Speaking last November at the Open Data Institute (ODI) Summit 2016, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, noted that, in order to help people “find their way towards being healthy, we should...put sports data online”.
The thinking is that an open approach will allow people to more easily find information on physical activities (simple things like what’s happening, when and where) across a wide range of online platforms – from health-focused apps and local authority websites to the wave of emerging chatbots.
This message came after nearly three years of work by imin to garner support for this open approach. In 2015, imin co-founded OpenActive with the goal of bringing together public and private organisations from across the UK and beyond to work towards an open data approach to physical activities. Today, OpenActive is an ambitious, sector-led initiative co-ordinated by the ODI and supported by Sport England, working to increase the understanding of, and grow the momentum towards, using open data to help more people be more active.
For the fitness sector, OpenActive represents a huge opportunity. By putting real-time information about physical activities at people’s fingertips, we mirror consumer-centric models seen in sectors like travel. We can finally bring to our sector the much-revered holiday-booking experience whereby people can easily find and book their holidays across a multitude of apps and websites.
This satisfies a key feature of Sport England’s new strategy, that says we must “keep pace with the digital expectations of customers, making it as easy to book a sports court as a hotel room”.
And this is where imin is now focusing its attention – facilitating the ‘one-click buying’ experience on a wide range of online platforms, including the Olympic Park website and London Sport’s Get Active London activity finder. imin enables the consumer to find and a book a physical activity without leaving their platform of choice.
The benefit is not solely to the consumer, however. For those looking to attract more participants to their activities or facilities, this approach means that real-time, bookable activities can be advertised across a wide range of online services. A number of leisure operators have backed the OpenActive initiative, and one with nationwide coverage has already agreed to work with imin on a pilot early this year.
And for those organisations building online communities, behavioural change tools or the next big app, there’s now easy access to real-time activity data, helping consumers immediately find ways to be active and healthy.