Some of the most-followed sports accounts on Twitter/X right now include OptaJoe, StatmanDave, WhoScored, and Squaka. These accounts don’t really deal with opinion or analysis; they deal with cold, hard statistics of the Premier League. Of course, it’s not unusual to see fans crave statistics based on their favorite clubs and players, but the sheer volume of data is staggering. Moreover, it’s quite a modern insert into the fan experience. US sports, particularly baseball, have had this approach for decades, but for the Premier League, the world’s most-watched sports league, it’s a relatively modern phenomenon.
There are practical reasons for the rise of a stats-based fan experience. Social media, for one, has largely supplanted print media reporting of football, and there is an infinite amount of column space to fill online. The game itself has also evolved to embrace data and sports science, which has largely filtered through to the fans. If Liverpool’s management team is studying a player’s sprints per 90 minutes, then that information is going to influence the reporting.
Data used across fantasy and sports betting
External factors, too, can impact the rise of data in the fan experience. For instance, both Fantasy Premier League and online betting are both providers and receivers of data. The latter, for example, will use data to set betting odds on the Premier League, and bettors themselves, particularly experienced ones, will use data to compile betting strategies. Again, this was not unheard of in the past, but it has been ramped up to 11 in the internet age.
Interestingly, there is conflict. Many fans believe that the focus on statistics takes away from the purity of enjoying the game. A modern phenomenon like xG (a relatively new measurement that explains what the score ‘should’ have been in a game) has both supporters and detractors. The former believes it is a useful measurement that can tell us more about a game or a player’s performance than the real scoreboard. The latter believes it is a nerdish pretension that sucks the joy out of experiencing the game.
A conflict about the purity of sport
The conflict has caused a war of words between some fans, and it has filtered through to professional punditry and the wider media. There is an argument for both sides, of course, and some blurring of the lines in between. But it becomes interesting when it starts to impact the subjectivity of watching a game. To explain, you can easily find arguments between fans on social media, with one camp claiming a player had a demonstrably bad performance, whereas the other is trying to prove the performance wasn’t bad at all: One camp will be armed with stats as proof, whereas the other will be incredulous, claiming only the proof of their own eyes.
As mentioned, social media is a big driver of this, and it is, perhaps, indicative of the literal way the viewing experience is changing for fans. Back during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Elon Musk waxed lyrical about how the tournament was being viewed on Twitter/X, claiming the Final saw 20,000 tweets per second. Social media doesn’t show full matches live, of course, as that is still the realm of broadcast television, but it does (almost instantly) show in-game highlights, provide the means for fan interaction, auxiliary information (what’s happening in the game), and a whole world of stats.
Perhaps overall the point is that fans are no longer “passive” viewers of the Premier League. They are “active participants”, using, in particular, social media to feel more connected to the passage of the game, often using data to bolster their arguments or enhance their understanding of the game. Data-driven dialogue is both inclusive and, at times, divisive, yet this evolution reflects a broader trend in sports and media consumption, where immediacy and interactivity are paramount – just ask Elon Musk – and the lines between spectator and analyst continue to blur.
