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Let’s say for a minute that you’re the armchair sporting type. As you sit in front of the TV watching (insert favourite sports team here) take on (arch enemy) you whip out your iPhone to see a graph telling you the chances of your team holding their 2 point lead for the last ten minutes.
The block representing your team’s odds of success grows steadily as time ticks away only to suddenly collapse as Arch Enemy scores in the dying minutes – and then rebound dramatically as Your Team hit back immediately.
That’s the idea behind Belfast-based Match Media – who are currently developing a ‘percentage and prediction engine’ (PPE) that uses 3rd party betting information to provide a real-time visual representation of the likely outcome of an event.
And provided the raw data is there, it can truly be any event – from sports to politics to reality TV.
But what’s important here is not how Match Media’s PPE is applied (the idea could easily work as an iPhone app, digital TV overlay or branded player on a website and they’ve already had interest from a variety of sporting brands) but rather what it says about the future of data and how we use it.
The Next Web?
In many cases, there is far more data available than we know what to do with or can realistically digest. The development of innovative uses for this data, and for how we interact with it, will certainly be one of the growth industries of the next decade.
Indeed, no less than Tim Berners-Lee sees elements of this in the next iteration of the internet. He’s currently building a web for open, linked data designed to unlock existing information and reframe the way we use it together. (For more info, check out his recent TED talk.)
The data that Match Media relies on is there and it’s available – what they’re doing is making that data useful, consumable and enjoyable. We can see the same concept of mashed, hacked and reconstituted data in everything from the latest Twitter app to The Guardian’s new data store platform.
What data could you help put to better use?
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Xcellent Article
Mr Iddictive
we need more like you
promoting the benefits of ‘Local’ and ‘Agile’ Business
The true test of any journalist is someone who can capture the Magic of an idea -in the shortest of conversations and/or the strangest of places
Thanx Phil
Nice concept, but not the real betting outcome that most seasoned better would be going for. There really needs to be first goal, first throw in, first booking, total numbers from shirts, total corners etc. This is really only scratching a very thing slice of the surface.
I worked on the code for one of the first betting sites in 1998 when I was working with PA Sporting Life. If the above could use a web service to place a bet there and then, onto a winner but I’m sure they are already thinking in that direction already.
Regards
Jason
I agree re: the betting angle but provided the live data is available, I’m guessing you could apply the concept to just about anything. It’ll be interesting to see how it actually develops in terms of real world applications – i.e. how MM and client businesses end up using the concept in practice.
Thanks Philip – kind words indeed. I very much enjoyed talking about the MM idea with you – make sure to keep us up-to-date with how things progress.
Just a quick note of Clarification:
info comes from the ‘Betting Sector’
this is however -not a ‘betting’ product
it is aimed squarely at two markets
Firstly Man united Mad -12 year olds
who could monitor and debate the progress of their team in a fantastic ‘real time’ environment
and secondly at Corporate Sponsors
Imagine Guiness delight as The -Big Pint of Guiness representing Ireland’s chances of beating Wales in the G Slam decider
Fills up,quickly empties as the kick sails 2wards the posts
and just as quickly fills again
A sponsors Delight!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7961703.stm
Above video shows my good friend Barry and his new wife
going through exactly the sort of Ups and Downs
that MatchMedia is able to capture digitally
and display so brilliantly!
http://blip.tv/file/2093150
Mark,
Anything with an outcome can be measured. A lot of this was bandied about 2002/03 time when WebTV was still a possibility. You can port this sort of data analysis to anything. XFactor results predictions etc. There’s an awful lot of milage in this sort of arena which is why I’ve been concentrating on Collective Intelligence a lot recently.
Philip,
Nice to meet you
I totally understand that it’s not a betting product, I’m just looking between the lines and seeing the realms of opportunity.
Man Utd Mad 12 years, brilliant folk to crack into. It just where the revenue streams come from that. The sponsorship route in interesting but how many sport mad pub spectators are going to be glued to the stats? Betting folk are glued to stats.
If you want to talk to me, please feel free. If I can impart any experience within all this, I’d be more than happy for the caffine (Mark knows that
).
J
I saw phils product concept last week and gott say, its cool!
anto
Got here belatedly via @internetsense. A question – most online prediction markets provide graphs already, beyond aiming this at 12 year olds is there something else to it?
Probably more of a question for @internetsense himself but my take would be twofold: