A Concept for Club Information Systems (CIS) - An Example for Applied Sports Informatics

In professional sports clubs, the growing number of individual IT-systems increases the need for central information systems. Various solutions from different suppliers lead to a fragmented situation in sports. Therefore, a standardized and independent general concept for a club information systems (CIS) is necessary. Due to the different areas involved, an interdisciplinary approach is required, which can be provided by sports informatics. The purpose of this paper is the development of a general and sports informatics driven concept for a CIS, using methods and models of existing areas, especially business intelligence (BI). Software engineering provides general methods and models. Business intelligence addresses similar problems in industry. Therefore, existing best practice models are examined and adapted for sport. From sports science, especially training systems and information systems in sports are considered. Practical relevance is illustrated by an example of Liverpool FC. Based on these areas, the requirements for a CIS are derived, and an architectural concept with its different components is designed and explained. To better understand the practical challenges, a participatory observation was conducted during years of working in sports clubs. This paper provides a new sports informatics approach to the general design and architecture of a CIS using best practice models from BI. It illustrates the complexity of this interdisciplinary topic and the relevance of a sports informatics approach. This paper is meant as a conceptional starting point and shows the need for further work in this field.