2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

The Future of Sports Can Be Found in the Data

#sxsw #sportsdata SXsports

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With millions of dollars on the line, sports teams are demanding the latest technology to maximize their players' performance. Whether it's wearable sensors with GPS capability or motion-tracking cameras capable of capturing 25 images per second, the science of athletics has moved beyond heart-rate monitors and into the world of big data and analytics.

Representatives from some of the world's leading firms - including the global leader in athlete analytics, Catapult, and the motion-tracking company behind the NBA stats revolution, SportVU - will talk about how their products are changing the sports world and what lies ahead with Kirk Goldsberry, a Harvard scholar best known for his in-depth analysis of the NBA for Grantland. This session is part of the brand new SXsports programming at SXSW 2014.

Presenters

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Adir Shiffman

Chairman

Catapult Sports Pty Ltd

Adir is a qualified MD, technology entrepreneur and investor. He has successfully exited several companies and has been featured in articles in the WSJ, Forbes, NYT, ESPN amogst others.
Adir is currently an investor and Chairman of a several companies including: Australia's largest cashback website StartHere.com.au, online hotel booking website CheckIn.com.au, and Catapult Sports - the global leader in elite athlete analytics. Catapult Sports counts hundreds of clubs globally as its clients including teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Division 1 Colleges.

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Ben Alamar

Prof of Sports Mgmt

Menlo College

Benjamin Alamar is a Professor of Sport Management at Menlo College, sports analytics consultant/researcher, and author of the Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers. He has consulted with a variety of teams in the NFL and NBA, including five seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder as well as with a variety of companies in sports analytics such as Krossover Intelligence Inc and ESPN. He has published numerous research studies in sports analytics and has written on sports analytics for outlets such as AllthingsD, Analytics Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, Professor Alamar is the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, the first peer-reviewed academic journal for research in sports analytics. You can follow him on twitter

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Brian Kopp

VP, Strategy & Dev

STATS Inc

Brian Kopp joined STATS in 2008 and is currently Senior Vice President of Sports Solutions. In this role, Kopp leads all aspects of new business development including the revolutionary SportVU player tracking technology. SportVU is installed in all 29 NBA venues and has changed the face of basketball analytics. Kopp was named a 2013 Idea Innovator by Sports Business Journal and SportVU has won numerous technology and innovation awards.

Throughout his career, Kopp has held strategy and development positions for a variety of growth-oriented companies. Prior to joining STATS, he held leadership roles at Career Education, NAVTEQ, Svoboda Capital and Merrill Lynch. Kopp received his MBA from Northwestern University and BA in Economics from Wabash College.

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Kirk Goldsberry

Writer

Grantland/ESPN

Kirk Goldsberry is an academic turned journalist. Until the summer of 2013, he was a professor of geography at Harvard and previous to that taught at Michigan State University. He received a PhD from UC-Santa Barbara in 2007, where he studied mapping and visualization. It is these interests that Kirk has most recently applied to sports. More specifically, Kirk uses mapping and visualization techniques to study athletic performances. His work appears on Grantland a few times per week.

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