Our Round Table Series resumed yesterday looking at the rapidly evolving world of sports analytics. We were hosted by Accenture whose offices on Grand Canal Square provided the kind of environment in which ‘horizon’ thinking could be brought out from those who joined us.
Today we publish the first half of a list of 10 key take aways to emerge from the open and free flow of discussion that took place. The second half will be published next Tuesday.
We will make contact this morning with a number of our members about two very exciting initiatives which we will pursue. Those will be shared with our full membership first next week and then with our wider readership as they develop. These are exciting times.
Our first 5 of 10 Take-Away thoughts on the world of Sports Analytics
- While the world of sports analytics has developed at a rapid rate, we have still barely scratched the surface of what is possible. The Global sports industry is valued at somewhere north of $400 Billion. That’s more than most single countries in the world and twice that of Ireland. It is an industry in which marginal gains can make enormous differences and analytics delivers.
- Sport is not a complicated endeavour. People can grasp the concept of analysis and improvement. They can develop strategies that are tested in a real life environment, proven or disproved to be of value and then translated from one team or sport to many, or from one field to others in business and society. Nate Silver was a baseball statistician who, in 2008, at the age of 30, turned his analytics theory to the US Presidential elections. He correctly forecast 49 of the 50 states, missing Indiana by one percentage point. He called all 35 of that year’s Senate Races. In 2012 he produced the perfect game correctly calling all 50 states between Obama and Romney.
- The data being produced through online gaming and titles such as the hyper realistic FIFA 14 is being gathered and relayed back to professional sports teams at the highest level. Player stats are now so well developed and close to reality that teams can analyse multiple tactical line ups and player interactions gained from what millions of game players have done. The permutations would never be possible in real life but the ones that prove most successful on an X Box might be coming to a Champions’ League arena sooner than you might imagine.
- Sport is proving a winner as a means of introducing military developed technology into the mainstream world before onward translation into multiple areas. The US Military spent ten years and tens of millions of dollars researching sleep and the effects of fatigue on performance. This research developed into a wearable technology that is now being used across US sports including with the Dallas Mavericks which we wrote about earlier this week.
- The next logical development of this is into areas of the workplace where fatigue can impair critical decision making such as pilots or public service vehicle drivers. If it proves the value of a particular activity in sport, it means that people will accept it as being of real rather than only academic value. It may help to redefine a work culture where late nights and coffee fuelled adrenaline are still accepted as a path to success whereas the real winner may be the ones who are thinking better because they are better rested.
Join us again on Tuesday when we complete the list by looking at media, education, new tricks and the importance of 17 minutes…
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