7 Ways Sports Teams

Win With Analytics

The Path to

Victory Starts

with Data

ScoutingPlayer

Fitness

Player

Development

Game-Day

Strategy

Player

EvaluationTicketing Merchandising

There’s more to winning than training hard

and scoring pointsFrom media contracts to licensing deals, ticketing and merchandising, and even how many beats per minute a

player’s heart pumps on game day, data has essential information for strategic decision making.

Here are seven key ways the global sports industry is maximizing data:

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SCOUTINGAny successful pro sports franchise knows that the competition

starts with scouting. It’s critical for scouts to be able to quickly

spot potential value in a sea of prospective players.

Cut performance review times by transforming large volumes of

data into interactive visualizations.

Evaluate NFL Prospects with Key Metrics

Player comparisons are instantly visible in this

dashboard, which showcases top college

football prospects at the NFL Combine. Scouts

can compare current and past recruits’ power

and speed.

Coaches can:

• Sort by position and year to see additional

stats

• Explore the rankings of all attendees on a

chosen metric

• Make decisions 10-100 times faster than

with old-school business intelligence.

FPOPLAYER FITNESSNeed to know who to bench and who play? How valuable is each

player at any given time? Who performs better under stress, or in

the 18th minute of the game?

Tracking player status, training, improvements, and game-day

performance is all possible with data.

Seattle Sounders Improve Player Fitness

with Wearable Technology With wearable technology, the Seattle

Sounders track players’ every move. From

sleep patterns to GPS positioning on the field,

data is used to minimize injury and optimize

performance in the grueling 90-plus-minute

matches. With this data, coaches can:

• Personalize practice schedules, down to the

drill, to target each player’s stamina and

speed

• Identify which activities exhaust players to

help keep teams fresh for the entire period

of play

• Understand habitual behaviors, which can

then be used to predict reaction time

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PLAYER DEVELOPMENTOn-field wins often translates into a team’s financial success, so developing talent

and adding new players adds obvious value to a club. Teams gather huge

amounts of data on players to track multiple metrics such as training intensity,

game performance, recovery time, and injuries.

Whole-team intelligence is important too. How are players working together? Are

there patterns of play? Do various actions on the field make a difference in the

final score?

Visualizing this data allows tech-averse coaches to interpret immediate needs at a

glance.

Liverpool Analyzes Data on In-Game

Actions

The Liverpool Football Club leverages data to

improve game performance. This dashboard

visualizes a critical metric: the difference

between winning and losing. Hovering over the

scatterplot, coaches see how different in-game

actions affected game outcomes.

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GAME-DAY STRATEGYData visualizations don’t just capture what happened in last week’s game;

they can provide insight while the ball is still in play.

Dashboards help coaches predict outcomes with what-if scenarios by

combining live data with historical data.

Should a team go for a touchdown on the fourth down? What usually

happens in each scenario? Dashboards with historical data can give

coaches a way to make game-winning decisions in light of past outcomes.

4th Down Decision Making

This dashboard makes use of historical data

for tough calls.

Coaches can:

• Change the parameter to specify quarter,

yards to go, or position on the field.

• Drill down by choosing the team to control

and situation to evaluate.

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PLAYER EVALUATION Visual dashboards are a powerful tool for accurate individual player

evaluation. How is a player performing relative to last year? Last

week?

Last game? Are trends emerging in an athlete’s play that need be

addressed?

This data-driven evaluation clues coaches into who’s likely to play

well and who may be heading for a slump. Coaches can adjust game-

day lineups accordingly.

New York Mets Evaluate Player

Performance

This dashboard is an individual performance

evaluation for the New York Mets’ first

baseman, Ike Davis. Hovering on the data

points shows Davis’s relative success in 2010

vs. 2011.

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TICKETINGProfessional sports teams depend on ticket sales for their financial

health. It’s not always about people in seats; decision-makers need a

360-degree view of fan behavior, from the initial ticket purchase all the

way through the final point on the board.

The Texas Rangers Make Real-Time

Staffing Decisions

Nothing spoils a day at the ballpark like rain—

for fans and for the team. Rain sops revenue.

Because the Texas Rangers front office

monitors ticket data in real-time, they can see

down to the minute when rain delays stall ticket

sales. With this need-to-know info, staffing

managers can decided to close 75% of their

windows to cut costs: a bright spot for the team

on a loser weather day.

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MERCHANDISNG The home-team hat and jersey, beer, and bobble heads—what are people buying

once they're inside?

With merchandising and retail data visualizations, retailers can adjust inventory on the

fly when specific item revenue starts to dip.

Merchandise sales also reveal where a team’s fans live. Data can help identify new

areas of the country, or the world, to concentrate sales efforts.

Cowboys Find Far-Away Fans

Who knew New York was Cowboy country?

This dashboard shows where Cowboys are

selling merchandise in the U.S. By knowing fan

geography, Cowboys retailers can push

advertising and marketing dollars in those

areas.

Tableau offers a revolutionary new approach to business intelligence for sports analytics that will

allow you to quickly connect to, visualize, and share data dashboards with a seamless experience

from the PC to the iPad.

Tableau solutions generate fast, visual, easy-to-use self-service visualizations with no

programming skills required. See how Tableau can help your sports organization by downloading

the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial.

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