Development and promotion of hybrid (0n-line + on-site) sports services

Covid increased people interest in practising sports. The closure or limited capacity of sports centers arised the opportunity of delivering services online (medical, training, education,etc.) and afterwards, hybrid services combining online and onsite modalities. This appears as a way of recovering from the crisis, but also brought out the need of digitalizing the sector. However, market available technology and services, as well as national and regional policies supporting digitalization, have a general scope and fail to cover the specificities of sports such as on-line physical activity monitoring and data gathering, data driven decision making, etc. In this context, IBV is leading two 2-years regional projects, funded by IVACE with ERDF, with the aim of helping sports entities to develop hybrid services. This includes digital tools for data capturing, big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) services. Entities taking part in the projects include sports clubs, sports centers and events, companies and authorities (local and regional). Projects follow a 4.0 innovation approach: user centered, data driven and agile. Identified solutions to needs of sports entities were tested using agile methods. Afterwards, pilot applications were implemented and dissemination and transfer activities carried out. This approach has been very successful in helping entities (universities, medical services, gyms, etc.) in digitizing their activities and in developing new hybrid services.