Perform Content brand OptaPro is to work with Manchester City in the first football club hackathon, providing detailed match data as participants aim to uncover fresh insights on player performance.
Also working alongside the Premier League and ChyronHego, Manchester City are inviting experts and students from the fields of tech, data and digital product design to take part in a free weekend hack event like no other as participants work with exclusive datasets from ten Premier League fixtures from 2015/16.
The event will take place from the 29-31 July at the City Football Academy, and over the course of the weekend participants will be able to access rarely released data sets to help generate new ideas and insights about player and team performance.
Expert teams will compete for a cash prize and ‘money can’t buy’ experiences, plus the potential to develop their solutions with Manchester City. Students could win once-in-a-lifetime experiences and internships at the Club, which prides itself on delivering exciting and innovating content and technology.
Anyone over 16 who can demonstrate curiosity, technical skills and passion for football and data, is invited to register to attend. Places to take part in this unique event are limited and all applications will be subject to a selection process.
Ben Mackriell, Head of OptaPro, said:
“The application of advanced analytics within professional football has progressed significantly over the past 18 months and is an area where OptaPro has strived to help teams begin to understand its value.
“We are proud to work with a club as forward thinking as Manchester City. Having worked alongside them in the ground-breaking MCFC Analytics project, #HackMCFC is the perfect evolution of this. The event offers an exciting opportunity for participants to generate innovative data-driven insights from what is an extremely detailed dataset and is an excellent demonstration of Manchester City’s commitment to driving this growing industry forward.”
Edward Sulley, Head of Research and Innovation for City Football Services, commented:
“At Manchester City, we proactively strive to be at the forefront of innovative technologies that can help enhance our performance on and off the pitch. This vision is shared by our sister clubs New York City FC, Melbourne City FC and Yokohama F-Marinos, who are all supported by City Football Services, a unique part of the wider City Football Group business model that allows us to share innovative IP and insights across all four of our clubs.
“This Hackathon enables us to engage fans of both sport and technology in this process, and the support of the Premier League means we can provide them with a unique opportunity to access exclusive data they can use to develop creative ideas. We look forward to working with the participants and seeing what ground-breaking technologies they can bring to the table that could potentially benefit all four clubs across the City Football Group.”
For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.hackmcfc.co.uk