Inside the Numbers
If you’ve had a chance to see last year’s best film, Moneyball, then you have a pretty good idea of what MIT’s Sports Analytics Conference is all about. It’s really pretty simple: how to use data analysis to make better decisions in the sports industry. Most major sports franchises now use analytics to help with making roster decisions, in-game decisions and even ticket pricing decisions. There are now a growing minority of players who are using data to find ways to improve their performance.
While a subset of fans have been analyzing sports data for many years, it’s really only in the last 10 years that franchises started to pay any attention, and now that they are, the sports analytics industry is exploding. For example, devices are placed in basketball arenas to track player movement and the ball’s location in 3-D space. Teams then analyze the results to figure out how to get more rebounds, how someone performs when they're tired and much more.
The conference is organized by MIT Sloan School of Business MBA students, who did an outstanding job planning and executing the event. Everything seemingly went off without a hitch. It was held at the Hynes Convention Center, near Copley Square in Boston. The headlining guests were outstanding. Bill James is the inventor of sabermetrics, which is the statistical analysis at the heart of Moneyball. Bill Simmons is better known as ESPN's Sports Guy; he recently started the blog Grantland, as an offshoot of ESPN.com. Comedian and Price is Right host Drew Carey was there, and so was Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.
Panels included franchise owners, club presidents, executives from all major TV networks including the president of ESPN and a few select players. It appeared to me that about half of the attendees were students, with people working in the sports industry making up the other half.
I was lucky enough to attend the conference with three fellow Full-time MBA students from W. P. Carey, Matt Baltzer, Kristoffer Kaminski, and Derek Pignatelli. We attended because we all share a common interest in sports analytics, but also wanted to compete in the annual case competition. This year’s case featured a problem many NFL teams are currently facing: how to right-size their stadiums. Each team was given attendance data for four hypothetical NFL teams and asked to analyze it and come up with solutions to maximize profit and attendance for each team. Teams from 21 of the best business schools in the country competed and the top three were selected to present their findings to NFL executives during day two of the conference.
The winning team was from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, but it was a great opportunity for us to compete side-by-side with so many excellent students from across the country, and just to be a part of the event was a real highlight of my time in the W. P. Carey MBA program so far.
While a subset of fans have been analyzing sports data for many years, it’s really only in the last 10 years that franchises started to pay any attention, and now that they are, the sports analytics industry is exploding. For example, devices are placed in basketball arenas to track player movement and the ball’s location in 3-D space. Teams then analyze the results to figure out how to get more rebounds, how someone performs when they're tired and much more.
The conference is organized by MIT Sloan School of Business MBA students, who did an outstanding job planning and executing the event. Everything seemingly went off without a hitch. It was held at the Hynes Convention Center, near Copley Square in Boston. The headlining guests were outstanding. Bill James is the inventor of sabermetrics, which is the statistical analysis at the heart of Moneyball. Bill Simmons is better known as ESPN's Sports Guy; he recently started the blog Grantland, as an offshoot of ESPN.com. Comedian and Price is Right host Drew Carey was there, and so was Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.
Panels included franchise owners, club presidents, executives from all major TV networks including the president of ESPN and a few select players. It appeared to me that about half of the attendees were students, with people working in the sports industry making up the other half.
I was lucky enough to attend the conference with three fellow Full-time MBA students from W. P. Carey, Matt Baltzer, Kristoffer Kaminski, and Derek Pignatelli. We attended because we all share a common interest in sports analytics, but also wanted to compete in the annual case competition. This year’s case featured a problem many NFL teams are currently facing: how to right-size their stadiums. Each team was given attendance data for four hypothetical NFL teams and asked to analyze it and come up with solutions to maximize profit and attendance for each team. Teams from 21 of the best business schools in the country competed and the top three were selected to present their findings to NFL executives during day two of the conference.
The winning team was from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, but it was a great opportunity for us to compete side-by-side with so many excellent students from across the country, and just to be a part of the event was a real highlight of my time in the W. P. Carey MBA program so far.
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