SPORTS ANALYTICS STARTUP · AGENCY PROJECT

How can brand managers quickly compare sponsorship value across teams, leagues, and seasons?

Overview

While at Pixel Nirvana Design Studio I designed the main dashboards for a UK-based sports analytics startup (name withheld due to NDA). The platform aggregates TV, social, search, and audience data into a single sponsorship index, helping brands understand which teams and sports deliver the best return on sponsorship spend.

Challenges

  • Sponsorship performance data lived in separate CSVs, reports, and tools, making comparison slow and manual.
  • Marketing stakeholders needed high-level answers (Who should we sponsor? Is value going up or down?) without having to read dense analytics reports.
  • Dashboards had to surface a lot of metrics, index scores, values, reach, demographic splits, without becoming visually overwhelming.

Goals

  • Create a single dashboard view that summarises sponsorship value across countries, sports, and teams.
  • Make it easy to compare teams and time periods and spot trends at a glance.
  • Establish a reusable data-visualisation language for charts, tables, and KPIs that the startup could extend as new metrics were added.

My role

UI / Visual Designer – Pixel Nirvana Design Studio

  • Defined the layout and interaction model for the main dashboard and comparison pages.
  • Designed all charts (line, bar, donut, stacked bars) and KPI cards, including colour schemes and legends.
  • Created a small design system for typography, spacing, and chart components so additional views could be built consistently.
  • Worked with product and data teams to prioritise which metrics appeared in primary vs secondary positions.

Process snapshot

  • Started from raw Excel exports and early wireframes, mapping which metrics decision-makers cared about most (index score, sponsorship value, reach).
  • Grouped metrics into logical clusters: overall KPIs, trend over time, sponsorship breakdown, digital performance, and audience profile.
  • Iterated on how to show team comparison, moving from complex tables to line charts + comparative bar charts so differences were obvious at a glance.
  • Tested variations of colour coding and legends to keep multiple teams and sports visible without confusion.

Selected screens

Global overview dashboard

Top-level KPIs across all sports and regions: sponsorship index, sponsorship value, social media score, digital index, brand affinity, and TV reach. Below, a multi-year index trend chart and a "Top 20 teams" bar chart show which clubs drive the most value, with supporting modules for digital index, TV score, search engine score, and demographics.

Global overview dashboard showing top-level KPIs, multi-year index trend chart, and Top 20 teams bar chart

Team comparison view

Allows users to select multiple teams and compare them side by side. Includes a line chart of index scores over time, stacked bar charts for sponsorship value by partner type, donut charts for social/search/PR contribution, and age-group distribution bars for audience profile.

Team comparison view showing line charts, stacked bar charts, donut charts, and age-group distribution bars

Single-team deep dive

Focused view for one team showing its index trend, sponsorship value by partner tier (principal, jersey, sleeve, etc.), digital performance donuts, and audience demographics. Designed to support both high-level storytelling and detailed discussions with sponsors.

Single-team deep dive showing index trend, sponsorship value by partner tier, digital performance donuts, and audience demographics

KPI footer strip

Repeated summary section showing last-30-days index, total sponsorship value, total followers, and social interactions, giving a quick health check no matter where the user is in the dashboard.

KPI footer strip showing last-30-days index, total sponsorship value, total followers, and social interactions

Impact & reflection

The redesigned dashboards turned a complex analytics product into a presentation-ready decision tool for sponsorship and marketing teams. Brand managers could quickly benchmark teams, spot trends, and justify sponsorship decisions without digging through raw data. The chart system and layout patterns were later reused for additional sports and metrics, strengthening my experience in dense data visualisation and B2B analytics UI.

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