Sure, pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training to prepare for another baseball season and the Winter Olympics are in full swing in Vancouver, but the back office pros of data analytics in sports are heading to chilly Boston for the real “winter classic.” Since 2004, MIT Sloan School has hosted a conference on analytics in sports and this year’s lineup promises to bring their A-Game (insert your own sports clichés here for extra credit). Statistics have always been a factor for sports and fans, but analytics have never been more ingrained now that every sport has spawned fantasy leagues, videogames updated every year with stars and surprises. The amount of data has mushroomed and the ability to review and glean insights has turned the “sweet science” of boxing, soccer/football, and other sports into, well, another science.
The analytics tide — gathering unusual insights and intelligence from data — has been rising for a decade with celebrities including Bill James, who created a statistical encyclopedia of baseball and Billy Beane, featured in the book “Moneyball” about big league success on a limited budget. There are countless spreadsheets and cost-benefit analyses of everything from player statistics to ticket pricing, yield management to forecasting budgets. The MIT conference has grown rapidly to more than 400 attendees and attracted dozens of media outlets and even been nicknamed “Dorkapaloooza” by ESPN sports guy Bill Simmons.
So, come to Cambridge, Mass. for the March 6 conference and root for fan favorites like Simon Wilson, head of performance analysis of Manchester City Football Club or Dean Oliver, director of quantitative analysis for the Denver Nuggets. The 2009 conference was described by MIT Sloan School Dean David Schmittlein as the “leading venue for the modern management of sports enterprises – management that creates value through innovation and management that relies on fact-based to do that.”
Don’t be surprised if the audience high-fives and asks for autographs from management, not players.
David Wallace
Spotfire Blogging Team
Image Credit: Microsoft Office Clip Art
