The 12 places for this week’s Sport for Business members’ round table on Sports and Business Analytics are now full and we are looking forward to a good session, hosted by Accenture, exploring the crossover that can be delivered between what happens on the playing pitch and in the business world.
Among those joining us will be representatives from Gaelic games, soccer and the Sports Institute of Northern Ireland, as well as from Accenture, Ulster Bank, RTE and more across the world of sport and business.
The world of analytics is one which continues to drive innovation. The Dallas Mavericks in the NBA are one of eight teams in the league to use GPS trackers on their players during training and games and they are now moving off the court as well.
In recent weeks players have been asked to wear a black wristband through the day and night so that the team doctors and physios can analyse sleep patterns and track this to performance on the court.
In discussion with Gary Keegan and Phil Moore at the Irish Sports Institute recently they highlighted sleep as one of the key factors they look at in developing an overall perspective of an athlete’s environment.
Sleep can have many impacts including on the maintenance or restoration of bone density . It can have an impact on the likelihood of stress fractures during performance training if not enough sleep is being included in the 168 hours of the week that are broken down to gain marginal advantages.
The ‘Readiband’ being worn by the Dallas players is manufactured by a Canadian Company called Fatigue Science. It was established by founder Pat Byrne in 2008 and supplies to professional sports teams in soccer, ice hockey and NFL as well as to management teams in business, labour groups operating in a 24/7 environment and the military.
There are many ways in which the information can be processed and utilised. By pairing sleep patterns over time with cameras installed around the arena for analytics purposes team management say they will be able to determine whether sleeping eight as opposed to six hours a night for three nights before a big game can increase a players reaction times and speed moving up and down the court.
As with any data application, the more reference points and more data you have the more informed decisions are likely to arise from interrogation of the database.
Innovation in sport, particularly at a professional level can deliver many lessons for business as well.
We will publish a list of take-away points coming out of Thursday’s Round table on Friday morning, as well as any initiatives which the group feels will be worth pursuing over the coming weeks and months.
Thanks to News Digest subscriber Joe Favorito for first bringing this story to our attention.
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