Data: Hoops vs. Volleys

Over the past few years, our tribe at Huddle Up Group has undergone a pretty significant transition. The team itself has been intact for several years, so the “human capital” isn’t where our transformation has come from. It’s in the intentional use of data in our work. We use numerous sources to benchmark, rank, rate, and generally to help point us (and those we serve) in the right direction. While it used to be that we used our experience to guide the process, now we lean on the data first, then the knowledge.

We created the Sports Tourism Index™ nearly eight years ago, which really led us down this data driven path. The vast growth of the Index nationwide not only provides us with a deep trove of data to mine, it also got us to think about what other tools may be out there that we can use to supplement what we already had in hand. Today, we lean on three additional data services. One in particular provides us the numbers behind this week’s Huddle Up.

The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) is a geographic information platform that allows you to measure numerous activities, including participation in sports. ESRI is an index based system. That is, the scores for any activity that is measured is delivered in an indexed comparison to the rest of the country. The base Market Potential Index (or MPI) is 100, so anything that is measured against the national average.

Here is a real life example of how one might use ESRI data…..

Kevin on our team compared basketball to volleyball across the country. In the past year, basketball participation grew at a modest 4% pace. Over the same time, volleyball participation increased 8%. While basketball is still one of the largest sports in America, volleyball is trending upward at twice the pace. We can get more granular by looking at specific destinations. Iowa for instance had a volleyball MPI score of 111, meaning there are 11% more people playing volleyball in Iowa than the average state (which would index at 100).

ESRI also breaks out indexes for various drive distances. Taking MPI a step further, we can use the system to compare various drive distances from a destination. ESRI provides MPI data for three drive distances: 60 minutes, 120 minutes, and 300 minutes. Considering the impact on sports tourism, we can focus in on the 300-plus minute drive distance, as those are more likely to be overnight visitors than the shorter drive times.

One real life example, we recently ran a destination through the ESRI model and found out that they had a 300-minute MPI score of 135 for the sport of archery. Meaning that in the drive distance that is likely to involve a hotel stay, there are 35% more archery athletes than the rest of the country. That is data I would take to USA Archery and say, “We have an abundance of athletes close to our destination that would compete in your event, or would buy a ticket to your event.” If I’m an event owner and you bring me meaningful data on how we would be successful, I’d have to explore it.

In addition to leveraging data to attract interest from event owners, we also use the numbers to speak to facility development. As one example, many of the indoor court facilities we see only convert one basketball court to one volleyball court. Full sized basketball courts can be converted to two volleyball courts, which gives you more density and the opportunity to host more teams in a given event. Since we already talked about the growth of volleyball, shouldn’t we build venues to accommodate as many teams as possible?

We have more data at our fingertips than ever before. Lean into it whenever you can. Leverage multiple sources to help point your team in the right direction.

Have a super (data driven) week!