The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) will build on a decade of advancing tennis analytics, using SAP Business Technology Platform to orchestrate the league’s data into a central system which will manage one integrated, consistent, and dependable source of reporting, analysis, and insight. In its fiftieth year, the premier league in women’s sports boldly advances its vision to become a data-driven organization. The embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) may also be used to facilitate the creation of intelligent data applications, which will transform the business workflow from a series of steps informed by data to a continuous stream of smart decisions driven bydata.

“SAP is thrilled to work with the WTA to transform its data strategy, said Juergen Mueller, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Board Member, SAP SE. It is exciting to help the WTA unlock how t heir own data can serve its strategy today and well into the future.”

“Through our work with SAP, we can use data to enable the league’s strategy and operations. In doing so, we will improve how we run our tour, serve players, and engage tennis fans, said Micky Lawler, President WTA. We are excited to explore how the league can use data analytics to progress how the game of tennis is played, experienced and measured for the next 50 years.”

Annually, the WTA runs more than 50 events worldwide, organizing more than 6,000 matches and supporting 1,650 players. Over its 50 years as a league, the WTA has amassed numerous, rich data sources; spanning fans, tour operations, match information, and player statistics. Historically, these data sources operated as siloes, making it difficult to leverage the full relational and predictive data analytics possible.

Consolidating and harmonizing data through the SAP cloud-based platform is a pivotal first step in the WTAs data transformation journey. With SAP BTP, the WTA can access a portfolio of integration and extension services via the SAP platform-as-a-service offering.

The WTA’s data strategy naturally serves its business strategy. As its transformation continues, the WTA will leverage its harmonized data to:

Advance Player Health and Safety: Through unique data anonymization features in SAP HANA Cloud, the WTA can analyze player health data, drawing correlations across tournament conditions and career histories. This will enable coaches and players to monitor and adjust their games regarding physical load and strain to help maximize their tennis careers.

Optimize Tour Operations: With SAP’s platform as a service, the WTA can massively improve data integrity, cybersecurity, redundancy, and maintainability of tour data. As a result of improved access and application of the tour’s operational data, leadership and staff can optimize monitoring and safeguarding, increase speed of comprehensive data exchange, and evaluate simulations of potential future tour structure changes.

Deliver Advanced Stats and Live Match Data: Leveraging data from SAP HANA Cloud, the WTA’s long-standing statistics page will evolve from providing simple season- and career-long player stats into a more robust tennis analytics hub that offers new advanced insights., This go-to destination for fans, media, and coaches will provide more ways to view, interact with and share data from live matches.

Discover more about SAP’s partnership with the WTA.