SMGT3050: Sports Analytics

Students will learn and apply innovative analytical techniques used within the context of sport organizations across the globe. Examining the use of analytics across baseball, basketball (men’s and women’s), soccer (men’s and women’s), golf (men’s and women’s), cricket (men’s and women’s), football, and gambling/fantasy sports (men’s and women’s) will provide students with an appreciation on the value of analytics for sport organizations to gain a competitive advantage against other sport organizations. Students will adapt various analytical techniques in creating predictive models in an effort to emulate weekly experience-based learning opportunities to assess success or failure of their modules, therefore providing opportunities to reflect on their models and make adjustments in subsequent weeks and for the final project. Additionally, a number of sports will include a review of data availability across both men’s and women’s leagues/teams, including the frequency of a lack of data within women’s sports, potentially creating a suppression of analytics within women’s sports.

This course is designed to provide students with a learning experience associated with a burgeoning area within sport and society. The application of analytics will allow the students to think beyond the application to sport, specifically on how these tools can be used to analyze and interpret local, national, and international issues. Predictive modeling is used to assess the impact of a number of political and societal concerns as it relates to budgetary, economic impact, and societal impact to individuals. The application of techniques in this course also apply to many professions outside of sport administration, such as engineering, biomedical sciences, statistics, sociology, and computer science.