Sports Analytics Data Is Now Feeding the Same Datacentre Fight It Runs On

Campaigners obtained the documents through freedom of information requests, and Sandra Laville reported on them for the Guardian. The documents show developer Xlinks had been in private talks with Torridge district council since March 2025. The council sent a letter of support in April 2025, before any environmental study or public consultation.

The council told the Guardian that early talks are standard and confidential, and do not mean approval. Xlinks plans a 1.5GW AI data campus and a 1.8GW battery storage site on about 344 hectares near Great Torrington, inside a Unesco biosphere reserve. The company puts the cost at up to £13.8bn and says the site will create 600 to 1,200 permanent jobs.

That fight matters to sports technology, because the same compute, cooling and power constraints are the backbone of modern performance analytics. Optical tracking, wearables and biomechanics platforms generate data constantly. Teams increasingly process it close to real time, not overnight.

The analytics stack is a datacentre story now

TechShack's 24 September overview of sports analytics in 2026 lists Hawk-Eye, Second Spectrum, Kinexon, Catapult and Stats Perform as core suppliers of positional, movement and workload data, alongside force plates, GPS vests, smart insoles and sleep tracking. The article argues access is no longer the edge; knowing which signals change behaviour is.

That shift moves analytics budgets closer to infrastructure budgets. A club tracking sprint distance, deceleration load and shot quality needs storage, networking and models that run during a match, not after it. So the local politics of power and water in Devon, New Jersey or Victoria eventually reach the analyst's desk.

"How can the largest and most costly infrastructure proposal in the nation be conducted almost exclusively in secret?" said Emily Clark of the Devon Datacentre and BESS action group.

One document showed that in severe heat and drought, the Devon site could use about 2.9bn litres of water a year. Xlinks told the Guardian that figure came from an old design, and that the campus will mainly reuse water and top up from rain. A national petition started by Devon county councillor Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin has passed 36,000 signatures. The government rejected a pause on 17 September.

Enforcement, not promises

Enforcement is already arriving elsewhere. Ars Technica reported on 24 September that New Jersey fined DataOne $1.1m. The Guardian and Floodlight News investigated the site and shared thermal drone footage showing 45 of 62 unpermitted gas generators running. The state gave DataOne 45 days to apply for permits or cease operations. Residents told the New York Times the penalty was pocket change.

Sports analytics suppliers are not named in that case. But the pattern is identical to what clubs face when they lean harder on real-time data: more compute, more local footprint, more scrutiny.

Australia is running the same argument with different numbers. The Guardian reported on 26 September that Data Centres Australia head Belinda Dennett said the US has 5,400 datacentres with 53.7GW of capacity, against 252 in Australia with 1.4GW. The Guardian noted Australia has just under one datacentre per 100,000 people, versus 1.5 in the US.

Meanwhile the hiring keeps going. SportsCareers listed 520 open sports analytics roles across 80 organisations, with betting and data firms posting the largest share. Analytics Sports Jobs showed a Philadelphia Union data science manager role posted on 24 September.

The talent is there. The power, water and permits are the harder part.