Stephen O’Malley
Chief Operating Officer
What is your name and position within the organisation?
I’m Stephen O’Malley, Chief Operating Officer at DataPOWA, an IXUP Group company. I joined DataPOWA at the start-up phase in June 2018.
In brief, what does DataPOWA do and what approach do you take to sponsorship and partnerships?
Across the past decade, data has changed the face of sport, but data alone isn’t enough to create the revolution that rights owners and sports properties and their partnering brands need. It’s what you do with it that really counts.
The DataPOWA ethos is simple: accurate data, used in the right way, enables rights owners and sponsors to get more from their partnerships.
Whether it’s through our asset-tracking software or homomorphic-encrypted first-party data technology, we’re dedicated to helping the industry adopt the future of data solutions now and push it forward – further and faster.
What tools and metrics do you offer to measure the effectiveness of sponsorship, and how has your approach to this evolved?
We’re hugely excited about our first-party data product. Powered by IXUP’s state-of-the-art homomorphic encryption technology, it allows businesses to share customer data with 100% assurance of its safety. With security taken care of, rights owners and partnering brands can bring their datasets together, build highly targeted segments and use that insight to deliver campaigns that drive better conversion rates.
This creates a massive paradigm shift in the way sponsorship success is measured. While visibility remains a key metric (one covered by our always-evolving POWA tracker software), the bottom line must go further. What good is an audience seeing an asset when the brand doesn’t know if they’ve taken action after seeing it?
DataPOWA and IXUP can now unlock that bottom line and show rights owners and brands exactly how sponsorship activity affects return on investment.
How has sponsorship changed in your sector in recent years, and how do you see it changing in the next five years?
In the ‘privacy age’ first-party data is becoming more and more important. In the past year we’ve seen a dramatic example of the importance of understanding first-party data in FC Barcelona’s sponsorship deal with Spotify. Reports suggested that Barca’s lack of registered fans significantly affected the deal’s value, leaving the Catalan club potentially millions out of pocket.
It’s always been said that time is money, but now data is money as well. The more data that sports properties and brands can gather, and the more they can do to analyse and enrich that data, the more revenue they’ll be able to gain from partnerships.
Security has been the missing element for so many years, but homomorphic encryption fills in that gap and paves the way for a brighter, smarter future.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
The key to sponsorship is getting ahead of the pack, not simply watching and responding when the next big technology comes along.
Thanks to our parent company, IXUP, we’re delighted to have built products that are at the forefront of data technology and hugely excited about sharing our vision in the coming months. We welcome exploratory conversations around first-party data with rights owners, brands and their agencies.
