Cricket may have something of an old-fashioned reputation, with its genteel attire and somewhat languid pace, but just like every other sport, it’s in the process of being revolutionised by increasing use of digital technologies and data. Nowhere is this more evident than in Australia, where cricket remains an almost universal passion.
In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we talk to Michael Osborne, general manager of technology for Cricket Australia, to find out how the organisation - in collaboration with technology partner HCL - is using data to support volunteers, develop players and connect with fans of the game.
Highlights
“Over the summer there's over 700,000 registered players in the country who are competing at every level from the under-eights, all the way through to the seniors. In this day and age, we have about 60% of those games that are now live scored on a mobile app. So the old days of the big paper book, sitting by the sideline, keeping track of all the statistics; for 60% of those games - which happen every weekend - It's live scored, streamed across to our MyCricket app, where then parents, brothers, friends, siblings, can follow in real-time how the scores are coming together.”
“One [sport we’ve been inspired by] is the NBA. We've had the opportunity to connect with them a couple of times as well. But the NBA does such a good job of engaging the youth demographic. If you can believe it, the NBA itself is one of the most popular sports in Australia from a fandom perspective, particularly amongst that youth demographic. And none of those kids, or very few of them, will ever get to go and see a live NBA game. And in fact, we're gonna have to follow these games at inconvenient times of the day and night. Then yet, they're able to reach them, to connect with them, they're able to amplify their player brands, provide solutions into markets that really get people engaged. So a lot of what the NBA is doing, from a direct to consumer perspective, is really interesting to us”.
Read the full transcript here.
Footnotes
- Australia plans to become a leading digital economy by 2030
- Australian government invests $8 million to boost cyber skills
- How AWS took over sports
- How big data can give you a competitive edge in sports
- Sports industry urged to reform cyber security after £1m Premier League phishing scam
- IT Pro Live: How Pro Football Focus became the NFL's secret weapon
Subscribe
-
Should AI PCs be part of your next hardware refresh?AI PCs are fast becoming a business staple and a surefire way to future-proof your business
-
Westcon-Comstor and Vectra AI launch brace of new channel initiativesNews Westcon-Comstor and Vectra AI have announced the launch of two new channel growth initiatives focused on the managed security service provider (MSSP) space and AWS Marketplace.
-
Google Cloud Next 2025: Targeting easy AIITPro Podcast Throughout its annual event, Google Cloud has emphasized the importance of simple AI adoption for enterprises and flexibility across deployment
-
Is the IT service desk dying out?ITPro Podcast Employees could soon use chatbots to resolve common IT issues rather than wait for tickets to be resolved
-
Harnessing unstructured data to fuel AISponsored Podcast Knowing how your data is stored can make all the difference to your AI success
-
How effective are AI agents?ITPro Podcast AI agents have been sold with the promise of fully automating tasks without the need for step-by-step instructions
-
Are most AI projects destined to fail?ITPro Podcast The current era of AI projects could provide the lessons we need to make the most of the technology going forward
-
Revenge quitting and Microsoft goes quantumITPro Podcast Breakthroughs in quantum computing across February have been matched by financial and workforce upsets in the tech sector
-
Who wins out from DeepSeek's success?ITPro Podcast Firms focused on AI at the edge and open source LLMs could reap massive rewards from the Chinese startup's industry upset
-
DeepSeek flips the scriptITPro Podcast The Chinese startup's efficiency gains could undermine compute demands from the biggest names in tech
