Big Data is the science that is dedicated to the processing and massive treatment of data. Due to the large volume of data (petabytes and exabytes from thousands of different sources) and its continuous growth, the treatment of these is carried out with specific technologies and methodologies such as Hadoop. The sports sector is one of the broadest and most varied in the world. FIFA estimates that there are about 24 million football teams in the world, including professionals and amateurs. This number grows exponentially when you think about all the existing sports disciplines. Every sports practice requires training, especially if it is done at a professional level. For this purpose, the use of data is critical for both players and coaches, who can check both the performance trend of a team's players and the forecast of a player's selling prices at any given time of the season. Adequate and detailed analysis will maximize the results of athletes and coaches.
The Expert in Data Analytics for Sports Performance is the professional expert in data science who will know how to treat and analyze the information collected from the performance of different players, both in training and in competitions, to help coaches and teams make decisions. They will know how to differentiate the types of information collected from various sources, whether it be a player's speed data, their position in a ranking, number of goals, baskets, etc., knowing how to analyze and relate each type of data. One of their main tasks will be obtaining forecasts and trends for future results. They must be familiar with the sport in which they are analyzing the data, so that they know the benchmarks within which players operate.
Both the results and the performance of players are always on everyone's lips in a sport. With the use of Big Data, knowledge about the condition of an athlete can be much more rigorous. Market Insider estimates that the market for player tracking, analysis, and forecasting will reach $15 billion by 2023. According to an Intel article, the use of Big Data combined with positioning technologies will allow runners to know more than 1,000 data points per second, and thanks to the use of databases and historical results, both coaches and players will be able to analyze progress and create predictions about them. Sports like baseball have been using data and statistics for player management for years, and this will become increasingly common in all sports with the implementation of Big Data. This technological implementation will be a challenge and will require an increase in job opportunities for data scientists in this sector.
