A unique platform developed to identify the real marketing value of sports players from across the globe.
By tapping into the social media presence of sports stars and adding on custom data modifiers for sentiment and engagement, we could rate their influence and marketability to brands.
Developed in 2017, the initial concept for Sportstar Influencer was born from a desire to determine the reach and influence of Premier League Clubs and players, pulling together disparate sources of data and accumulating them into a single view.
The Filter team wanted to create a unique platform which combined social following, engagement and team/player performance stats with search and demographic data, to identify the real marketing value of sports players from across the globe.
As the project developed, we found that we could do this on a basic level using a platform such as Sprout Social, but it only took into account basic social metrics. We then looked into news stories and column inches being written about players. This led us to consider how we could capture positive or negative sentiments from such sources.
Being inquisitive by nature the Filter development team decided to do an R&D prototype project to better understand ‘real’ influence and nuances to better determine ‘true’ ranking. In addition, it was also important to try and show how the clubs social ranking and influence differed from other clubs.
At the heart of each ‘influence score’, the team developed the platform to look at overall social following across the main networks, and then added on modifiers for levels of performance, engagement, sentiment, media buzz and other elements.
Rating ‘influence’ however is not just a numbers game and we were acutely aware of this. ‘Influence’ is also based on softer, more human factors; which is why we developed our datasets to feature personality traits.
The Filter team continued to develop the initial concept and refined the platform into a dataset backed by a complex algorithm that grew by the day with new data points and modifiers.
Not to be restricted to the world of football, it was also important to expand the index to showcase ‘social influence’ from available data across several different sports. Sportstar Influencer index expanded to include data sets from Cricket, Rugby, Motorsports and Tennis.
Sportstar Influencer has been featured in several key publications including The Guardian, The Sun, Digital Sport, Influencer Update and Net Imperative to name but a few.
The Sun used the data sets to run a piece around the Football World Cup 2018 focusing on the 50 most influential Premier League signings of the summer’s transfer window.
Digital Marketing Briefing online, who provide digital marketing news and analysis, wrote a great overview of how Sportstar Influencer tracked sports player social statistics.
They even interviewed our very own Oliver Morrison, Filter CEO for the full story on how the platform used social, engagement, media, and sentiment data points to rate and rank sports players.
It became clear that no single index existed for how influential sports players are, and how they compare to each other. Sportstar Influencer changes that, allowing brands to understand which players can provide the most effective return on investment for marketing spend.
Filter, CEO
