Sports analytics came into existence in the 1940s when a statistician Allan Roth was hired by Branch Rickey, General manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to evaluate the performance of the players. It became a popular and integral part of every sports company after the release of the book ‘Moneyball’ in 2003, by Micheal Lewis.
The majority of the winning teams use sports analytics for improving their play and to help the company hop on the fast track to success. It maximizes the overall team performance and Managers of the teams use this data to determine the fit players for their club.
However, sports data analytics can allow your business to get more value out of it by following various techniques which are used by the teams to increase their on-field success.
Here are the few steps that will help you get started.
1. Aspiring to become a top performer
The path to becoming a top performer begins with the ability to identifying the projects that offer both, promise and practicality. To become the best in your field, you cannot just rely on your gut instincts.
You need to make decisions based on all available real-time data analytics. The need and requirements of every team or organization cannot be the same, so you have to depend on facts and data.
2. Developing a skilled analytic team
To find and hire the right and analytically skilled individual is another major step in creating a skilled analytic team. You should hire considering that the people you choose understand the work and your business completely.
They should possess a deep and proper knowledge of models, tools, and formulas that are needed to evaluate sports using big data analytics.
3. Extracting data from multiple sources
You cannot analyze a team or a player without data. In other words, data is the fuel that drives analytics. Organizations obtain data from various sources like schools, game statistics, equipment sensors, and even other teams. However, while you have the access to ample amounts of data, all of this can become overwhelming. Buried under a plentiful amount of information, it is necessary to discard the useless data.
4. Focusing on team
Initially, sports analytics focused mainly on the players, rather than collectively on a team. All they put their energy was on which player the company should buy, sell, and trade. In simple words, they focused on curating a team with the best players whose ultimate goal would be to win games. But in reality, real-time data analytics can be used to do numerous useful things like identifying unproductive businesses, relationships, underperforming employees, etcetera.
5. Spreading analytics across the entire team
It is important to incorporate data analytics in every key decision across all sorts of customer experience, marketing, sales, supply chain, and all other core functions. The scattering of data and analytical functions tends to make it difficult and sometimes restricts the analysis and access of data. It might end up making it difficult to grab valuable opportunities and allow sports data analytics to help in the growth of the organization.
6. Using best tools
Just like every player in the team needs the best ears to play, sports data analytics staff also need to be equipped with the best and latest resources and analytical tools. Selecting the best analytical tools for your business is essential to the success of all its future analytical projects. It must include prioritizing and gathering requirements along with understanding cases and tools categories. Therefore, you should choose the analytical tools that allow the best result and can be implemented with current projects and resources.
7. Maintaining and building open channels
When it comes to sports, the analytics experts have to communicate with the people who know more about the technique of hitting a low-hanging fastball than algorithms and models in plain and straightforward language.
In the same way, a similar approach can be used by businesses as most users have little to no knowledge about sports data analytics. So, your analytics team should know enough about the company’s business to effectively interpret the key-analytics-generated insights to managers and other decision-makers.
8. Working with IT partner
Not many companies and organizations can have a luxurious budget of operating giant IT or analytics departments due to the salaries of players and other financial encumbrances, particularly those based on smaller markets.
9. Seeking external support
The data-obsessed fans are continuing to take sports analytics to a new level of power and refinement. There is a possibility that your business might not have a fan base compared to the other companies but you can draw on to provide analytical support by making deals with business partners and customers with their analytics department. They might help you by putting their team forward to work for you and help you solve a problem that will benefit both companies.
10. Critical importance of analytics
The chances of encountering strong resistance from the managers towards new analytics initiatives are quite often. These individuals are often convinced with old-school approaches when it comes to solving business problems.
With Data Sports Group explore the power of Sports analytics and take your business to the next level.