How Analytics and Stats are Transforming Sports

Over the past few years, we have seen a real change in the way that sports are looked at. Analysts, analytics teams and stats companies are being employed by the biggest teams in some sports and their task is to bring forward information from their perspective.

This is certainly not the traditional way in which sports teams have been run for a number of years, but those who are into analytics and their impact state that this can be the difference between winning and losing.

When any major sport has a big signing or trade take place, the first thing that the media does is to analyse it and see which side has won the deal. Now, we have people looking at what they see with the eye alongside people looking at the underlying numbers to give us a full picture.

How Analytics is Being Used

There is no doubt that we have seen a huge shift forward in analytics use recently. There are some sports leading the way with this, such as the NHL, where those who don't want to use analytics simply have no choice but to use them, because that is what the rest of the league is doing.

Others sports will come in time, the tide has changed and there are too many teams seeing the benefits of using analytics for them not to take over.

Often when you look at players who play in defensive parts of any sport, they go unnoticed. Using analytics will show them for who they are, when these players do the small things right we don't notice them but analytics does.

Sport is so advanced at the top end that teams need to do all they can to get an edge. Analytics is seen by many as being the edge that teams can get, which has played a part in its popularity.

What Role do Stats Play?

Stats offer assistance, but the key about stats is that every single person in the world can access them. This means fans of the sport, those who are gambling on games can view them and of course teams can look at themselves.

Websites such as Odds Manager show gamblers where the best odds and offers are to take advantage of, and if you believe in stats then you can access the stats on offer to aid with gambling.

There is no doubt a big role for stats to play, and if you don't watch a game, the stats will show you who played well and who scored the goals.

The bad side to stats is that everyone has access to them, even the more complex stats that are used in some sports, so there is not as much of an advantage available here. What has to be said though, because of their availability, if you don't use stats, you are immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage.

What Does the Future Look Like?

We are seeing a huge change with business analytics becoming even more important. People are being hired by businesses to look at this, and to help them improve via this method.

This is being translated over to the sports industry, and it is only likely to improve. What sets analytics apart from stats is that analytics are created by people, they are not accessible to everyone and there is some serious work that goes into them.

When you look at backroom staff over the coming years, you can expect to see more of these analytics people in the room, showing what they can create and this will lead to more decisions being made using them.