Sports are an organized business nowadays, facilitated by analytics. The sports analytics market may be classified on the basis of application, deployment and the type of sports. Analytics in sports is necessary for team composition, performance optimization and injury prevention. Investment in sports analytics is a long-term plan rather than an immediate solution. Baseball had been the flag bearer in this field.
Application of Sports Analytics
Analytics in sports may be used in innumerable ways such as fan engagement, performance analysis of players by analyzing bio-mechanics so that coach can understand and help them improve on their techniques. Not only in professional sports, but also in training institutes is sports analytics helpful. It helps in rooting out bias and uncertainty. Predictive analytics can be applied to gain insight into what is likely to happen in the future. It helps in projecting careers of amateur players by tracking the strengths and weakness of opponents. If information system in sports can be managed properly, then sports analytics may prove to be a data-driven decision support platform. Motion capture technology has increased the data collection from each sport to a million-fold. This has been possible as it can track every movement on a field at 100th of a second.
The actual effect of sports analytics can be however judged in the boardroom. In a revenue model, the weightage may be given on different factors like: day of match, commercials and broadcasting. However, social media analysis concludes that an individual player attracts more fans than their clubs do. Clubs are now able to use data on their fans to segregate them on the basis of location, age and sex. Predictive analytics may help retail stores to decide on their optimum location by analyzing location, demographics, behavior of fans, pattern of fans, season ticket holders, etc.
Development of Sports Analytics Over The Years
Earlier, data usage in a sports organization was limited only to player and team summary statistics, individual box score and scouting reports. Later, due to increased computation and reduced storage cost, the frequency of information captured, stored and utilized, increased tremendously. Now, many companies have emerged who provide historical data with customized reports to organizations.
Dark Side of Sports Analytics
Powerful tools may be misused if in wrong hands. Data availability has helped team managers, coaches to recruit and train players. Similarly, the frequency of bettors has also increased owing to this accessibility of data. Thus, sports analytics has also aided huge illegal online betting market, with a high demand of quality data.
Sports analytics can either provide a simple comparisons, or extremely complicated and cutting-edge statistical analysis. Insights which are provided by data are impossible for humans to come up with. The results of these analyses may feed directly into an intelligent information system that provides decision-makers with standardized results.
