Marketing 5.0

CHAPTER 9Predictive Marketing: Anticipating Market Demand with Proactive Action

Following the 2001 Major League Baseball season, the Oakland Athletics lost three key players due to free agency. Under pressure to replace the free agents with limited budgets, the then–general manager Billy Beane turned to analytics to assemble a strong team for the following season. Instead of using traditional scouts and insider information, the A's used sabermetrics—analysis of in-game statistics.

With analytics, the A's discovered that underrated metrics such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage could be better predictors of performance compared to more conventional offensive stats. Since no other teams are recruiting players with these qualities, the insights allowed the A's to recruit undervalued players and maintain relatively modest payroll. The remarkable story was documented in Michael Lewis's book and Bennett Miller's movie, Moneyball.

It attracted the attention of other sports clubs and sports investors around the world. John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club, was one of them. Mathematical models were used for the rebuilding of Liverpool. The soccer club, despite its fantastic history, was struggling to compete in the English Premier League. Based on analytics, the club appointed manager Jürgen Klopp and recruited some players onto the team that would go on to win the 2018–2019 UEFA Champions League and the 2019–2020 English Premier League. ...