the resulting speed 25 times per second. Each soccer stadium has 16 to 20 cameras installed at different locations to track a soccer game. In addition, four employees per game ensure that the data is correctly fed in.

The ball must go into the square. The game is 90 minutes long. The factory self needs data.

Software then processes this tracking data into figures. In this way, Sportec Solutions, a subsidiary of DFL, determines around 3.6 million position data points per game and 1,600 game events such as goals, passes or fouls, which are used for a variety of purposes. Values that are later used to compare standards, such as possession of the ball or the number of sprints, are also recorded. This football analytics data can be accessed by professional clubs via an online platform and can even be viewed in real time during the game. During and after each game day, the collected raw data is processed and made available to all clubs. This football analytics data helps with game preparation or scouting later on.

This is where the collaboration between Bayer 04 Leverkusen and taod begins. The raw data is processed via Python and SQL, stored and modeled in the Snowflake cloud data warehouse and then via the Tableau analytics platform visualizes.

Background information about the Bundesliga database

The official DFL match data Does the DFL subsidiary collect Sportec Solutions. Although it all actually began with Reinhold Beckmann. In 1992, as Sat.1 Sports Director, he initiated the establishment of a Soccer database. It was developed for the Sat.1 format “Ran”, the mandatory program for all soccer Bundesliga enthusiasts. Last but not least, the show impressed with extensive game analyses right from the start. Today, sports enthusiasts have long been accustomed to visualized real-time analysts via touchscreen presentation.

Since January 2020, the DFL has been the first soccer Bundesliga ever to work with Amazon Web Services as an official technology provider. This cooperation enables further innovations in the collection, processing and delivery of game data, including with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Marcel Daum inspires the team with data via football analytics

Based on this, the club can enrich, analyze and convert all data into animations. To communicate the evaluations to the Bayer 04 team, Daum and Sports Director Simon Rolfes are looking for ways that are particularly catchy for the players. “Our job is to visualize these things, to make them visible. Show it, show it in figures, show it in a graph and, above all, show that it is understandable for everyone in the end,” explains data analyst Daum. Inspiring and motivating the factory team with “datatainment” is likely to remain a future concept at Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Because as is well known, after the game is before the game and that is always the hardest thing.