New Garage project brings predictive analytics to sports performance data

Sports Performance Platform, a Microsoft Garage project, announces an invitation-only experiment for teams and athletes. Sign up to express interest in participating.

Meet the newest project to join the Garage portfolio: Sports Performance Platform. A project built on Power BI, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Surface technology, Sports Performance Platform has an ambitious mission to drive the shift in the sports industry towards predictive outcome modeling and predictive analytics that is accessible for the professional, academy, high school or individual athlete.

A small team led by Steve Fox, Principal Software Engineering Manager of the Azure Customer Advisory team, saw a need in the industry for predictive analytics and modern machine-learning techniques. “The future of sports is trending towards data dependence – making it actionable will be key,” says Steve Fox. For the past year and a half, the team has been working to advance athlete performance by blending physical and digital feedback into a comprehensive, predictive solution on a reliable and secure platform.

Turning Sports Performance Into Actionable Insights

Sports Performance Platform enables sports scientists to understand team and player data and derive actionable insights that can enhance performance on the field. For example, the platform empowers sports scientists to use machine-learning and predictive modeling to uncover insights around athlete readiness, injury prevention, practice design and management, longitudinal player reports, and talent watch.

In addition, teams can leverage Sports Performance Platform to relay key insights to team personnel such as coaches, players, and management to inform decision-making that ultimately leads to better performance. Nick Leman, Head of High Performance for Reign FC, is able to review practice and game data in one centralized view within the platform. Leman can use this data to give informed recommendations to the coaching staff on how much rest a player may need to recover or how hard to train players during practice.

The Sports Performance Platform team has been working with sports teams around the world, including Cricket Australia, Benfica, Real Sociedad, and Seattle Reign FC, to develop a highly customizable platform that enables teams to improve athlete and team performance through predictive analytics. “The cool thing about SPP is how customizable it is,” says Lisa Vailencour, one of the marketing co-lead for the project. “The team has built a solution that can really be tailored to any team’s unique needs.” Fellow marketing co-lead Thomas Labuzienski nods and adds, “By enabling coaches, management, and athletes to make smarter decisions on and off the field, Sports Performance Platform is changing the game.” The team has partnered with industry leaders Pop, Akvelon, and Fair Play to drive customized solutions with sports teams from around the globe.

Together with teams and partners from around the world, Microsoft is delivering the next generation of sports performance for athletes around the world.

Sports organizations and development partners interested in learning more can submit this survey to receive more information or request an invitation to the private experiment.