The sports sector is a great example of an industry that makes efficient use of data today to make decisions. All professional series, such as the NHL, NBA, Premier League and even esports, use data analytics to define winning strategies and e.g. maximize player performance and talent. Just like other companies, clubs seek to increase their efficiency through, for example, marketing campaigns to increase sales. Billions and billions of euros are moving in professional sports series and other related activities, such as betting.
Data analysts have become a key part of club operations and a very important resource for coaches. Clubs use data collected from their own performances as well as commercially available data. Data analytics is used to analyze player performance, maximize player talent, and design winning strategies. They can use data analytics e.g. to predict and avoid player injuries and to create effective marketing campaigns to increase sales revenue. It is very important for professional clubs that people buy their fan products and tickets. It is possible to anticipate fans behavior with data and try to assume optimal actions.
Nowadays, it is a basic premise that game situations can be tracked by fans in real time using data feeds for game watching and betting. The technology available is evolving every day, and what comes even in the near future is pretty hard to predict. Highly sophisticated data services are already available, with performance and forecast data for the needs of coaches, spectators and bettors alike. It is a matter of dividing each individual activity of each sport so that it is converted into numbers and statistics to be analyzed. Nowadays almost everything is measured and verified.
Individual athletes also strive to develop their own performance. And, for example, even their contract negotiations with the help of data. An interesting example of which is the contract negotiations between Belgian footballer Kevin De Bruyne and Manchester City FC. De Bruyne hired a data analytics research firm to provide insights into drafting the next contract for his professional career and did a £ 83 million four-year contract with Manchester City FC without an agent.
A wealth of high-quality commercial and real-time data is available from the sports sector. When talking about sports data, it is not appropriate to forget people's desire to measure their own fitness performances. Almost every fitness enthusiasts today have a high-tech device in their hands and a fierce health technology boom is at hand. Companies can develop their products and services with the massive amount of data that each of us produces. It is perfectly fair to say that the sports sector is making a significant contribution to the data economy.
To this end, I added couple of links to check out:
API-Sports is an excellent example of a service that provides global coverage sports data
A very interesting The Numbers Game - How Data Is Changing Football documentary on Youtube