UK Sports Institute Performance Data team and British Curling scoop Sport Industry prize

The UK Sports Institute Performance Data team have won the Data and Insight Award at the FEVO Sport Industry Awards for the development of a data-driven model called ‘Game State Probabilities’ for British Curling.

The model uses tens of thousands of data points from historical competitions to calculate the probability of winning from different game states.

The Game State Probabilities tool was used at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics to support in-game decision-making, which played a crucial part in the British Curling team achieving Women’s Gold and Men’s Silver at the Games.

This project’s foundations are in a ‘Game State Probability’ model that was delivered through a sportscotland institute of sport collaboration agreement with the University of Stirling and their ‘Big Data’ MSc programme in 2018. This special project collaboration developed the analytics model upon which ‘Game State Probabilities’ was based. The Performance Data team built upon these foundations and enhanced the analytics to provide new insights and interpretations, while working closely with British Curling performance staff to make the model usable by athletes and coaches in both training and competition environments.

Head of Performance Data at the UK Sports Institute David Gallimore said: “We are delighted that the Game State Probabilities project has been recognised by the Sport Industry Awards!

“Our ongoing collaboration with British Curling and sportscotland has proved extremely successful, and this work is indicative of how the World Class Programme is embracing the opportunities of digital technology and data to support performance.

“I’d like to extend a massive congratulations to everyone involved for all the hard work that has led to delivering impact from this initiative and the wider collaboration.”

Taking place on Thursday 27 April at Evolution London, the FEVO Sport Industry Awards 2023 saw 18 prestigious awards up for grabs, showcasing and celebrating the sector’s finest work.

The FEVO Sport Industry Awards celebrates the immense work done around the sector, whether it’s delivering world-leading events of all formats and scale, or using sport as a platform to drive social change, to those campaigns that have an ingenious creative spark which reverberates throughout the industry and beyond.

This is the second consecutive year the UK Sports Institute has been recognised at the awards, having won the Cutting Edge Award for the Hormonix female hormone data project, developed in collaboration with Mint Diagnostics, in 2022.

Watch Kenny More, Performance Analyst at SIS (sportscotland), discuss the Game State Probabilities project in more detail here.