European sport generates a growing volume of data, whose exploitation remains unequal. No verified primary figure makes it possible to claim that fewer than half of European national anti-doping organizations use compatible formats, and differences in monitoring standards can complicate comparative analyses between sports. The market for sports technologies in Europe is expected to grow from 4.78 billion dollars in 2025 to 14.5 billion in 2034, according to Market Data Forecast. Data standards can influence the possibilities for innovation and competition in this expanding space.
The Essentials
- Fewer than half of European national anti-doping organizations use compatible monitoring formats, according to the International Testing Agency.
- In 2023, German handball and ice hockey adopted different monitoring frequency standards, making any inter-sport performance analysis impossible.
- The European sports technology market is expected to triple by 2034 (from 4.78 to 14.5 billion dollars, according to Market Data Forecast), amplifying the stakes of each normative choice.
- Whoever imposes their standard decides who can analyze, compare, and innovate.
- Liberal democracies have not yet defined how to regulate data standards in sectors dominated by private actors without restricting competition.
Fragmentation Results from a Deliberate Choice
When two sports leagues in the same country adopt different monitoring frequency standards, their data can be more difficult to compare. Handball and ice hockey leagues can use different monitoring standards. Inter-sport comparisons are difficult and require methodological harmonization; they are not impossible in principle. Data may require harmonization before being analyzed together.
Data standards are strategic assets. A league imposing a proprietary format can increase the dependence of clubs if data is not exportable or interoperable. A widely adopted supplier can acquire a lock-in advantage, particularly if interoperability and portability are insufficient. Fragmentation can consolidate positions and result from organizational or technical choices.
The economics of standards has documented this in other sectors. In the automotive industry, in finance, in telecommunications, the battle of the standards has always had identifiable winners. Sport is no exception to this logic. It simply enters it later, with less awareness of what is at stake.
Anti-Doping Reveals the Scope of the Problem
Dependence on proprietary formats exacerbates this problem in a specific way. Renewal can prolong a risk of incompatibility if the contract and tools do not provide for interoperability or portability. Data accumulation can increase costs and migration difficulties, without their evolution necessarily being proportional to historical volume. Fragmentation thus reproduces itself at each budget cycle, without any explicit decision being necessary to perpetuate it.
The case of national anti-doping organizations is particularly instructive because it touches on an area governed by harmonized global standards and obligations arising from the World Anti-Doping Code. The integrity of sport depends on the ability to detect biological anomalies over time. This requires longitudinal, consolidated, comparable data.
No identified primary source allows this figure to be attributed to the International Testing Agency. In the ABP system, relevant biological data are managed and shared via ADAMS between competent authorities, subject to rules of jurisdiction and data protection. Cross-border controls are governed by harmonized WADA procedures; ADAMS is mandatory or central to certain anti-doping flows and processes, notably the management and sharing of biological passports.
The consequences extend beyond anti-doping. If systems for tracking physical load, injury prevention, and recovery management are built on such fragmented foundations, sports medicine loses part of its capacity to produce generalizable knowledge. The richest clubs mitigate the problem by financing their own data science teams. Others suffer.
Who Benefits from Incompatibility
This asymmetry is both financial and epistemic. Formats and access rights strongly influence the analytical questions that are feasible and the cost of studying them. A supplier controlling a proprietary format can limit or increase the cost of certain analyses if export and interoperability mechanisms do not exist. This competitive advantage can persist when data remains difficult to export, document, or query with third-party tools.
Fragmentation of standards creates a precise asymmetry. Large sports organizations, well-funded international federations, and technology suppliers powerful enough to impose their format have the resources necessary to build bridges, converters, and dedicated teams. Mid-budget clubs, national federations of lesser-known sports, and university researchers without access to proprietary databases encounter obstacles that these resources would allow them to overcome.
This pattern appears in other rapidly expanding technological sectors. As illustrated by the analysis of football and its technological biases, data tools are designed for certain actors and ignore others. Fragmentation of standards amplifies this structural bias. A club that invests in a proprietary platform can more easily access certain analyses when data formats are not interoperable.
The rapidly growing market makes the issue more acute. Growth and adoption can reinforce switching costs and lock-in effects, without making it possible to assert an exponential progression of the difficulty to change standards. It is true in energy, it is true in finance, it is true in sport. Market growth can attract actors who will develop their own standards without awaiting European intervention. These standards can impose themselves through market adoption.
Federations Making Progress on Standardization
The situation is not uniform. Several actors are attempting to build islands of compatibility, and their methods are worth examining.
The UCI is subject to the global anti-doping framework and the biological passport; no primary evidence establishes that it has imposed a distinct standardized biometric protocol on all teams. The WADA biological passport allows longitudinal monitoring of hematological markers according to harmonized protocols. Longitudinal anomalies are evaluated according to harmonized biological passport procedures and data managed in ADAMS.
FIBA uses common systems and interfaces for some of its competitions, without a general requirement regarding monitoring data being established. In competitions administered with the relevant FIBA systems, match data follow FIBA interfaces; generalization to all European clubs has not been established. Interoperability remains partial, but this normative constraint is real and was negotiated at the federal level rather than abandoned to individual club choices.
These examples have a common point: standardization was imposed by an authority that had both regulatory legitimacy and a direct interest in data comparability. These approaches aimed notably at ensuring consistency of certain data. Federations without this direct interest remain in fragmentation by default.
Public Regulation Facing Private Standards
The question posed by these dynamics is properly political. Liberal democracies have developed tools to manage this type of situation in other sectors: open standards imposed by public authority, interoperability requirements inscribed in regulations, access to data for researchers and regulators. The EU has established access and interoperability rules in payments with PSD2, in data with the Data Act, and in health with the EHDS, which entered into force on March 26, 2025, and is progressively applicable.
Sport does not have a complete European sectoral framework on data interoperability, but it is not largely exempt from European horizontal frameworks. EU law recognizes the specificities and structures of sport, but federations remain subject to Union law, including competition law. This autonomy has legitimate justifications. It also creates regulatory uncertainties: there is not necessarily a single European sectoral mandate on the interoperability of sports data, but regulators and federations may have relevant powers according to the legal and contractual field.
SportsInnovation 2026, which devoted a session to the standardization of 3D data in sport, highlighted this blind spot. Participants agreed on the diagnosis: fragmentation costs the entire sector dearly. They disagreed, however, on the competent authority to impose it. International federations have jurisdiction only over their own sports.
The European Union has competence to support sport and can adopt horizontal rules applicable to the sector. National governments would act country by country, reproducing fragmentation at another level.
The parallel with other sectors where regulation of data standards conditions the sharing of technological gains is direct. AI in enterprise poses the same question: when a technology shifts from the status of tool to that of structuring system, the governance of its standards determines who captures value. Digital sport is no different.
Existing Avenues and Actors Pursuing Them
The impasse is not total. Several initiatives merit attention.
FIFA publishes a standard EPTS data transfer format; no evidence makes it possible to attribute it to an EPTS consortium or to assert its majority adoption by European leagues. FIFA illustrates that an international federation can propose a voluntary sectoral standard; its actual adoption and the conditions necessary for its success remain to be demonstrated.
WADA published ABP guidelines in 2023 and maintains ADAMS as a management and sharing system; the alleged migration architecture is not documented. Migration is costly. It is technically feasible. What is missing, in most countries, is the funding and political will to inscribe it in national sports budgets.
Specialized think tanks such as Play The Game or the Sports Institute advance a third avenue: conditioning public funding for professional sport to the adoption of open standards. If a league benefits from tax exemptions, loan guarantees, or infrastructure subsidies, the counterpart could include requirements for data interoperability. This lever already exists in other subsidized cultural and media sectors. Its application to sport would require political will that few European governments have demonstrated thus far.
The market will evolve rapidly over this decade. Widely adopted formats can reinforce switching costs and lock-in effects. Negotiated standardization remains possible, depending on the sectors and actors involved. Available data support the interest in targeted common standards, co-constructed and adapted to purposes, sports, and data protection constraints.
Sources
- Market Data Forecast – Europe Sports Technology Market
- International Testing Agency – Report on anti-doping monitoring formats (2024-2025), no guaranteed URL
- World Anti-Doping Agency – Report on the modernization of the Athlete Biological Passport (2023), no guaranteed URL
- SportsInnovation 2026 Proceedings – Session on 3D Data Standardization, no guaranteed URL
- FIFA EPTS Regulation – Electronic Performance and Tracking Systems (open exchange format), no guaranteed URL
