Analytics FC CEO Jeremy Steele talks us through the recent rebrand process, what he learned and what you should expect from Analytics FC going forward.
As anyone who has started a business will know, the flow of time is a funny thing. You can get stuck in the day-to-day running of a company and lose the sense of direction you started out with. It’s only when you stop, zoom out and assess what you’ve done that you can refocus and go again.
This is what we did at Analytics FC recently. We took a step back and took stock. It seems so long ago that I met a group of four university students to talk about what the possibilities were for their “fanalytics” project. But in the half-decade since then, Analytics FC has grown into being a market leader in one of the fastest-growing sectors within the football industry: the data insights sector.
One of the necessary byproducts of this kind of rapid growth is that it can lead to a mismatch between a company’s core identity and its brand identity. Its core purpose can go through a process of realignment as it re-imagines its potential, leaving its brand identity behind.
At heart, brand identity is about presenting yourself to the world. Given the amazing changes that Analytics FC had gone through in the five years since its inception, it was high time for us to reassess the way we wanted to present ourselves to the world.
I’m excited to have overseen the rebrand of Analytics FC this month. But what did we learn from the process? Here are a few answers to questions it raised for us:
Who are we?
For many people, Analytics FC had become synonymous with TransferLab, our market-leading scouting platform. Of course, the TransferLab tool and the cutting-edge data model inside it are a fundamental part of our services, strategies and predictive intelligence platforms that we offer. But it is just one part.
In re-assessing our core purpose, it became obvious that we needed to unify the various facets of our business under a coherent brand identity. After some introspection, we came up with this description of our core purpose:
We fuse performance analytics and business acumen to support clients in achieving their strategic goals, empowering the biggest players, clubs, federations and agencies in world football through our unique and powerful data services.
With the notion of coherence at the forefront of our mind, our rebrand was designed to consolidate all of the aspects of Analytics FC under one brand so that our customers can enjoy all of the services that we offer under one umbrella.
How did we get here?
The last decade has seen a rapid change in the football industry. Football has discovered data. As a result, we are seeing the breakneck adoption of data-based technologies and the hiring of data analysts across the world of football.
Where we had originally targeted data scouting as our market focus, it soon became clear that there was a demand for other services in the data sphere more broadly, encompassing not only areas of on-field success, but also supporting clubs with their sporting strategy and assessing financial value off-the-pitch.
This led to us diversifying our offering. The results were more than we could have hoped for! We developed a suite of services and platforms which have truly disrupted the industry. They address both aspects—sporting success and financial value—giving clubs, owners, players and agencies access to a broader range of data-driven specialisms which will allow them to succeed at the highest level.
What is Analytics FC 2.0 based on?
Analytics FC can best be described as an “insights company”. We support and advise by translating and interpreting data into meaningful, actionable insight. We have built a portfolio of data models over years of experience in helping clients to maximise their use of data and achieve their sporting and business goals. We will continue to help clients leverage that portfolio.
We will also continue to innovate. We attack projects in a bespoke way for each client which reflects their unique context as a club, player or agency. For example, in the last year or so, our Signature service has been used by Champions League winners, Premier League winners and a host of international players keen to augment their contract negotiations through smart use of data. We also flipped this service on its head by offering Clubs the support they need to accurately value players and maximise returns from player trading.
We will continue to create groundbreaking services such as our Coach ID and Acquisition services which give owners (and potential owners) a higher quality of intelligence and strategic insight to help them better understand the business of owning and running a football club and to make smarter decisions. Our recent projects working with investors have been some of the most challenging and enjoyable since we started the company.
Of course, we also won’t stop growing our suite of intuitive and powerful data platforms, like TransferLab and our GBE Calculator. We are proud of our global user base. We have brought complex data scouting insight directly to clients’ fingertips.
Analytics FC 2.0 will see us expanding further into the football industry, providing unique and powerful data services to clients so that they can better succeed in an ever-changing environment.
What does the new website communicate?
Our rebrand has seen the complete overhaul of our website. The new website does an amazing job in reflecting the new foundations of our business, not only giving us a fresh look but reflecting the coherence of our core purpose.
On the face of it, this means a consistent style and feel. But this redesign also reflects the fact that we are an innovative and inclusive company. We have hired some of the smartest minds in sports data from around the world to build a cutting-edge and disruptive business within the football data industry.
We are at the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Analytics FC. I can’t wait to see what the future holds!
