With the Wimbledon Tennis Championships underway in South West London (and my plans to attend this weekend!), it’s worth taking a moment to think about the role fast data will play at this year’s most prestigious of Grand Slam tournaments.

As well as opening its gates to the world’s best tennis stars and almost half a million tennis fans – the number of people engaging digitally with the two-week Wimbledon tennis tournament is set to be exponentially higher than past years.

This year BBC Sport plans to deliver its biggest ever digital Wimbledon, enabling audiences to follow more of the action than ever before, with up to 12 live streams available across any device. And that’s before fans get to have their say via the BBC’s live online page or directly through social media.

Meanwhile, around the globe, millions of tennis fans will be turning to mobile apps for the latest scores and updates on their favorite players. Indeed, Wimbledon’s own award winning digital platform anticipates welcoming nearly 20 million unique users – all of whom will expect to receive a high quality, tailored experience on any device.

Delivering live scores, results, news, photo and video highlights on–demand is just the tip of the iceberg. You want to offer an interactive experience to the customer. Consider what some of our customers are doing with in-play betting. When watching Wimbledon, they are delivering betting odds to customers in real-time, during the match. For example, when Roger Federer starts to serve in his semi-final match today, you can place a bet instantly on what will happen – will he ace or fault?

But for this to occur, data must be sent back and forth, conversationally in real-time. Otherwise, betting on a serve that is done or missing a jackpot because of slow Internet connections is pointless and your users will go to a competitor.

When it comes to satisfying the expectations of today’s digital sports fans distributing fast data to web and mobile applications is the key to engaging and reaching new audiences.

Because, putting real-time data in the palm of a user’s hand such as in-play odds or contextual ‘bet now’ calls to action, will generate more confident betting decisions, create bet intent and ultimately capture the transaction – the moment their favorite player serves.