La Liga basketball using Catapult to connect with fans through performance insights
Since 2017, Catapult has provided its technology to Argentinian La Liga basketball teams to conduct individual and collective athlete analysis and improve performance.
The 20 participating clubs are equipped with Catapult’s wearable technology, allowing them to monitor their players’ physical efforts during trainings and games, with the goal of reaching the highest form of competition and minimising injuries throughout the season.
Marketing Director of the Association of Clubs, Juan Diego Garcia Squetino, said “the league is making major investments in technology applied to sports to provide more efficient tools to the professional teams of each of the associated clubs.
“This technology provides a large amount of information that we want to make known and that all the sports world knows the data that our players generate in the competition. We use technology and we also communicate what we generate with it, looking for La Liga to grow bigger and bigger.”
Following this unique partnership, La Liga is taking their data to the fans in weekly instalments, where engagement is driven through a deeper look into the analytics of the league’s top performers.
In an example instalment of performance data, La Liga shared the players with the highest average explosive efforts per game so far in the season. In this instance, Máximo Fjellerup (116) of Bahía Basket, Paolo Quinteros (96) of Regatas Corrientes, and Maximiliano Stanic (99) of Olímpico de La Banda recorded the highest number of total Inertial Movement Analysis (IMA) on-court.
The explosive efforts are the total accelerations, decelerations, and changes of direction at high intensity made by a player during a game, and is an indicator of the agility and explosiveness of the player.
La Liga is also looking to engage fans further during their Top 4 tournament by broadcasting data live during the games, coming on the heels of the State of Origin and Ashes series, where player tracking data was shown on-screen to help tell the story of the physical demands of elite sport.
La Liga President, Fabian Borro, looks forward to continue setting the standard in professional basketball for technology.
“The National Basketball League looks ahead to the future and new technologies,” Borro said.
“Through a new global agreement, the incorporation of Catapult to the competition as well as the main sponsor of the Super Copa is an unparalleled opportunity to provide all of the twenty franchises a tool to use hard data and conduct objective analyses of the different performances of teams and players. We want to keep setting the standard in the sports industry; and these type of alliances strengthen our business vision.”
Catapult Head of Latin America, Luciano Tomaghelli, explained that the “variable explosive efforts allow us to understand the high intensity efforts made by the players during the competition or training. By high intensity we understand the accelerations, brakes and changes of direction in all the senses.
“These actions usually occur in different situations of play, such as when going one-on-one and breaking down your man towards the basket. It is understood that a greater number of these actions boost performance, but at the same time have a significant mechanical stress which we want to quantify and measure,” Tomaghelli said.
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