By Theresa Böhme
The National Football League (NFL) and SAP enhance NFL.com Fantasy Football with Big Data technology. From May 8 to 10, the 2014 NFL Draft will be held again and franchises will select newly eligible football players.
The NFL is one of the most popular sports league worldwide: “She is the flagship of American Football,” says Brian Ralopp, Chief Operations Officer of NFL Media. Approximately 200 million viewers tuned into the NFL season in 2012—that’s 80 percent of all American households with a TV. As such, the NFL is eager to offer its fan community a raft of interactive media experiences and to incorporate the very latest technologies into its online games.
Interactive services for fans
“There are 188 million self-identified fans, and producing media offerings and technology solutions that service them is something that we find to be both a challenge and a privilege for us,” Vishal Shah, VP of Digital Media, Business Development.
For the online-based NFL.com fantasy football, SAP and NFL worked together to build the Player Comparison Tool, a big-data-technology. It gives fans the chance to manage their very own virtual teams – which are made up of data from real NFL players – and to compete against other fantasy teams.
The underlying technologies of the tool, SAP HANA and SAP Lumira Cloud deliver real-time analysis to fantasy-team managers, enabling them to make better game-day decisions. What’s more, because SAP software can handle enormous volumes of data, the NFL’s fantasy football game draws on real data from every NFL game ever played. “By teaming with SAP and harnessing its technology and expertise, we can be sure of offering our fans a truly awesome fantasy football experience,” says Ralopp.
Learn more
Blog: Beyond NFL Fantasy Football
Article: SAP HANA Powers Ultimate Fan Experience
Press Release: SAP Unveils Powerful New Player Comparison Tool Exclusively on NFL.com
Photo: Shutterstock