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Sports League Business Reference Architecture

Business Capability Maps, Value Streams, and Strategy Maps for Sports Leagues.

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  • Sports leadership requires a unified and validated view of sports leagues business capabilities that help CIOs and sports leadership accelerate the strategy design process and that aligns initiatives, investments, and strategy.
  • The business and IT often focus on a project, ignoring the holistic impact and value of an overarching value stream and business capability view.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Using an industry-specific reference architecture is central, and has many benefits, to organizational priorities. It’s critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the organization, but more significantly, to enabling measurable top-line organizational outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Impact and Result

  • Demonstrate the value of IT’s role in supporting your sport's organizations capabilities while highlighting the importance of proper alignment between organizational and IT strategies.
  • Apply reference architecture techniques such as strategy maps, value streams, and capability maps to design usable and accurate blueprints of your sports league operations.
  • Assess your initiatives and priorities to determine if you are investing in the right capabilities. Conduct capability assessments to identify opportunities and to prioritize projects.

Sports League Business Reference Architecture Research & Tools

1. Accelerate the Strategy Design Process – Leverage a validated view of the sports league’s business capabilities to realize measurable top-line business outcomes and unlock direct value.

An industry reference architecture is comprised of tools, templates, and a validated view of sports leagues business capabilities that help CIOs and sports organization's leadership accelerate the strategy design process.

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Sports League Business Reference Architecture Guide

Business Capability Maps, Value Streams, and Strategy Maps for Sports Leagues

Analyst Perspective

In the age of disruption, IT must end misalignment and enable value realization.

A business reference architecture is used in a variety of strategic planning initiatives and connects strategy to execution in a manner that is accurate and traceable and promotes the efficient use of organizational resources.

An industry business reference architecture helps accelerate your strategy design process and enhances IT’s ability to align people, process, and technology with key business goals, outcomes, and initiatives.

Using an industry specific reference architecture is central, and has many benefits, to organizational priorities. It’s critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the enterprise.

Sports Leagues that leverage a validated view of their business capabilities that aligns initiatives, investments, and strategy are able to realize measurable top line business outcomes and the unlocking of direct and indirect value.

Photo of Elizabeth Silva, Research Specialist, Sports Entertainment, Info-Tech Research Group.

Elizabeth Silva
Research Specialist, Sports Entertainment
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge
  • You are a CIO, head of EA, or chief architect who needs to improve your organization’s understanding of business capabilities and how IT can provide support.
  • You work for an organization that wants to sharpen its alignment and focus on organizational outcomes and value by using architecture to better inform innovation, stakeholder management, and IT strategy capabilities.
  • Before executing any strategic initiatives, use this guide to understand how the organization creates value and the underlying capabilities and processes of the organization.
Common Obstacles
  • You don’t know where or how to begin, or how to engage the right people, model the business, and drive the value of an architecture.
  • The business and IT often speak in their own languages without a holistic and integrated view of mission, strategies, goals, processes, and projects.
  • The business and IT often focus on a project, ignoring the holistic value of an overarching value stream and business capability view.
Info-Tech’s Approach
  • Build your organization’s capability map by defining the organization’s value stream and validating the industry reference architecture.
  • Use business capabilities to define strategic focus by defining the organization’s key capabilities and developing a prioritized strategy map.
  • Assess key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of business processes, information, and application and technology support of key capabilities.
  • Consolidate and prioritize capability gaps for incorporation into priorities.

Info-Tech Insight

Using an industry-specific reference architecture is central, and has many benefits, to organizational priorities. It’s critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the organization, but more significantly, to enabling measurable top-line organizational outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Reference Architecture Framework

Overarching Insight

Using an industry-specific reference architecture is central and has many benefits to organizational priorities. It's critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the enterprise, and more significantly, to enabling measurable top-line business outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Determine your organizational priority.

Many organizational priorities are dependent on an understanding of how the organization creates value and the organization's capabilities and processes.

Examine organizational opportunities through the lens of business, information/data, applications & technology.

Your understanding of your organization's business capabilities, processes (rules & logic), information/data, and architecture will identify organizational opportunities to create value through reduced costs or increased revenues and services.

Follow Info-Tech's methodology to enable organizational outcomes and unlock direct value.

Your approach indicates the scope of your modernization initiatives.

Build your organization's capability map by defining the organization's value stream and validating the industry reference architecture.

Use business capabilities to define strategic focus by defining the organization's key capabilities and developing a prioritized strategy map.

Assess key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of business processes, information, applications, and technology support of key capabilities.

Sustain capability-based strategy planning through ongoing identification and roadmapping of capability gaps.

Pinwheel diagram of value in the industry context. At the center is 'Value (Revenue, Margin, Assets)' surrounded by a cycle of '1. Build', '2. Define', '3. Assess & Prioritize' and '4. Sustain'. Surround that are categories 'Business', 'Information/Data', 'Applications', and 'Technology'. On the wings of the pinwheel are 'Governance & Risk', 'Business Context', 'Business Strategy', 'IT Strategy', 'Innovation', 'IT Budget', 'Digital Transformation', 'Core Application Rationalization & Modernization', 'IT Service Mgmt', 'Requirements', 'Data', and 'Org Design/ Operating Model'. The entire pinwheel exists within the 'Industry Context'.

Industry Overview: Sports Leagues

Sports leagues within North America and APAC are essentially the “master company” of the various teams, known as franchises. Franchises are only able to operate under their respective leagues, therefore teams do not play games against those within other leagues. North American and APAC leagues are organized in a closed league system. Formula One has also been described to be a closed league. Closed league sports are sometimes considered a form of sport monopoly where value appropriation is present.

Value appropriation is "related to advertising activities, which aim to capture value by improving competence in offering existing products or services." (Heldt, 2021)

Sports leagues with Europe act as a governing body that clubs (teams) of all levels belong to. Clubs are promoted to different leagues or divisions within the European system based on high- or poor-quality performance. Clubs are also able to play matches inside and outside of the league. European leagues are organized in an open league system where value creation is present.

Value creation is "related to new product development and research and development activities, which aim to create superior value for fans by developing products or services.“ (Heldt, 2021)

Value Stream for Sports Leagues with value chains 'Competition Planning & Strategy', 'Govern Player & Team Market', and 'Distribute Revenue'.
Figure above: Value Stream for Sports Leagues

Sports Leagues, Franchises & Clubs

North America & APAC
Closed Leagues
NFL
  • Green Bay Packers
  • New England Patriots
  • Dallas Cowboys
  • Buffalo Bills
NHL
  • Montreal Canadiens
  • Las Vegas Golden Knights
  • Boston Bruins
  • Los Angeles Kings
NBA
  • Phoenix Suns
  • Toronto Raptors
  • LA Clippers
  • Charlotte Hornets
AFL (Australian Football League)
  • Brisbane Lions
  • West Coast Eagles
  • Gold Coast Suns
  • Melbourne
Europe
Open Leagues
Premier League
  • Arsenal FC
  • Chelsea FC
  • Liverpool FC
  • Southampton FC
Bundesliga
  • FC Bayern München
  • FC Union Berlin
  • Eintracht Frankfurt
  • RB Leipzig
LaLiga
  • FC Barcelona
  • Real Madrid
  • Valencia CF
  • Sevilla FC
Serie A
  • Juventus
  • Lazio
  • AC Milan
  • Torino FC
(Source: American Football Database & UEFA.)

Differences in closed and open sport leagues

Closed League (NA & APAC) Open League (Europe)
League System
  • No promotions
  • Teams compete in one league competition
  • Franchise system
  • Annual promotion and relegation
  • Teams/clubs may compete simultaneously in many competitions creating a multiple league system
  • Clubs are not franchised by the league
League Functions
  • Collective sale of TV/OTT rights
  • Centralized marketing
  • Collective sale of TV rights
  • Distributed marketing
Competition Between Teams/Clubs
  • Limited substitution by the market
  • Large territories
  • Significant potential for substitution
  • Shared territories
Competition Between Leagues
  • Numerous cases of entry by rival leagues
  • All leagues contained within the established hierarchy
Player Market
  • Draft (non active transfer market)
  • Salary caps
  • Collective bargaining
  • Active transfer market
  • No salary caps
  • Individual bargaining
Revenue Sharing
  • Equal division of national broadcast income
  • Gate sharing
  • Sharing of TV/OTT income
  • Little or no sharing on gate from competitions
  • Centralized sale of TV rights
Competition Policy
  • Antitrust exemption for baseball
  • Sports broadcasting act exempts national TV deals from antitrust
  • Ticket allocations
(Source: Semantic Scholar, 2015 & ResearchGate, 2003.)

Business Value Realization

Business value defines the success criteria of an organization as manifested through organizational goals and outcomes, and it is interpreted from four perspectives:

  • Profit generation: The revenue generated from a business capability with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
  • Cost reduction: The cost reduction when performing business capabilities with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
  • Service enablement: The productivity and efficiency gains of internal business operations from products and capabilities enhanced with modern technologies.
  • Customer and market reach: The improved reach and insights of the business in existing or new markets.

Business Value Matrix

Business Value Matrix with four quadrants defined by an x-axis between 'Improved capabilities' and 'Financial benefit' and a y-axis between 'Inward' and 'Outward'. The four quadrants are 'Profit generation (outward, financial benefit)', 'Cost reduction (inward, financial benefit)', 'Service enablement (inward, improved capabilities)', and 'Customer and market reach (outward, improved capabilities)'.

Value, goals, and outcomes cannot be achieved without business capabilities

Break down your business goals into strategic and achievable initiatives focused on specific value streams and business capabilities.

Example table for determining business capabilities. The first column is 'Business Goals & Outcomes' listing four Business Goals, two of which are color-coded similarly. The second column is 'Business Initiatives' with Initiatives 1 through 10, each color-coded to match the business goal they help to achieve. The third column is 'Level 1 Business Capabilities' with capabilities grouped by 'Value Stream', each of which are color-coded to business goals and the business initiatives that create or improve them.

Sports League Business Capability Map

Business capability map defined…

In business architecture, the primary view of an organization is known as a business capability map.

A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation, rather than how. Business capabilities:

  • Represent stable business functions.
  • Are unique and independent of each other.
  • Typically will have a defined business outcome.

A business capability map provides details that help the business architecture practitioner direct attention to a specific area of the business for further assessment.

Sports League Business Capability Map with the sports leagues' industry value chain as column headers, 'Competition Planning & Strategy', 'Govern Player & Team Market', and 'Distribute Revenue'.

Info-Tech Insight

Open and closed leagues may create value differently; however, the value streams, chains, and capabilities that create value remain the same, as the execution of those capabilities is what's different.

Glossary of Key Concepts

A business reference architecture consists of a set of models to provide clarity and actionable insight and value. Typical techniques and terms used in developing these models are:

Term/Concept Definition
Industry Value Chain A high-level analysis of how the industry creates value for the consumer as an overall end-to-end process.
Business Capability Map The primary visual representation of the organization’s key capabilities. This model forms the basis of strategic planning discussions.
Industry Value Streams The specific set of activities an industry player undertakes to create and capture value for and from the end consumer.
Strategic Objectives A set of standard strategic objectives that most industry players will feature in their corporate plans.
Industry Strategy Map A visualization of the alignment between the organization’s strategic direction and its key capabilities.
Capability Assessments Based on people, process, information, and technology, a heat-mapping effort that analyzes the strength of each key capability.
Capability An ability that an organization, person, or system possesses. Capabilities are typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization, people, processes, and technology to achieve.
(Source: The Open Group, 2009)

Tools and templates to compile and communicate your reference architecture work

Sample of the Sports League Business Reference Architecture Template. The Sports League Business Reference Architecture Template is a place for you to collect all of the activity outputs and outcomes you’ve completed for use in next steps.

Download the Sports League Business Reference Architecture Template

Info-Tech’s methodology for reference architecture

1. Build your organization’s capability map 2. Use business capabilities to define strategic focus 3. Assess key capabilities for planning priorities 4. Adopt capability-based strategy planning
Phase Steps

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

2.1 Define the Organization's Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

Phase Outcomes
  • Defined and validated value streams specific to your organization
  • A validated level 1 business capability map
  • Identification of level 1 cost advantage creators
  • Identification of level 1 competitive advantage creators
  • Defined future-state capabilities
  • Identification of capability process enablement
  • Identification of capability data support
  • Identification of capability application and technology support
  • Prioritization of key capability gaps

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

Guided Implementation

Workshop

Consulting

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 6 to 9 calls over the course of 1 to 4 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Call #1: Introduce Info-Tech’s Industry reference architecture methodology. Call #2: Define and create value streams.

Call #3: Model level 1 business capability maps.

Call #4: Map value streams to business capabilities. Call #5: Create a strategy map.

Call #6: Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.

Call #7: Review capability assessment map(s).

Call #8: Discuss and review prioritization of key capability gaps and plan next steps.

Business Capability Maps, Value Streams, and Strategy Maps for Sports Leagues.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

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Elizabeth Silva

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