Though not a football fan in any sense, an item of news about PSV Eindhoven caught my eye because it illustrates well the costs of poor data management.

PSV have been disqualified from the Dutch league cup competition because they had fielded a player who had been disqualified due to having received two yellow cards in the 2006 competition. Somehow, this information didn’t reach the team manager and nobody else seemed to notice.

This could be seen as a one off administrative error. It appears, however, that not only did the club receive a reminder of the disqualification beforehand, but that this is just one of a string of problems in recent years. Twice before the club “forgot” to register some of its best players for competitions and had to field weaker teams, which resulted in lost matches.

I have not found any figures given for how much the most recent error will cost PSV, but I would guess that the lost revenue with run into the millions of euros. The club don’t seem to know how this blunder happened, but it is a data quality problem which can very easily be resolved. Given the financial implications of these errors, a thorough check of their data and communication procedures seems to be in order!