Unstructured Data Analytics

CHAPTER 11The Power of UDA in Sports

War is 90 percent information.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

In the course of our lives, we have all played some sports, or have been a fan of a team or a star player in baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, hockey, track and field, or golf, to name a few.

Whether you are a fan, coach, player, general manager, investor, or an owner of a team in any sports, what really matters is performance results and outcomes: wins versus losses. Did your favorite team win or lose? And why? How did your star athlete/player perform? Did she/he score? Even before the game, gathering all the information and statistics regarding players and teams has been getting a lot of traction to support team management. Predictions are made on the favored teams or players and what they need to do to secure a victory.

In most team sports, such as baseball, hockey, and basketball, star players' historical scores and performances usually drive all the prognostics that fans make around the player and the team. However, a popular player or “big name,” despite poor performance results, will more likely rank higher than an undervalued unknown player. Before the advent of analytics in sports, wealthy teams were always in a race to acquire those stars because they assumed that accumulating star players would guarantee success. Most general managers and coaches have been relying on this approach that favors instinct, intuition, gut-feel, and experience in building their rosters. ...