Football’s data wars takes another turn, but can players really protect their information?
A former Leyton Orient, Scarborough and Yeovil Town manager may seem an unlikely figure to be at the forefront of football’s data wars, but a landmark announcement in the Netherlands this week can be traced back to Russell Slade.
Fifpro, the international union for professional footballers, on Tuesday announced the creation of a new database for players to manage their personal information, which is being captured on a greater scale than ever before and accelerating rapidly with the progress of AI.
It came four years after Slade, 62, triggered wider debate within the industry by founding the Global Sports Data and Technology Group and launching Project Red Card, the first steps in a possible legal battle over the handling and exploitation of player data.
Fifpro says its “player-centric” platform is the first of its kind in the game and will allow footballers “to protect, manage and control their data through a universal database”.
“Data collection, access and use often remains hidden and inaccessible to players, despite their rights under privacy laws,” it added.
“Under the leadership and initiative of Fifpro and its 66 member unions the development of a centralized player data management platform will address the need of players to control the use, application, and exploitation of their data in the workplace or outside.”
Volumetric tracking will capture 8m data points per player, per game at this summer’s Women’s World Cup, as it did at the men’s tournament last year in Qatar, says Fifpro. It says that millions more data points are collected in club competitions, training and even in players’ private lives.
The platform is designed to give footballers greater oversight of their data by creating a central home for all metrics collected across what can be itinerant careers in a fragmented industry. It has implications for performance management but also for employment and commercial matters; contract negotiations are increasingly conducted with reference to data.
It is also designed to ensure there is adequate data protection, one of the concerns raised by Slade and Project Red Card. But the extent to which data already in the public domain can be safeguarded is far from straightforward, says Jon Baines, a senior data protection specialist at law firm Mishcon de Reya.
“Information about an identifiable player is their ‘personal data’ under UK and EU data protection law, and this gives certain rights to those players, and imposes various obligations on those who wish to use it,” said Baines.
“The Fifpro data platform may now have the potential to give players, or those who directly represent them, more control over the collection and commercial use of their own data.
“This may not, however, end the legal debates about such data use: questions may still arise about whether, for instance, performance data which is available in the public domain can realistically be protected from use by others, and it is possible that disputes in other areas of law (such as competition and intellectual property) may instead emerge.”