Are British Sports Becoming Data Driven Like US Sports?

In the United States of America, data has long been a key factor in sports. The story of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics became a sports movie with Brad Pitt in the leading role, which is remarkable when you consider that it is essentially just a tale about a man using data to drive his decision making at a baseball club.

Whilst American sports fans have long accepted data as an important part of what they’re watching, the same can’t really be said of British sports lovers. As a result, the influence of those American sports has been a game-changer for many.

Not only is it allowing managers and coaches to be much more analytical in their approach, it is also putting statistics at the front and centre of what fans look towards when trying to understand results.

An unforeseen consequence of the improvement of data in sports in the UK is the fact that many American sports have now become more popular over here. From the likes of baseball and the National Football League through to the National Hockey League, sports that have previously been the focus of American audiences are now finding new fans in the United Kingdom.

What Do We Mean By ‘Data Driven’?

The most important thing that we need to establish is what it is that we mean by ‘data driven’. The truth is that data has always been important to any sports. There are all sorts of things that coaches and managers will think about that the average viewer won’t know much about. That being said, the extent to which data has become a much more important factor in sport cannot be overstated.

What we’re talking about when we discuss data is the use of stats and information that won’t be easy for someone just watching with their eyes to pick up, instead using computers and other sources to gain it.

When we watch football, as an example, we can have an idea about which team has the ball for the longest. Data can tell us precisely how long each team had the ball for, which areas of the pitch they had it in and which players got the most touches. It can inform us how quickly it was moved from one part of the pitch to another, or how much spin was on a ball being hit in a tennis match. It can inform us about whether players prefer one type of serve over another or the extent to which a golfer has turned his wrist and that is impacting the direction of the ball once it’s hit.

How Things Used To Be

Whilst talking about the past always runs the risk of sounding like an old person shouting at a cloud, it is important to establish a sense of how things used to be before we get too engaged in how they are now.

The reality is that most sports used to be interested in nothing other than the most important facts: the scores. When you watched football, the only thing that people would talk about was the number of goals that had been scored by either team. In tennis, it was how many sets, games and points had been won by the players, whilst in rugby it was tries that mattered.

People would not be concerned about more specific statistics, so it would only really be able what you could judge with your eyes. There were no in-depth looks at sports beyond the things that an audience just tuning in could understand easily enough.

Over time, simple things such as percentage in football or the speed of the serve in tennis began to be introduced, but these remained relatively easy for an amateur to get their head around and it was easy to figure out how they might have an impact on the outcome of a game or match, which is why they seemed to matter.

The Modern Use Of Data

In the modern world, data is used to a much more significant extent regardless of the sport that you enjoy watching. If we focus solely on football as an example of the manner in which stats have changed and grown over the years, you can look at both the basic and the more extensive depending on what it is that you’re wanting to find out.

In simple terms, the likes of shots taken per goal might be used, say, or the possession percentage of each club. The pass completion rate can also be looked at, whilst aerial duels won is important when assessing the work of a defender.

Depending on what it is that you’re trying to discover about a match, there can be any number of interesting data points to look at. During a match between Chelsea and Liverpool during the 2022-2023 campaign, for example, the number of times that a player had received the ball from the backline was used as a reason for their selection as the Player of the Match.

The reality is that there are countless sites online that have been developed and grown specifically on the back of the data that is out there that people might want to look at when assessing a football match.

If you’re looking to figure out how well a team attacked, goals alone are no longer enough. Instead, we look at information such as a players Progressive Carries or their Progressive Passes. Strikers aren’t judged as much as on the goals that they’ve scored as they are their xG, which stands for expected goals. This is essentially a statistical equivalent to when people used to say something like ‘he has to be scoring that’. Non-penalty expected goals can also help to narrow down a player’s ability to get themselves into good positions, even if they aren’t converting.

It might seem like madness to ‘old school’ people, but these sorts of stats can be very helpful to managers and coaches. If you have a player with a very high expected goal figure but a low non-penalty goals number, that is essentially saying that they get into good positions but struggle to convert their chances into goals.

For a coach that is good with working with strikers, that is really good information to have and might mean that they could train them to become prolific, having bought them for relatively cheap on account of the fact that they haven’t scored many goals.

Why Stat Usage Has Increased

Given the fact that we seems to be using stats more and more than ever before, the obvious question to ask is why that is the case. The simple answer is that there is far more and better tech around now than ever before.

There are companies that have been set up specifically in order to gather huge amounts of data that simply wouldn’t have existed before the technology was widely available. Whether it be the speed at which a tennis ball is hit or the amount of ground covered by a player in any sport, we can know about it now in a way that we couldn’t do with any definitiveness in the past.

It is also true that a lot of fans of sports nowadays will have grown up playing computer games. This means that they’ll have grown used to seeing statistical information in the games that they’ll have played, so they will understand the importance of xG, as an example, much quicker than those that have never played such games. This means that they can be used more casually by commentators and pundits, without the need to explain what it all means. The more that they get used, the more that the wider audience will understand them and so they can be used in an increasing amount.

The American Influence

There is little question that American sports have influenced the use of stats in British ones. In fact, in the majority of instances when you look into the companies that offer statistical analysis, they are American ones.

In 2018, for example, Arsenal paid more than £2 million to buy StatDNA, with the data they gained from the business used to inform the signings that they have made. Leeds United, meanwhile, have signed up to work with Zone7, which is a US-based company that used artificial intelligence in order to help reduce the risk of injury to an athlete.

When it comes to the American influence of statistics, few stories are as well known as that of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. The book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game was written by Michael Lewis, looking at what Beane did during his time with the Athletics. It was later turned into a film with Brad Pitt in the role of Beane. In essence, Moneyball was the art of finding under-valued players and making use of them. It looked at statistical variables that had mostly been ignored but that could lead to good results if used correctly, like by the As.

Indeed, the Oakland As made it to the play-offs four years running and went on a 20-game unbeaten run that had never been achieved in the 100-year history of the American League. In the years that followed Beane’s success, other General Managers followed his methods. It also moved over to other sports, such as when Fenway Sports Group took over at Liverpool and began to look towards moneyball strategies in their signings and decision making. Whether the more old-fashioned types like it or not, the American influence on British sports was complete.

Does It Take The Fun Away?

One thing that a lot of people find themselves asking when it comes to the statistical influence in sports is whether or not it takes a bit of the fun away. For those that are interested in the stats, they can no longer just watch a sporting event and take it for what it is. Instead, there are a wealth of different things that they look for aside from just the most obvious outcomes.

On social media, statistical analysis has changed the game in terms of the arguments that fans have after matches. It doesn’t matter that a team lost 2-1 if their xG was significantly higher than an opponents.

As viewers, a lot of people aren’t concerned with what’s happening in front of them as much as they are in following the stats as they unfold on their phone. It has taken away the purity of various sports, making them much more confusing and a lot less accessible than they were in their original form.

Of course, for those that use stats there is no debate. For them, the increased knowledge makes the entire thing much more interesting than simply watching something in an uneducated manner could ever do. It is, as with most things in life, all about perspective.

Examples Of Good Statistical Usage

In 2010, the English cricket team flew over to Australia to take part in the Ashes. They did so in the wake of Peter Moores having introduced Andy Flowers to Moneyball, with Flowers then overseeing the expansion of the performance analysis unit of the ECB.

They looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the Aussies and developed their tactics as a result, winning the Ashes on the back of the work that they did. During the same period, Sir Dave Brailsford was using marginal gains to improve the number of gold medals won by the British Cycling team.

For a time, few football supporters would have heard of Brentford more than as an area on the outskirts of London. Then their co-director of football, Rasmus Ankersen, realised that ‘If David wants to beat Goliath, he can’t do that by using the same weapons.’

Brentford began to use football analytics in a big way, taking under-performing individuals with high potential and putting them to use. When Thomas Frank lost eight of his first ten games, they didn’t panic. Now, Brentford have become something of an established Premier League team and a statistical analysis success story, offering fans very good value for their money.