Setting the Scene
In the extremely competitive world of professional sports, organizations and teams will strive to gain an advantage in any permissible means necessary. Many progressive thinking individuals in sports have begun to analyze statistics into great detail, and are attempting to reshape their strategies for winning. The most notable sport, baseball, and the popularity of the movie “Money Ball” have led to other professional sports leagues following in Major League Baseball’s (MLB) footsteps, as the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) have taken the initiative to incorporate data analytics into their respective sports. From the utilization of the three-pointer in basketball, or the two-point conversion in football, it’s becoming more and more about what outcomes are “most likely” or have the “highest percentage”, and it’s extremely fascinating to examine how this might affect our future landscape for sports and the business world. Moreover, my curiosity has brought me to wonder whether we’ll reach a certain point in time for sports or business, where coaches or CEO’s will no longer be the individuals making the decisions. Imagine the elements of human nature not being a factor in coaching or decision-making, putting trust into computers and software to select who should play or what course of action to take, it’s obviously extreme but definitely a possibility. For me, I’m an accounting student and have learned of many large companies implementing initiatives to further digitally upscale and to integrate more data processing systems, and I myself have even thought about pursuing a concentration related to this topic. Additionally, I truly believe that the field of data analytics is young, and will have a prominent presence in future years to come. Through my research, I hope to determine the implications data analytics may have on professional sports, what these effects could cause on the industry, and ultimately looking into how the business world will be influenced by data in the future.
