On the 25th July Sky Sports Austria debuted their new Austrian Bundesliga analytics show with hosts Marko Stankovic and Alfred Tatar/Walter Kogler. The show airs at 19:00-30 and aims to give fans exposure to advanced football analytics in an easily digestible manner.
The duo uses each episode to surface talking points from the weekend’s matches using Stats Perform’s Opta data and advanced analytics every step of the way. Sky enlists the help of our award winning data-editorial team to provide data-led infographics and pick out the most compelling stories from the league each week.
Alles Taktik and other shows like it, aim to feed the growing fan demand for in-depth statistical analysis in sports. They offer a weekly insight into players, teams and games that is otherwise not catered for. When creating data-led sports content for fans, our unrivalled historical database coupled with our industry leading advanced analytics and predictive outputs makes Opta data the clear choice.
Here’s some examples of our data at work:
Results Deep Dive
The team use a portion of episode 2 to look at the weekend’s fixtures, highlighting the match between SK Sturm Graz and Red Bull Salzburg. They used Expected Goals (xG) to explain that although Salzburg had the majority of possession and more shots on target the quality of shots meant they lost the match, in fact, the program highlighted that it was Salzburg’s lowest xG value in 4 years. Providing deep dives on results like this gives fans a greater understanding of each game, not just that their team won or lost, but why.
Head to Heads
The hosts used Opta data to compare Rasmus Højlund and Benjamin Šeško’s (SK Sturm Graz and Salzburg respectively) on-ball actions, compared to their shots and success rate. This helps fans see the value in statistical analysis, how two players with similar base level statistics actually have very different contributions to the game when you delve deeper.
Touch Maps
Touch maps were a great way to showcase Konstantin Kerschbaumer’s touches so far this season illustrating his omnipresence and work rate for RZ Pellets WAC. Highlighting key player performances and statistics that might otherwise get overlooked, means fans can start to find excitement in all areas of a game and see value in the contributions of all 11 players in a team.
Momentum
The team use our new Momentum infographic every week, it’s a great way to help fans understand the story of a game without overwhelming them with complicated statistics and numbers. Here we can see that FK Austria Wien were overwhelmingly more threatening in attack but LASK were able to withstand the pressure and nearly won the game after going 1-0 up in the second half. Momentum is a great example of a complicated metric presented in an easy to digest format, fans are able to understand the story of a game in one simple infographic.
Expected Goal (xG) Maps
Expected Goals maps have been a great way for the program to look at the individual contributions of players and highlighting key performers to fans . Marin Ljubicic’s six goals in three games led the league at the time of writing and the xG maps offered an opportunity to look at the xG value for each of his ten shots highlighting it as the highest Goals vs xG across the league.
Comparing Halfs
Opta data was used to compare Rapid’s first half effort vs their second half against Gdansk. Despite having the same amount of possession, the team were able to highlight the almost tripled ball actions in the opposition box, doubled shots and increase in passes in the attacking third. Another great example of the value in granular statistical analysis and how it can be used to tell different stories to fans.
Transfer Talk
On the day of the show one week it was announced that Donis Avdijaj would be transferring from Hartberg to FC Zurich. The team used it as an opportunity to highlight the gravitas of the loss for Hartberg. The shows ability to highlight breaking news with additional detail and an extremely quick turnaround will help to solidify them as a trusted and go-to football news source for fans. 
Interested in using Opta data to power your programming? Go to https://www.statsperform.com/opta/ to find out more.
