The Necessity for a Robust Data Foundation in Sports

Innovation growth in sports has been exponential, between technologies that are advancing player wellness, injury prevention and on-field data collection. For coaches, this has provided a wealth of data points that could be used to inform decisions that lead to winning games and keeping players healthy. But consistently growing your data catalog requires careful consideration, as keeping it all organized while the number of data providers grow can be difficult.

While the rise of AI has excited many to start incorporating predictive modeling into their workflow, it’s extremely difficult to get started when data is in disparate locations with little way of connectivity. This exact problem was recently highlighted by Alexander Booth of the Texas Rangers at the Databricks Data + AI Summit. Though he is no longer with the club, Booth highlighted how his R&D team created a proper data platform, using Databricks and other tools, that enabled fast insights and analytics.

The scale of cloud data storage/processing has made it more accessible to create data platforms that fit all team requirements, whether there’s one analytics use case or there’s need to create multiple reports that aggregate data sources. Not only is getting started on a data journey easy, it can provide immediate results by saving coaches time in data collection. As the number of data sources grows, the quantity and quality of automated reports will quickly add value for the coaches and players.

If you are interested in discussing more, feel free to reach out here!

Alexander Booth’s full presentation can be found here.