Professional sports have undergone a true data revolution over the last two decades.

Today, all major sports teams, regardless of sports code, use analytics and data science to drive team performance, optimise game outcomes and scout young talent.

Why has analytics become so popular in professional sports and how does it help drive a competitive edge?

To answer these questions and many more relating to the sports analytics, I recently spoke to Ari Kaplan.

Ari has spent more than three decades using analytics to measure and understand human ability, scout future superstars and win professional sports titles.

He is known as “The Real Moneyball Guy” because of his work in baseball and his involvement in making the Hollywood classic Moneyball.

Today, Ari is Global AI Evangelist at DataRobot.

Listen to this episode of Leaders of Analytics to learn:

• How Ari became “the Real Moneyball Guy”
• The analytics the Chicago Cubs used to break a 108-year drought by winning the World Series in 2016
• The evolution of analytics and data science in sports
• What the business world can learn from sports in terms of using analytics to gain a competitive edge
• Where sports analytics is going in the future, and much more.