The Manchester City Men’s Team are celebrating a historic treble, but that’s not been the only success at the Etihad in recent weeks. Having competed in a hackathon on the Hays CodeCo platform, one team of tech specialists were left celebrating huge prizes too – as well as the respect of a former City player.
CodeCo was set up by Hays in 2022 as a hub for programmers to learn, collaborate and test themselves through a series of challenges and hackathons. To date, over 1,000 members have joined the community, competing in our challenges for the chance to win vouchers and put their profiles in front of employers.
This time, the ask was a bit different, though – and so were the rewards. Together with our partners, Manchester City, Hays devised a hackathon with experiences and prizes on offer that money couldn’t buy.
The challenge was to team up with other members of the CodeCo community to create an app or tool that delivers real-time insights to football coaches using data from StatsBomb. The coaches could then use this knowledge to inform their decisions.
As well as the opportunity to design and develop an app using the incredible wealth of data provided by StatsBomb, the teams were also competing for the opportunity to pitch their idea before expert judges at Manchester City’s media centre on the Etihad Campus, where the winners would take home matchday tickets and £1,000 in tech vouchers.
And so, on Wednesday 24 May, it wasn’t Pep Guardiola greeting journalists in the press room, but instead our ten finalists arriving to present their ideas that could change the game. Judges included:
Given the number of variables involved in a football match, the data can be overwhelming. This makes it difficult to extract the relevant information to influence important decisions, at which point we revert to the biases.
The winning team, kicksmarter, entered the hackathon with the goal of using data to remove biases and provide insights in a “simple and digestible” manner - an approach that would benefit organisations of all types.
During their pitch, the team of five revealed how their tool would allow the user to analyse data from matches past and present to make changes during the action. Their demonstration, in which they played back a goal conceded by the City team, proved how mistakes could be avoided by tweaking the positions of the players. By pausing the action and dragging the players to new positions pitch, the visualiser indicated the space the goalscorer found herself in, as well as which City player could have made the crucial interception. Too late in this instance, but useful knowledge for next time!
The team also explained how they implemented feedback, as well as how they would develop the tool further. It’s clear that a lot of thought had been put into the user experience, which, combined with the range of functions, made kicksmarter a worthy winner.
Brian Prestidge, Director of Football Intelligence at City Football Group, commented: “Ten submissions made it through to the final with none of the submissions disappointing on the day. We were really impressed with the quality of the presentations and the delivery from a confident group of teams who were very engaging.
“The overall winner, kicksmarter, developed an online web-tool to enable coaches to provide effective visual feedback post-match and provide clear in-match feedback through engaging visuals and live-updating natural language insights.”
A big congratulations to the kicksmarter team: Chloe Shek, Craig Edwards, Jethier Casiano, Montvydas Klumbys and Nicole Shek. You can watch their pitch here.
“Being able to receive direct feedback from judges heavily involved in the football and data analytics world was so cool and also to be able to connect with other talented teams is truly inspiring!
“There was great support from the CodeCo team - I would recommend their hackathons to individuals of all ability!”
If you’re interested in taking part in our next hackathon, or even just some regular coding challenges, join CodeCo today.
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