Add support for Club (above the Team level)

[riannella]

I was wondering if you can model a Club in the ontology?

For example, "Manchester United FC" (a Club) that has two Teams (ManU Men, and ManU Women) ?

[bquinn]

Hi Renato, good to hear from you! We considered that in the early days but put it out of scope for 1.0. Maybe it's time to look at it now? @pauljkelly I think it would be fairly straightforward to add a class that sits above Team (or Agent)?

Are there other use cases / scenarios that we need to consider apart from the straightforward example given above?

[trondhuso]

When we consider club, then perhaps look at federation - or sport organisations in general ... and then you start digging into the rabbit hole.
Club -> National Federation -> Regional Federation -> International Federation -> Summer/winter olympic sport federation
For instance:
MUFC (a national regional sport organisation) -> the FA (a national sport organisation)
The FA -> UEFA (A regional sport organisation)
The FA -> FIFA (An international sport organisation)
FIFA -> ASOIF (An International umbrella sport organisation)

[bquinn]

When we consider club, then perhaps look at federation - or sport organisations in general ... and then you start digging into the rabbit hole.

Thanks, but we already have GoverningBody to cover federations. We just need something to represent the wider Club which the Team is a part of.

[riannella]

Perhaps add "Club" above "Team" and then link "Club" to "Governing Body"
And make "Governing Body" have a relationship to itself for multiple layers...

[pauljkelly]

Hi @riannella we discussed this in our regular meeting and we had trouble finding the Man U Club per se (we looked at Barca too). There's no wikipedia page for it, just pages for the men's and women's teams (also referred to as clubs) which share an owner, Man U PLC. However, when we looked at Bayer Munich we found that more traditional club structure which you are likely referring to above.

Do you have examples from other sports? We'd also be interested to know what use cases you are dealing with here.

I think we can incorporate that into the model with no disruption since it would simply point from the team to the club (and back). But what do we make of the Man U structure?

[riannella]

Hi all...if you look at the ManU wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_United_F.C.
and look under the RHS summary you can see the "Departments of Manchester United" that
includes the Men's, Women's, and Academy (U21) teams (Even a Basketball team!)

Here in Australia, the Brisbane Roar FC:
https://brisbaneroar.com.au
Has 3 teams (look under the "teams" menu)

In the Australian Rules Football, the Brisbane Lions:
https://www.lions.com.au
has 4 teams (look under the "teams" menu)

I think from a modelling perspective, this is an important part of sports "data".
Eg, how many titles has "Club X" won in total ?

[Pupix]

Another team that I've seen using a similar structure to what @riannella linked is Real Madrid. The football club started as only that, but then they added different divisions within their company structure for other sports.

Main wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Madrid_CF with their departments

And the basketball side of things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Madrid_Baloncesto

You can find the other division links on the main wiki page.

[bquinn]

Thanks for these examples, they're a great help to focus our thinking.

It's interesting that so many clubs have teams in wildly different sports... we also found that many German clubs have teams that participate in many sports, eg https://fcbayern.com/en/club/fcb-club/other-sports/chess !

Questions:

• Do we need some kind of Membership object that sites between Club and Team? ie can a Team move between Clubs? do we need to track the dates on which Teams "joined" and "left Clubs?
• Can only Teams be part of Clubs or can individual Athletes too?

@freeballoon maybe you have some thoughts in this area?

[Pupix]

• Do we need some kind of Membership object that sites between Club and Team? ie can a Team move between Clubs? do we need to track the dates on which Teams "joined" and "left Clubs?

Not necessarily, but having start and end dates to track when a team was founded and dissolved would help. This can be done at the Team level as well, the same way Participation doesn't have dates, but the Event does. Defining a sport that team plays would also be good to differentiate them.

In the worlds of eSports this happens all the time. Most organizations have multiple teams, one for each videogame, and sometimes academy teams too in lower leagues.

When an entire team gets sold, which happens pretty regularly, the roster and sometimes the staff is transferred from one org to another, not the Team. This may be due to an org closing a division for a particular game or due to poor performance.

Just last year an entire org was bought out (CLG), the old League of Legends team was disbanded and recreated under the new org of NRG. They would be considered 2 different Teams, but it's the same people under a new ownership.

An older example is Dignitas EU, which had to be sold due to regulations, and the same thing happened. The roster of the EU Team was sold off, the EU division closed down and a new Team was created under Fellow Esports with the same athletes.

At some point in the future Fellow Esports became Splyce, which was just a rebranding. I believe this is the case when it will still be the same Team, just different name.

Here's an excerpt that showcases the wording being used when "moving" teams:
On August 19, 2015, Follow eSports announced it had acquired the roster of SapphireKelownaDotCom. Follow eSports dropped SapphireKelownaDotCom and picked up the roster of ex-eLevate on October 25, 2015.

• Can only Teams be part of Clubs or can individual Athletes too?

I am inclined to say both, if we see Clubs as Sport organization/businesses. My understanding is that Athletes sign with the Club, not the Team. Playing for the Team X, which is part of Club Y is just their job description.

I would also add Associates there too, if you need to define people working at a Club level, such as an owner or staff.

[pauljkelly]

Membership has start and end dates and could look after that. Name changes are something on our road map but would be handled differently, perhaps by some general identity management scheme.

Franchise moves was something we took into consideration for the model.

In terms of Athlete membership our scope is really results, as our overall use case is for news. But if we can get that association with Club at little cost then no worries.

[trondhuso]

Thanks for these examples, they're a great help to focus our thinking.

It's interesting that so many clubs have teams in wildly different sports... we also found that many German clubs have teams that participate in many sports, eg https://fcbayern.com/en/club/fcb-club/other-sports/chess !

Questions:

• Do we need some kind of Membership object that sites between Club and Team? ie can a Team move between Clubs? do we need to track the dates on which Teams "joined" and "left Clubs?
• Can only Teams be part of Clubs or can individual Athletes too?

@freeballoon maybe you have some thoughts in this area?

This is not uncommon.

For instance. The club I belonged to – Stabæk IF – is a multisport club:
Alpine skiing
Cross country skiing
Handball (elite / different age groups)
Football (elite series / 1. Division / different age groups)
Bandy (like hockey – just on ice)
Orienteering

That is how many Norwegian clubs are organized.

Often the elite teams are being organized as separate organizations, still under ownership of the club. Without the club connection, they cannot participate in any Norwegian tournaments.

Dumb question (and maybe late into the discussion), but would it be a better idea to have a general SportOrganization object where you type it? SportOrganization.type=club / GoverningBody / Team / EventOrganizer? (is Euro 2024 a sport organization?)
(are we doing the same thing we did with SportsML - making it less generic in version 1.0 - and then more generic in the last version)

Trond

[bquinn]

Here is what we are thinking currently to implement this: (this diagram also includes our other proposed changes for v1.1)

[riannella]

Hi, can you show an example (turtle) of what the new Club/Team Membership/Competition would look like?