Sarah Rudd (OnFooty/StatDNA), without whom this meetup wouldn’t have been possible.

Part of the crowd at the Sports Analytics meetup.

I’d like to be able to make interesting remarks about the sport analytics panels at the Conference, but to be honest, I can’t because I spent much of the conference in the corridors meeting people.  If you’re looking for those insights, there are plenty of places to go such as Mitch Lasky, Zach Slaton, Joe Posnanski, and ESPN Daily Dime (Day 1 and Day 2).  If you want an idea of how the SSAC has transformed from a lightly-organized affair to a slick, almost corporate production, you must read Kevin Arnovitz’s piece at TrueHoop.

The sessions that I did got out of my way to attend were the Research Paper finalists and the Evolution of Sport presentations.  It’s not too surprising that I would attend the Research Paper presentations given my analytical background, but there were some EOS talks that were interesting and not as far-fetched as I originally thought.

Nevertheless, my priority was to roam the halls, talk to select exhibitors, and have meetings (scheduled or impromptu) with colleagues and prospects.  The greatest value of these conferences is the serendipity, those chance meetings with people that will change your life.  It was true for me last year as I ended up meeting a future advisor and an investor.  This year I reconnected with a former graduate school colleague who is now a professor, had an extended conversation with one of my recent hires, and got invited to a sponsor’s party.  So it’s very frustrating that the SSAC has made it so difficult to make those serendipitous moments possible.

What do I mean?  Here is a photo of my nametag from the Sloan conference, taken from 18 inches away:

My Sloan conference nametag

And here is my nametag from Startup Riot, an entrepreneur-oriented conference in Atlanta that I attended the week before:

My nametag at Startup Riot

Which nametag can you see from a foot away?  Which one doesn’t require you to have either 20/10 vision or lean forward into someone else’s space?  And would you feel comfortable doing the latter in order to identify some famous person who you’ve wanted to introduce yourself to?

There were a number of people at the conference who I had only known via LinkedIn or Twitter and wanted to meet in person, but never did because that chance meeting in the halls never happened.  And it was even less likely to happen if you had to be within six inches of a person’s chest to identify him (or her, but you’d never make it that far without getting slapped).

This gets into another complaint about the conference: the attendee list wasn’t made available until I checked-in at the conference.  As a result there were people who I wanted to meet who I couldn’t contact at the conference and could only hope to meet by chance (which is more difficult with the nametags on display).  Other conferences, such as the Leaders Sports Summit, not only makes the attendees list available to registered attendees, they also facilitate introductions between interested parties.  The SSAC is becoming more of a sports business conference, so why can’t they make it easier to people to do business?

At the end of every conference, I take a step back and ask myself if the conference is worth my time and money to attend, in terms of technical knowledge gained, contacts made, ideas generated, or sales made.  I was starting to have doubts about the SSAC over the last two years as the price to attend continued to climb, but I still conclude that I need to be at this conference.  The opportunities for cross-pollination are much greater here than at any sports conference, and even though the SSAC is becoming less “geeky”, the level of analytics discourse is higher there than at any other sports conference of its size.  (NESSIS and NCSSORS are very technical, but only 50-80 people attend them.)  It is still value for my money, and I hope to attend and participate as long as I can.

Soccer Analytics panel at 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Panelists (L-R): Albert Larcada, Chris Anderson, Blake Wooster, Jeff Agoos. Moderator (far R): Marc Stein.

Returning to moderate the panel was Marc Stein of ESPN, and joining him were Albert Larcada (ESPN), Jeff Agoos (MLS), Blake Wooster (Prozone Sports), and Chris Anderson (Soccer by the Numbers and Anderson/Sally).

Marc ran the session as a continuation of last year’s panel, so he focused on two issues: what is next in soccer analytics, and how will analytics be used throughout the soccer industry.  The intent was good, but it limited the scope of the panel discussions.

Albert and Jeff could talk about how data are used by a media company and a professional sports league office, but Prozone isn’t going to talk about ongoing or future projects at such a forum and even if a sports betting consultancy were on the panel, they wouldn’t talk much about their use of analytics, either.  This left much of the task to Chris who, as someone independent of the rest of the industry, could give a detached perspective on the state of analytics.  His comments made it clear that there’s still a lot of the present in soccer analytics that needs to be matured before we talk about what’s next.

In Chris’ opening comments, he pointed out that football analytics descends from work done in notational analysis by Charles Reep in 1950 and the work that he performed for a number of title-winning teams after that. (I recommend reading this account of Reep’s life in the 2002 Journal of Sports Sciences; even if you read only the first page it provides a good picture of Reep’s remarkable work.)  There is also the work of Mike Hughes (who influenced, among others, Gavin Fleig and Blake Wooster) and the great Dynamo Kiev/Ukraine manager Valeriy Lobanovsky.

What has happened, Chris said, is less of a revolution than it is an evolution, and that’s right, although the generational cycles have shortened thanks to technology.  As a byproduct of technology, data are becoming less expensive and more of a commodity, while a community of armchair (or is it desktop?) analysts has formed outside the realm of the football clubs.  So data are more available than ever before, and more people are comfortable talking about data in sport than ever before.

Albert Larcada (L) and Chris Anderson (R) at 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

So if data have a higher profile than ever before, what is keeping them from being used more extensively by football clubs?  The panelists addressed this issue from various directions during the session — cultural resistance, contextual challenges, inherent noise in match inference and prediction, and short-termism.  It’s possible that cultural resistance will weaken as a generation of players, executives, and supporters grow up in an era where data are more accepted, and context might be captured better as sensing technology gets cheaper and more pervasive.  But the structure of the game creates a ceiling on the level of precision to which we can analyze players and teams, and the short-term mentality of professional clubs (partly, but not entirely, a product of promotion/relegation rules) limits their capacity to embrace innovation.

If there is a place where data are being used, it is in the media organizations, and Albert spoke at length about the data visualizations that are shown on ESPN SportsCenter.  He showed a couple of examples of maps that compared playing tendencies of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and illustrated ESPN’s priorities on analytics: that they be self-contained, communicate the story succinctly, and be accessible to on-air talent.  One sentence of his stuck with me: we — the soccer analytics community — are not the primary SportsCenter audience.  And because we are not the primary audience, understanding for the broader public is critical.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t develop better match predictors or game models or stuff like that.  But until those can be explained in a way that the broader public can understand what is being communicated, those analytics are not ready for public consumption.

I left the ballroom observing that while soccer analytics has grown tremendously since 2010, there remain significant and unique challenges. Unlike baseball and basketball, whose analysts developed much of their work outside the game and with public data, working with proprietary data is the only way an analyst can do any meaningful work in soccer.  The only way one can work with proprietary football data is through the sports data companies or a professional football club.  And would a club be willing to pay for an analyst to deliver insight on match strategy and player performance and present said insight at public conferences?  The question almost answers itself.

We still have a very long way to go.  And if the early work on analytics is any indication, the window of opportunity and receptivity in the professional football world doesn’t stay over indefinitely.

UPDATE: For a bracing example of the limited window of opportunity, read Mitch Lasky’s review of the Soccer Analytics panel.

I warn you that while I tried to capture what the panelists were saying, these are paraphrases and not guaranteed to be 100% accurate. At any rate, here we go:

Panelists:

• Albert Larcada (ESPN)
• Chris Anderson (Soccer by the Numbers)
• Blake Wooster (Prozone)
• Jeff Agoos (MLS)

discussion topics:

• what are next steps?
• how can data be used throughout industry?

* what’s next step?
(Chris) where have we been?  misnomer to describe this as “revolution” — more an “evolution”
soccer has more history in analytics than people think
Reep’s coding system goes back to 1950 (notation system — all events in pitch),  worked with teams in 1950s-1980s

biggest advancement in analytics: cost of data going down, accessibility increasing
gives MCFC Analytics as example

more people writing about it in soccer analytics blogosphere
clubs work hasn’t moved the needle

* why are clubs not keeping pace?
(Blake) cultural challenge exists, persists
regulation driving more interest in due diligence, data usage
generational shift as well
Mike Hughes notational analysis –> Blake, Gavin Fleig
mentions generations –
X: access to technology
Y: making things faster, better
Z: generate insight, making things easier

(Albert) more data available — more data you must visualize
huge on media side — focus on telling stories

(Jeff) more data isn’t always better, ref Silver’s book (The Signal and The Noise)
owners see it as expense or investment

* are analytics more valuable in MLS?
(Jeff) to a point, but there’s cost-benefit equation to consider

(Albert) real-time shot charts, heat maps (Trumedia)
some heat maps actually used on SportsCenter (Messi vs Ronaldo)
shows video

(Jeff) challenge is capturing context
(Blake) diff b/t what’s important, and what’s interesting
(Albert) important to remember that SportsCenter audience =/= audience in room
telling the story
(Chris) technology used to communicate story very important
have moved quickly from zero data –> drowning in data

talking about Mourinho’s use of data
(Blake) discussing about Mourinho’s match preparation through data
no-stat all-stars more common in soccer than you think
“most important things are the hardest to measure”

(Albert) is there a player in Europe who is like Shane Battier?
(Blake) IQ — EQ — CQ (contextual intelligence)

(to Jeff) Do you wish you had more access to data ten yrs ago?
(Jeff) absolutely — new players growing up in culture where data is accepted
more tools, visualization critical

* does soccer world lag behind bball on analytics?
(Chris) fair point — “going 0 to 100 in data is scary to lots of clubs”
hard to remember that we’re not dealing with North American sports
- winners don’t feel need to innovate
- relegation battlers too risk averse
- middle runners feel they should finish in top 6 anyway

(Blake) short-termism rampant
manager lifespans extremely short
75% of managers will coach maximum of 75 matches

(Jeff) management decision — captive to short-term concerns

half of league have invested in analysis / BI teams
advance scouting, sports science, academy

(Albert) what is analytics? is it video? data viz? stats/CS?
use of analytics is very gray

(Chris) proving the ROI is very hard
element of trust hugely important
element of randomness is HUGE in soccer

(Blake) we need success stories more than anything else

(Chris) we’re now on Liverpool 2.0 now
big announcement at beginning of LFC 1.0 not productive long-term

(Albert) nature of game not designed for analysis, lots of noise
baseball “is a PhD’s dream” (me: not sure I agree)

(Blake) mentions case of Michu (one who got away) — Type II error
15 goals in Spain, very low transfer fee for Swansea, missed by six scouts

(Jeff) coaches are doing measurements all the time, just in a different way

(Chris) let’s not pile on coaches
dealing with lots of tasks, limited resources
lots of fads in the industry
just b/c we think it’s demonstrably useful doesn’t mean it will be

(Blake) challenge and opportunity
if coach doesn’t get it, it’s our fault for not communicating it

(Chris) we pretend that coaches know how to win football games
not clear that soccer analytics knows what wins games
what is theory of what produces wins in football?
clubs: intuitive non-verbal theory

* what are new metrics that should fans be more familiar with to help game-watching experience?
(Albert) timely stats, fans get info when they want it
(Chris) best player debate not all that interesting
favorite metrics are ones hardest to measure –> defensive metrics
prefers team performance
(Blake) game intelligence
(Albert) certain skillset required
(Chris) difference between prediction and explanation
prediction: interest from bettors, media
explanation: interest from clubs
(Jeff) for MLS, how do we compare ourselves to other leagues
measure everything –> indices of match performance
(Chris) soccer’s unique in terms of “right way” to play
what does it mean to be an attractive league?
(Jeff) attractive vs compelling

* Bundesliga and MLS have bought data and made available to clubs. Premier League hasn’t.  Why?
(Blake) used to be resistance in PL, less so now
do same in Qatar, Poland, etc
more cost effective to make central investment
common language

I am adding the summary later, but I’ll liveblog the remainder, for what it’s worth.

The panel has come a long way from its first appearance in 2010, when it was called the Emerging Analytics panel and combined panelists from American football and the English Premier League.  Even so, it was a packed session as people staked out seats two hours before the actual session took place.

In 2011, American football and soccer were given separate sessions, each very well-attended and comprised of a combination of professional club, data supplier, and independent analytics talent.  In 2012 there was more of a 50/50 split between American and British participants on the panel, which reflects the two major markets for statistical analysis in sport.  I was pleasantly surprised by last year’s session, especially by Drew Carey’s contributions to the discussion, but nevertheless I left thinking that there remains a very long road for analytics in soccer to travel.

Last year I made the following complaint about the Soccer Analytics panel:

The one charge that could be made against the Soccer Analytics panel is that there are no representatives of the upstream elements of the analytics value chain.  There is no one from a sports data company, nor anyone from a soccer analytics company or blog.  Why isn’t there someone up there like Blake Wooster of Prozone or John Coulson of Opta, or analysts like Chris Anderson, Sarah Rudd, or me?

Sadly, I won’t be participating in this year’s panel, but the Soccer Analytics panel will be sponsored by Prozone.  The panelists represents a wider range of the analytics value chain than ever before — Blake Wooster returns to the panel representing Prozone, Albert Larcada (ESPN) and Jeff Agoos (MLS) represent the users of data in the media and the professional game, and for the first time a member of the soccer analytics blogosphere joins the panel in Chris Anderson (Soccer by the Numbers).  I’m very pleased to say that I’ve gotten to know all of the panelists personally and professionally, and with the exception of Albert, I’ve heard all of the presenters speak about soccer analytics in various forums.

The objective of this year’s panel is to build on the guided questions from last year, inquiring about the strategies and tools used to inform decisions from the playing field to the front office.  Here are last year’s questions:

• What role can analytics play in the world’s favorite sport?
• How can analytics be used to field the best team formation?
• How can analytics help clubs find players that would suit them best?
• What are the challenges that face soccer clubs in adopting analytics and how can they be addressed?

Even though there is no representative from a professional club, Blake and Chris have worked with a number of clubs so they might be able to share some insight on how clubs use data and the current lessons learned.  Chris is writing a book with his business partner David Sally on soccer analytics, so perhaps he will be able to share some highlights from it.  Jeff comes from the perspective of a league organization that is focused more on the business of sport, but player acquisition is a key element of MLS so perhaps he will speak to that.  Albert might talk about the Soccer Power Index and the internal simulations conducted by ESPN Stats and Information, but I’ve learned from last year to keep an open mind.  In a way, it’s too bad that neither Gavin Fleig nor an Opta representative will be on the panel because I’m almost certain that MCFC Analytics will be a topic for discussion.  And if it’s not, it should be.

I look forward to a very thought-provoking Soccer Analytics panel on Saturday.

In 2011, the SSAC added an Evolution of Sport (EOS) session to highlight presentations on ideas, technologies, or thoughts that have the potential to change the way people approach, play, and analyze sport.  One could view the EOS session in the same light as the TED conferences and their derivatives, which is a comparison that the SSAC organizers would welcome.

I don’t know how many proposals were submitted for EOS, but in the end a final group of 13 was selected.  The organizers have done a good job of ensuring variety among the presentations over the three years.  You have some presentations on in-match statistics for sports such as American football, baseball, and basketball, but also presentations on fan engagement, sport marketing, talent identification and selection, sport finance, and biology.  None of the finalists are presenting anything overtly soccer-related.

In my opinion, these are the presentations that appear to be interesting:

• Dequantizing the Draft using Extreme Value Theory (Darren O’Shaughnessy): A proposal to replace the current draft system in North American sports leagues with a system of draft points, and a description of the underlying statistical framework.
• Interactive Data Visualizations: Next Step in Deconstructing the Rebound (Rajiv Maheswaran): Presented by last year’s winner of the Research Paper competition.  Here he will show off tools that perform interactive visualization of finely grained in-match data from basketball games.
• Paired Pitching (Greg Rubin): I might want to see this presentation just to find out what on earth the presenter is talking about when he says that a “tectonic shift” has occurred in baseball.
• Sports as an Alternate Asset Class (Joe Peta): Former Wall Street trader turned baseball hedge fund manager, Joe Peta will describe some of the lessons learned and the opportunities for sport as investment. But how does the return compare to that of your average bettor?
• Using Human Biology to Measure Sports Performance (Daniel McCaffrey, Kevin Bickart): Part of the founding team for SyncStrength, a startup developing an analytics platform for biometric devices.  Most of the presentation focuses on the relationship between synchronized heart rates and team chemistry.
• Your Personal Fantasy Sports Reporter (Robbie Allen): Presented by the founder of Automated Insights (ex-StatSheet), a talk about experiences from machine-generated recaps of fantasy football leagues.

Again, these are talks that are interesting to me, so if you want to see the rest, follow this link at the SSAC site.

The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference started a Research Paper session in 2010, coincidentally, my first year at the conference.  It’s been a very popular addition from the start and has grown into a more sophisticated and formalized process.  First, researchers have to submit an abstract of their work, and a selection of those abstracts are invited to submit full papers.  The finalists have posters and/or oral presentations at the Conference, and the winning oral presentation receives US$10,000 (the second-placed finalist also receives a cash award).

It should go without saying that I’m a huge fan of the Research Paper Competition.  As the SSAC transitions to more of a sports business conference (not a surprise given that it’s organized by a business school, but more apparent with ESPN as the lead sponsor), the Research Paper Competition keeps the SSAC close to its roots and keeps me coming back.

Last year I noted that the final paper list was overwhelmingly dominated by basketball topics.  Basketball represents a plurality of the final papers this year — four of the oral finalists (all NBA-related) and none of the poster finalists.  The finalists consist of three papers on baseball (one oral, two poster), two on ice hockey (one oral, one poster), one oral presentation on American football, and one poster presentation on tennis.  And for the first time, there is a soccer-related paper as an oral finalist.

Below is a thumbnail sketch of the eight oral finalists.  Hopefully these notes will motivate you to read their papers, and watch their presentations!

The hidden foundation of field vision in English Premier League soccer players (Geir Jordet, Jonathan Bloomfield, Johan Heijmerikx)

• Examines player head movements off-the-ball, thanks to Sky Sports PlayerCam
• High correlation between exploratory movements before taking ball, and performance on ball (pass %, esp forward pass %)
• Effect strongest in midfielders, independent of field location…forward pass completion performance only significant for midfielders
• Best players keep their heads like a swivel

Total Hockey Rating (THoR) for NHL forwards and defensemen based on on-ice events (Michael Schuckers, James Curro)

• two-way performance evaluation of NHL forwards/defensemen
• two-way: expected goals created and prevented
• take in account every on-ice event in NHL match, teammates/opponents on ice, probability that event results in goal within next 20 seconds
• a hockey analogue to a Wins Above Replacement rating

Live by the Three/Die by the Three? The price of risk in the NBA (Matthew Goldman, Justin Rao)

• determine optimal strategy for 2-/3-point shot taking using game theory
• tested a couple of assumptions about team risk as winning/losing team
• as teams become more risk-loving, 3-point efficiency drops
• conclusion: it’s against a winning team’s interests to become risk-averse
• comebacks in NBA occur more often because…
  • losing teams motivated by scoreboard
  • shot selection for leading teams sub-optimal

A new ensemble of interior defense analytics for the NBA (Kirk Goldsberry, Eric Weiss)

• popular defensive stats are misleading, not necessarily related to each other
• who is good at preventing the other team from scoring, or reducing their scoring efficiency? (Dwight Howard effect)
• apply spatial analytics to new defensive metrics in NBA
• notion of spatial splits: close-range/mid-range/3-pt range
• shot frequency and shot efficiency (percentage)
• main case studies:
  • basket proximity — how does shot frequency/efficiency change when defender within 5 feet of basket?
  • shot proximity — how does shot frequency/efficiency change as function of distance between shooter and defender?
• best interior defender: not Dwight Howard (Larry Sanders)

The value of flexibility in baseball roster construction (Timothy Chan, Douglas Fearing)

• what is the most optimal way to construct a roster in baseball, given:
  • positional flexibility of players
  • injury risk
• major contributions:
  • injury rate estimation, given changes in fielding positions
  • optimization models to assess vulnerabilities to injuries
  • quantify value of flexibility to MLB teams in 2012 season

A quantitative look at the relationship between offensive rebounding and transition defense in the NBA (Jenna Wiens, Guha Balakrishnan, Joel Brooks, John Guttag)

• upon missed shot, player can either go for rebound, hold current position, or go back on defense
• what is best strategy? quantify through SportsVU data (3D position data of ball, 2D position data of players)
• Crash Index (number of players in neutral positions — 8-33 ft away — who move toward basket)
• Retreat Index (number of players in neutral positions — 8-33 ft away — who move away from basket)
• finding: getting back on defense early reduces opposition’s shooting efficiency, but reduces probability of offensive rebound by 50% (no kidding!)

Acceleration in the NBA: Towards an algorithmic taxonomy of basketball plays (Philip Maymin)

• how to incorporate acceleration in graphical description of basketball plays
• data: SportsVu optical data in half-court situations (N=233 games)
• determine acceleration levels of teams/players in offensive/defensive situations
• identify regions of half-court characterized by “burst points” – similar rates of acceleration/deceleration
• use these regions to describe player motions around half-court

Predicting the likelihood of field goal success with logistical regression (Torin Clark, Aaron Johnson, Alexander Stimpson)

• Thesis: distance is not the only factor in success rate of field goals in NFL
• binary logistic model of field goal rate, include distance, environmental conditions, game scenarios
• findings: distance and environmental conditions matter most, game scenarios not at all
• compute “added points per attempt” — points added by kicker above a generic average kicker
• rank stadiums by difficulty in scoring field goals
  • most difficult: outdoor stadiums in cold-weather cities
  • least difficult: indoor stadiums, and Mile High (Denver)

This match was a special moment for a member of the founding team.  Matt is a Tottenham Hotspur fan, and he’s as big a fan of the side as you can get without having seen an official Spurs match in person.  (He did travel to Baltimore for their preseason match against Liverpool.)  I mean, he’s even “walked” around White Hart Lane on Google Maps!  Tickets for the match were hard to come by, and even more so if you are not a member of the club.  Matt was resourceful enough to sign up as a club member and then purchase tickets, so we were set.

We took the tube and Overground trains to get to the White Hart Lane station…

Then we followed the flood of football fans to the stadium.  It’s a very heavily ethnic Turkish neighborhood.

From the moment you approach White Hart Lane, you know you are at one of the traditional football grounds in England.  There is enough room at the spectator entrance for one — and only one — person at a time, and the opening was created at a time when Englishmen were much narrower than they are today.  It’s an old ground with all of the smells and residue of years gone by.  The concourses are narrow and cramped.  And no, I didn’t visit the toilets.

When you reach the top of the steps and enter the stands, two things hit you: the intensity of the sound and the proximity to the pitch.  In contrast to Etihad, all four stands are inclined at a very steep angle.  This is the view from the very top row of the main stand, where we sat:

Etihad has a roof, but at WHL the closeness of the supporters combined with the roof results in a more intense atmosphere.  I would not be surprised if it’s the same at Anfield, Old Trafford, or Goodison Park (or St James’ Park).

There was a lot of tension surrounding this match because Spurs, despite having won three League matches in a row, were still trying to settle under André Villas-Boas.  Aston Villa weren’t playing very well — still aren’t — but they were keeping it 0-0 for an uncomfortably long time.  The big news was that Brad Friedel’s long streak of consecutive starts in the Premier League came to an end as Hugo Lloris saw his first start.

After a scoreless first half, and not a small amount of frustration from the Spurs fans, goals from Steven Caulker and Aaron Lennon brought relief:

The final score was 2-0, a fair reflection of the difference between the two sides.

And now it’s time for some post-match souvenirs:

It was another memorable day out at the football, and I look forward to future visits to other grounds in England.

The Leaders Sports Summit is scheduled on an international weekend.  Last year I arrived a couple of days before the conference, so the only opportunities to watch a football match were in League One and below.  I ended up travelling to the Valley to watch Charlton Athletic vs Tranmere Rovers, which was actually a nice place to watch a match.

This year I wanted to experience a Premier League match for the first time, and Matt was eager to see his beloved Spurs for the first time in an official match, so we arrived early enough to see the last weekend of matches before the international break.  As it turned out, we were fortunate to be able to view not one, but two Premier League matches in a two-day period.  The first match was Manchester City vs Sunderland which had a 12:45pm kickoff, so we took a fast train to Manchester:

The English countryside

Another view of the English countryside

Etihad Stadium is about a 20-minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly station along the canals.

Etihad Stadium was the City of Manchester Stadium, which was previously used for athletics and rugby events of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.  It’s very apparent that the stadium used to have a track.  We had seats on the lower bowl yet it felt like we were so far away.

Etihad Stadium, 45 minutes to kickoff.

It’s a very modern stadium with wide concourses and large murals that had recollections from City ticket-holders of their first ever City match.  There were also some other exhibits that demonstrated City’s commitment to fan engagement.  I didn’t see the scrolling board of live MCFC tweets that I had heard about — is it still there?  The restrooms were clean for a stadium venue.  The concessionaries sold typical English stadium fare such as burgers, hot dogs, pies, beer, and yes, Bovril.  One complaint about the stadium was that there was not a single cash machine to be found, and none of the concession stands accepted bank cards.  I was told that the lack of cash machines were typical, but I thought I had seen them at the Valley, and cash machines are common at US sports venues.  (It was hard to find cash machines that accepted US bank cards — our cards don’t have the embedded chip in them.)  Another complaint was that while the seats were comfortable, the seat pitch was too narrow, but then again the world’s not built for 194cm guys like me!

As for the match, it was a one-sided affair.  An early Kolarov free kick…

Free kick to Alex Kolarov

Kolarov celebrates

Agüero comes on from Balotelli (who was getting major stick from the spectators around me) and gives immediate rewards…

Off, Balotelli. On, Agüero!

Agüero mobbed after his goal

and Milner finishes it off with a well-taken free kick.

Free kick to James Milner

A good day out and a great experience at Etihad.  Everyone from the stewards to the surrounding fans was friendly to us and curious as to our impressions of the match.  Thanks to all who made this trip possible!

Proper expression of City’s dominance

We returned to London that evening and the following day we set out for Part II of our Premier League experience.  I’ll write about that in a future post.

Earlier in the month we had the privilege of attending the 2012 Leaders Sports Summit at Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club.  It provided me an opportunity to reconnect with the contacts I made in the football community over the last twelve months as well as make connections to those who I had previously known online.  In addition to the conference we hosted a social event, introduced ourselves to London’s tech startup scene, and attended Premier League matches for the first time.

The Leaders Sports Summit is a set of five co-located conferences at one venue: Leaders in Football, Leaders in Performance, Leaders in Sponsorship, Leaders in Digital Sport, and Leaders in (Horse) Racing.  The flagship conference is Leaders in Football which attracts the major names in world soccer (as well as the international press), but this year all of those sessions were open to all conference attendees.

There were a lot of big names at the conference, from Jean-Pierre Meersseman of the Milan Lab to Mark Verstegen of Athletes’ Performance to former Bolton player Fabrice Muamba, England manager Steve McClaren, and former international referee Pierluigi Collina.  The conference was hit by some unfortunate withdrawals, such as Ole-Gunnar Solksjaer (ex-Manchester United player and current manager at FK Molde) and Jeffrey Webb (new president at CONCACAF).  Webb took sick during his flight from North America to London and had to be hospitalized, and I was especially disappointed that he would not be able to talk about CONCACAF in the post-Warner/Blazer era.

The first day featured presentations in the morning by current England rugby manager Stuart Lancaster on the importance of instilling a positive culture that expects excellence and high standards and in the afternoon by John De Witt (NASA/Houston Dynamo), Jonathan Neale (McLaren F1), and Scott Drawer (UK Sport) on the intersection between innovation, technology, and human performance.  For me the highlight of the first day was the interview with Fabrice Muamba.  I think everyone who visits this site and those like it know what happened to him several months ago.  His recollection of his cardiac event, and his subsequent charity work to place more defibrillators in public places, served as an illustration of the importance of testing elite athletes to maximize athletic performance and identify possible defects such as Muamba’s.

Stuart Lancaster of English Rugby

Fabrice Muamba on the big screen

Day 2 was the “analytics” day of Leaders in Performance, and it was also the day that I attended more of the Leaders in Football sessions.  The first analytics session covered on-field analytics and featured Mike Zarren of the Boston Celtics and Nick Broad of Paris St. Germain (ex-Chelsea).  It seems that North American and European sport have much to learn from each other — Europeans tend not to realize the extent of number crunching that takes place in North American sport, and North Americans don’t realize how much player tracking data are collected in a typical football match (at least by Prozone).  The second analytics session on business analytics featured lessons learned from the business and financial sectors, but I was expecting it to deal with front-office analytics so I felt a little disappointed.

Mike Zarren, Damien Comolli (center), Nick Broad.

The crowd for the MLS session

Instead I spent most of my time attending the session on Major League Soccer and its business model.  Heading the panel were commissioner Don Garber, Adrian Hanauer (Seattle), Merrit Paulson (Portland), and Robb Heinemann (Sporting KC).  There’s quite a bit of fascination in Europe with MLS’ operations and their contradictions to America’s free-enterprise system (the session was titled “Socialist football in the land of capitalism”).  I think that there are several accidents of history in America’s sporting history compared to Europe’s — American sports leagues are formed from the top down instead of bottom up in Europe, and for better or worse, the practice of promotion and relegation never took hold in American sports.  At any rate there was a lively discussion on player contracts, fan interaction (Seattle’s fan vote on the GM came up for discussion), and stadium finances, as well as the future plans for the league over the next 10-20 years.  The audience was genuinely surprised that the most recent derby match between Portland and Seattle drew 66,000 and there was some discussion of the success of the Pacific Northwest clubs.  This session was the day after the blockbuster USADA report on Lance Armstrong so the Sporting KC director received a number of questions on the future name of their stadium. I continue to be amazed that it is so much easier to interact with a MLS official in a conference in Europe than one in the USA.

As was the case last year the Leaders Summit provided high-quality contacts with executive-level personnel at football clubs and organizations all over the world.  But it wasn’t just football — there were representatives from both codes of rugby, Australian rules football, cricket, athletics, and American football and basketball.  We’re still processing through all the contacts we made during the conference, and we know that there are now a lot more people watching the site and learning more about us.

I’ll have more to write about our experience with London’s startup community and of course our baptism into Premier League fandom.

Current status quite prominent

Not suitable for Tottenham supporters