Technology and data have become commonplace at the highest levels of professional football. As teams begin to work with multiple datasets and a range of different technologies, OptaPro has aimed to ensure it can cater to this demand, and meet the needs of its clients. OptaPro combines Opta data with that of some key partners: ChryonHego’s analytics on player tracking and movement and Scout 7’s huge bank of video resources on players across the world.
“Football is a low-scoring sport, compared to basketball, for example, which means the score-line lies a lot more. The league table also lies, even a long way into the season. So there’s a need to try and identify some under-lying performance indicators that give you a more solid indication as to where you are going against where you currently are in the table. It’s more a model that takes into account other factors is a fairer reflection of the game to provide a table of justice.”
The California based wearable tech company, Hykso wants to invent technology that creates the next generation of super humans in combat sports and with their newly released sensor, that is one of the most advanced training tools around, that might just happen.
But though the score will mean that this year’s edition goes down in the history books as a thrashing, it hides how close the 2016 Ryder Cup was, according to Mark Broadie, a professor of business at Columbia University who invented some of the most used metrics in modern golf analytics (notably “total shots gained”, an average of how much better a player is than the field). Mr Broadie remarked that many of the results at Hazeltine could have gone the other way: 23 of the 28 ties were still undecided as the competitors approached the 16th green, a proportion that has only been exceeded once in the last three decades.