Amateur data in sport is important for our future generations

9 min readDec 22, 2018

SportsPodium is a transparent blockchain-based sports community. We apply blockchain technology to unlock undervalued and previously un-monetized aspects in sports. But what does this mean?

As a starting point there is currently no single point or global database where amateur sports data is collected, verified and stored for future generations.

If we ask the following questions:

How many tries did Bryan Habana score in his professional career?
How many seasons Wayne Gretzky play in the NHL?
Who has the most pass completions in NFL history?

The answers to these questions can easily be found by a simple google search. The data and statistics for professional athletes and sports are freely available on various websites. Sure it is not in a database, but at the end of the day it is freely available.

Now let’s ask the following questions:

How many tries did Bryan Habana score when he was 16 years old?
What was Usain Bolt’s average time over 100 metres at the age of 13?
Who has the most pass completions in at the age of 16 in the year 2018?
Who has scored the most drop goals at Under 14 level in Australia?

There are many more of these type of question that can be answered when we have the data in a structured in a searchable manner. At present there is no easy way to find this information. Sure, there are pockets of information in various sports clubs, schools, sporting bodies etc. This data is however very difficult to get hold of.

Why is amateur data important to future generations?

Sport is progressing at very fast pace. New records are set at incredible new highs and faster times. A lot of this has to do with the progress that we made over the years in various areas of sport like technology, science, diets, the understanding of the human body and this is only to mention a few.

The progress we made in these areas has come over many years and is a result of various aspects, but one of these aspects were to study this field, collect data and then process this data to provide information on how we can improve.

If we have a large ever growing database of amateur sports data, we will have the opportunity to study the data over a period of time.

One example is that we can look back into the superstars athletes histories to see how they performed at various age levels and then potentially identify new talent at a young age.We will be able to see what characteristics is needed for which sporting disciplines. There are an unlimited number of possibilities of what we can do with the data.

Why is amateur sports data / information not available?

One of the first things that comes to mind is that is was too expensive to gather this information and the technology and structures to gather this information was just not available. Sporting bodies and federations struggle to keep there head above water by getting sponsorship to survive. We live in a professional sports era, and it takes a lot to ensure the professional athletes are taken care of. A lot of money needs to be spent to ensure that a specific sport is seen in the media, on television and the appropriate sports is marketed to the world in order to get more people at stadiums and to buy merchandise for the specific sport.

Let me highlight three problem areas which is only some of the causes:

It is too expensive

There is unfortunately not enough money to be spent on building technology applications and market these applications to the amateur clubs and athletes.

Too many sporting disciplines to standardise on a single platform

Another major problem is that there is many sporting disciplines around the world, and it will be close to an impossible task to facilitate or standardise a specific process for all these sporting disciplines to work together on a specific sporting applications.

There is specialists required per sporting discipline

A further problem is that a single institute or organisation will not have the knowledge about the various sporting disciplines to ensure that the appropriate data is captured. There is definitely data that overlaps between various sporting data, for example fitness data and dietary information, but there is also very specific data that needs to be targeted for each sporting discipline.

How will SportsPodium facilitate a process to assist in the collection of amateur sports data?

We will reward aspiring athletes of all ages, across all levels of proficiency, with crypto-based rewards for tracking their day-to-day commitment to their sports and fitness activities. This information will be accumulated into a transparent and credible global sports database that will completely disrupt the current flow of funds and talent. The rewards will be issued when users add the data in various mobile and web applications. The first application is already built and in final testing and is targeting golfers around the world. Golfers will be able to earn rewards for adding there scores into our database.

SportsPodium has developed a golf solution consisting of three components. An events management portal, a mobile scoring application and a live leader board. Any golf club, golfer or partner can earn our POD tokens for participating in the SportsPodium ecosystem.

The events management portal is key for driving usage of the mobile application. All golfers registered for a specific golf day will automatically be added in the mobile golf app and users need only download the golfing app before or on the day to be able to record their golf scores on their scorecards. The scorecards are populated with the data for the specific golf course being played that day.

The golf app supports more than 34 000 golf courses around the world. The golf app is key for delivering detailed data into our sports database, which will allow hyper targeted advertising in an ultra-relevant marketplace. As scores are recorded on the day of the event, a live leader board is updated in near real-time. The leader board is accessible through any television screen or computer which has Internet connectivity.

The live leader board calculates scores for many types of golf competitions and supports golfers that play on various courses on the same day — even on the same leader board. Considering that we take Handicap Index, Course Rating and Slope Rating into account, we are breaking new grounds in the golfing world.

How will we reach the various sporting disciplines around the world?

We are building an open platform where any sports application can potentially join the ecosystem via our platform’s interface which enables us to incentivise 3rd party user bases.

Our partnership framework has been designed for various stakeholders and partners to drive users to our platform and create large volumes of data flowing into an aggregated database of amateur sports data. In return, partners will be rewarded with our crypto token (POD) on an ongoing basis and therefore benefit from a high value token. The aim is to create an ecosystem driving a value for value economy.

How will we ensure that the tokens are distributed fairly?

SportsPodium have developed a unique reputation system which we will allow us to distribute our token fairly to higher reputation holders and users will not only build their reputation based on their performance. We believe that all athletes deserve a chance to earn our token and have identified the following three parameters as a basis for building a reputation:

Token emission is linked to a smart contract and ensures that tokens are fairly distributed when activities occur within the ecosystem. The emission model takes the following variables into consideration to calculate activity rewards:

Total PODs in circulation, User Rep, Total Rep, Activity Weight (Set by App), Weight Sum, Source App Weight, App Weight sum, Verification factor, Community pool split

Emission rate will be directly proportional to the number of activities recorded on the blockchain and the value of the data. Activity value is calculated purely on potential ad revenue from the users logging their activities.

Token Value Drivers

Token value should remain stable if token emission rate is proportional to the value of the data — speculation aside. We realise the importance of protecting POD holders and have built in measures in the platform to protect POD value.

In short, all tokens printed today are worth more compared to the tokens printed yesterday as demand was created by emitting less tokens than were required to incentivise the userbase for the activities which they performed.

Amateur data in general is undervalued and we will find many ways to monetize the platform to ensure the future of the token and platform.

Keeping to our promise to build a value for value economy, where users receive value for the value they provide to the ecosystem, we believe that a percentage of all revenue generated from revenue streams should be allocated back to the community. The revenue streams include the following:

• Advertising

• Platform Services: Sponsorships, Self-Promotion and Talent Scouting, Event/Competition Management

Online and Retail Shops (Discount deals and Transaction fees)

Driving Adoption — Our Partner Model

Our ecosystem is designed to encourage various partners to participate on the platform. Partners and promotors can earn a percentage of all distributed PODs in their network. Please see the SP golf example at the end of this section.

Sports Application Owners

SportsPodium can create a new revenue stream for existing Sports Application providers when the integrate their application with our API. Current application providers will also be able to provide their userbase with incentives, which in turn provide the application provider with the potential of expanding their current userbase. Application providers will receive a share of all tokens allocated to their userbase as incentive should they be willing for SportsPodium to incentivise their userbases. This percentage will be determined by the value their userbase brings to the overall platform.

Online and Retail Stores

Online and retail stores are key to the success of the Sportspodium economy. SportsPodium are looking for partners in the online and retail stores to accept our token as a method of payment for their goods and services. SportsPodium is a decentralised payment mechanism and we are in the process of developing payment gateways which will be free to use for both online and retail stores. SportsPodium will not charge any fees for the stores, to the contrary, we will give retail stores 50% of all transaction fees paid by users of our token for their specific online or retail stores.

Sport Clubs and Schools

Sports Clubs and Schools will earn a percentage of all tokens allocated to athletes within their school or club. The tokens will be paid directly into the SportsPodium wallet of the specific School or club. Should the golf club be introduced by any club member or another outside party, a commission will be included in the distribution (see golf example at the end).

Ambassadors

A percentage (0.2%) of all tokens emitted will be allocated to the ambassador’s pool. PODs from this pool will be distributed to the SportsPodium wallets of the sports ambassadors according to their specific agreements and roles.

Entrepreneurs — Take the SP Golf solution to your market

Conclusion

SportsPodium is destined for great things in 2019 and we invite everybody to join our community on our various social media platforms. We are looking for partners, athletes and everybody involved in the sporting world to participate in the future of sport. We are open for discussions for partnerships and will find ways to ensure that everybody involved in the ecosystem will be rewarded in a way that makes sense for all parties involved.

For all that have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram and Instagram accounts please follow us and Share and Like our posts as part of our social media campaigns. We need to get the word about the project as far and wide as possible.

Our Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SportsPodiumApp

Telegram: https://t.me/SportsPodiumPublic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@mysportspodium

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysportspodium/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sportspodium/

Website: https://sportspodium.net

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