Analytics hold an essential role in the world of sports, revolutionizing both athletic performance and the viewing experience. In almost every sport seen on television today, numbers and statistics are constantly flashing across the screen; whether it be metrics on individual players, team stats or the weather, all kinds of statistics have worked their way into playing key roles in athletics. Fans should embrace analytics as vital information to help coaches and teams for numerous reasons, such as increasing quality of play and providing live data, making sports more exciting to watch.
For example, a sport where the advancement of analytics can be observed clearly is baseball. Though it has always been a sport where statistics have been important, as technology improved the type of analytics changed. Now analysts have the technology to track the smallest details of nearly every aspect of the game. Baseball is in what is known as the “statcast era” where a system of radars and cameras can quantify thousands of data points per pitch, such as pitch speed, exit velocity and launch angle.
In football, Pro Football Focus has changed the game when it comes to statistics and analytics. PFF provides player grades for every team, player and position in the league, ranking players from top to bottom based on those scores. The statistics provided by PFF have a direct correlation with player salary and career longevity, as the players who produce higher scores stay in the league for longer and get paid more.
The results of analytics on sports manifests in many ways, through record contracts, signing bonuses and countless records being set and broken. One of the first major sports teams to find success using statistics to make roster decisions was the Oakland A’s franchise of the early 2000’s known as the “Moneyball A’s.” Using statistics, the A’s transformed themselves from a struggling small market team to a record setting and playoff contending franchise. Their trailblazing success transformed the way people used analytics in baseball and other sports, as other front offices across a variety of sports started to use statistics when making roster decisions.
Almost every statistic you can think of is being quantified nowadays, and this makes watching sports more entertaining than ever before. Analytics have made athletes bigger, stronger and faster, and data used by professional athletes helps them design strict training regimens and diets that result in peak athletic performance.
This data also improves player health and safety, as it can be used to track injuries both in game and in training. In addition to its utility for athletes and coaches, the expansion of analytics vastly improves the viewing experiences for fans. When all the numbers and statistics stack up against a player or a team and they are able to pull out an improbable victory, it makes the win more satisfying for the viewer.
While some may contend that analytics have made sports boring and monotonous, in actuality they make records more meaningful as athletes are performing at higher levels than ever before and live analytics give viewers more insight than ever before. Analytics have led to more records being broken because we now have step-by-step recipes on how to break them from the data feedback.
Overall, analytics have improved sports greatly. They have made sports more entertaining for fans and more productive for athletes. Data-based decision making in sports has led to athletic reforms at both the professional and amateur levels, improving the quality of play and changing sports for the better.
