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by spinchange 5758 days ago
I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.
2 comments
ybot 5758 days ago
Interestingly enough, Bloomberg has started offering "Quant" tools to MLB teams: http://www.bloombergsports.com/proofferings/

They specialize in providing data and analytics on financial data. Clearly they didn't think it was too much of a leap to go from analyzing securities to analyzing baseball players.

As far as specific links, the Red Sox employ Bill James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James), who is a fairly famous statistician, to help them run the team. He invented Sabermetrics, "the analysis of baseball through objective evidence". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics)

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pchristensen 5758 days ago
The MIT Sloan Sports Conference http://www.sloansportsconference.com/ is a mix of fan/stats/business people discussing numerical analysis of sports.

Bill Simmons (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index ) has interviewed his friend Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets about this.

One interesting point is that there is no "salary cap" for sports statisticians, so rich teams are not restricted about what they spend on numerical analysis. Morey hinted that several (most?) NBA teams spend in the 7-figures on it.

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