My Experience @ Sloan Sports Analytics Conf Part 2

NOTE: I know there's a lot of text, but I hope you at least read the topics that you find interesting.

In March of last year, the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference marked a landmark for the progress of eSports in its quest to be recognized by popular media. Day[9], MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, and Evil Genius CEO Alex Garfield presented the world of eSports to a conference filled with well-respected figures from the more traditional sporting world and over two-thousand attendees. The panel was only mildly interesting, but at the conclusion of the talk, NBA Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey surprised everyone by walking on-stage, revealing a “Release the Gracken” tee, claiming that he was a fan of the game of Starcraft 2, and that he believed eSports would one day become the most popular competitive sport in the world.

I wrote a blog post about the story, as well as about my complete experience at the conference, and the post had a surprisingly large and positive reception. Below, I will offer some notes about this year’s conference and the more interesting panels and talks, with an emphasis on the eSports panel. I’d like to point out that all quotes or comments regarding what the panelists said are paraphrased. I swear they’re not fabricated though. ☺

Further reading material:

Last year's blog post
Research papers
Videos (will update when videos are uploaded. Estimated to be available in April)

The eSports Explosion
This past weekend, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Twitch COO Kevin Lin, and Gamespot journalist Rod "Slasher" Breslau joined Daryl, Mike, and Sundance to preach the book of e-sports once more. Similar to the year before, the contents of the talk were slightly scattered and possibly difficult to understand for those that are completely unaware of eSports, but it’s a challenge that may be difficult to overcome when given a one-hour window to cover many topics. Items like meta-game, game balance, and “choosing from three races” are what I would assume to be very difficult topics to understand for non-gamers.

The number of unique viewers for Twitch has grown from 4 mill in 2010 to 14 mill in 2011 to 30 mill in 2012.
The number of minutes of content consumed per month on Twitch has increased from 0.8 bill to 2.4 bill to 7 bill.
Since MLG was sponsored by Dr. Pepper (I forget if it was up until today, or even in a one-year span), sales of their 16 oz. bottles increased by 32%. Correlation and not causation, but still quite impressive. Sundance used this as an example of how eSports has grown past the mold of only energy drink and Mountain Dew.
Sundance also pointed out eSports is incredibly unique with how fans interact with sponsors. In no other sport except maybe Nascar do fans actively seek out sponsors to thank (or even criticize) them for supporting specific players or teams. The amount of engagement that fans have with sponsors is a powerful driving force for future sponsorship opportunities.
I got a chance to ask Sundance what his thoughts were about the current IPL struggles. He said that as a fan of eSports he was a little sad because IPL definitely has made some positive contributions and it worries him a little concerning eSports that they might just disappear. But at the same time, and more importantly, Sundance knows his own company’s numbers and knows that MLG is doing incredibly well, so he doesn’t have any fears for his own organization and is in fact, more and more optimistic after every event.
Breslau was introduced as “Rod ‘The Slasher’ Breslau,” which I thought was funny because I’m positive no one else at that conference during the entire weekend was introduced with a nickname.
Personal opinion: We are extremely lucky to have someone as charismatic and intelligent as Sundance to represent eSports. It’s no knock against Morhaime, Lin, and Morey, but Sundance was much, much more articulate. Also, his ability to draw parallels between traditional sport and eSports was a necessity at this conference. And whether or not MLG is doing as well as Sundance claims, the passion that he shows for his company and for the industry is both infectious and convincing.
NBA GM Daryl Morey was able to offer some of his opinions about eSports’ future as well.
- He has attended a minor SC2 live-event and he said that the passion of the fans was incredible, and comparable to that of a traditional sporting event. Possibly even greater.
- He believes that the tournaments/leagues should have more control over scheduling than the players. In all other sports except boxing, the organizations that run the games are also the ones forcing the schedules.
- He also believes that eventually, there will only be one league. He believes that the more successful leagues will pull ahead and the smaller ones just won’t be able to keep up. It’s a pattern that has happened with all other sports as well. I talked to Slasher after the panel and Slasher was in agreement, although he believed that it would remain as one league per geographical region. Slasher even offered me his preference for which league would succeed, but I’m not a Gamespot journalist so I’ll let him leak that information whenever he plans to ☺
- The panel had a discussion as to whether the American model of having all the teams belonging to one league (like the NBA) was better or if the European model where all teams were their own private entities and could move around (Euro Soccer) was better. Morey thought that both had its pros and cons, but that, admittedly with bias, he felt the American model was better because it results in greater revenue for the teams.
- Morey gave an anecdote to how around thirty years ago, the Boston Celtics NBA team was in the finals and the arena was almost empty, while on that same night, the Boston Bruins NHL team had a sold-out crowd for a much less meaningful regular season game. Today, the NHL is still watched by many in Boston, but the NBA has taken a massive lead in popularity. The strength of different leagues changes drastically from generation to generation, and he thinks it’s only a matter of time before eSports joins the ranks of most popular sports. It took the NBA almost thirty years from when it was created to become really relevant.
- Daryl did seem a little uneducated on the details of eSports, and while it was neat to have a relatively high-profile sports figure on the panel, I wonder if having someone with more eSports knowledge like a Starcraft player or a casting personality may have been more valuable. Daryl did a lot of bullshitting, albeit effective bullshitting.

Revenge of the Nerds ft. Nate Silver, Mark Cuban, Daryl Morey, and San Francisco 49ers COO Paraag Marathe

When asked how they got into the sports industries, the common theme was “a lot of luck, and passion at a young age.” Cuban was the only one that didn’t want to be in sports as a kid. The other panelists began studying sports business or statistics as early as twelve years old.
A common theme of the entire conference, and not just this talk, was that communication is more important than the idea itself. For an idea to be powerful, every single person must buy into it. A 5/10 idea that everyone understands and agrees will have more success than a 10/10 idea that is difficult to convey.
A funny anecdote from this talk: Daryl was talking about the NBA and giving his own anecdote about the players, and how they played on the “field.” Mark Cuban interrupted Daryl and points out that “we play the game on a court, Daryl.”
When asked about what the future of analytics in the NBA, Mark Cuban says that he thinks player psychology might be a strong direction to move in. The Dallas Mavericks are, to his knowledge, the only team with a psychologist that accompanies the team onto the court. Cuban then commented directly to Daryl, saying, “If you had a team psychologist, you wouldn’t have drafted who you did,” much to the delight of the audience (look up Royce White). Daryl put on a pained smile.

Automated Insights (cool sports technology that might one day be applicable to eSports)

This is a company that is able to generate life-like news articles about sporting events. The reports they “write” through computer software are almost indistinguishable from those written by the Associated Press.
The company last year began providing personalized news articles for an individual’s fantasy football teams.
Many sports journalists write for a general audience so they can target as many readers as possible. Bloggers can sometimes target a specific demographic (ex. Chicago Bulls fans). But what Automated Insights can do is provide truly personalized content based on the needs of the individual. They generated millions of news articles last year for Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football.

Misc notes:

NFL – The positional player with the highest Wonderlic (sports IQ test) scores on average is not the QB, but the center and the rest of the OL. The positions with the lowest scores are the RB and WRs.
EPL/Soccer – There is a very, very strong correlation between the metric “head movements per minute” and player success, measured by number of awards. The two players in the EPL with the most head movements are Lampard and Gerrard.
NBA – Stan van Gundy sounds like a smart guy, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s back with a coaching gig. If he wants one.
Field goals in NFL – Research has shown that icing the kicker doesn’t have any effect on lowering the kickers’ chances of converting a FG. In fact, there is a chance that icing the kicker may INCREASE the chance of nailing the FG, although the number is too insignificant to draw any conclusions. ESPN Around the Horn host, Tony Reali, who is one of the most charismatic and funny people I have ever listened to, offered the idea of coaches icing their own kickers. In fact, when the videos become available for the conference, I HEAVILY recommend any NFL fan to watch the “Monday Morning Quarterback” panel with Reali, Herm Edwards, Jack del Rio, and others. Super entertaining stuff.
NBA – There is a strong correlation between “acceleration” and player success. Acceleration is the absolute value of a player’s accelerations and decelerations in a game. That means both speeding up and slowing down to set picks are considered “accelerations.” Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Paul Pierce, Carmelo Anthony, and Kobe Bryant are all first or second in this metric in their respective positions. Surprisingly, the worst accelerators were not complete scrubs either, as they included players like Danilo Gallinari and Kyle Lowry.
NBA – There is no real good metric for defense right now. REBs are kind of a half-offense, half-defense metric. BLKs and STLs are nice, but sometimes opportunity-driven. A research paper looked into two effects, which the writer named “The Dwight Effect” and “The Larry Sanders Effect.” Inside of the paint, players have over a 60% FG rate, whereas outside of it, the rates drop down to 50% or less. The Dwight Effect refers to how important it is to prevent the opposing players from taking shots in the paint. Dwight Howard leads the league in this metric, because when he’s on the court, opposing players are less willing to drive to the basket or play a post-up game. It’s probably reputation-driven, so it will be nice to see how this number grows for someone like Larry Sanders in the upcoming few seasons. The other metric, the Larry Sanders Effect, is measured by “FG% when the defender is within 5 ft.” When Larry Sanders is within 5 ft., the man that he is covering shoots around a 25% (?) FG rate. David Lee, who was in the crosshairs of many jokes during this talk, allows almost 65% (?) of shots to go in when he’s within that same distance. That means that players actually shoot BETTER when Lee is nearby than if they were uncovered. Yet David Lee is an all-star because of his offensive prowess and is paid like an all-star. Larry Sanders is recognized as a stellar defensive player, but unlikely will ever receive a comparable paycheck. (Possibly link the video if I can find it)
Personal idea – Blizzard should make an open API for the data of a live game and give access to those with permission. Imagine box scores and live text-based game feeds for GSL games. This will also allow for more analytics in eSports as well as the potential for better fan engagement with features like fantasy Starcraft (that updates instantly instead of days later with TL’s Fantasy Proleague) or automated reports like the technology mentioned earlier under “Automated Insights.”
Personal anecdote – I arrived at the conference late on the first day and arrived right behind Mark Cuban. He pulled into the valet parking, and I kind of regret not following him in. I settled for the wallet-friendly regular people parking instead. Not many people can claim to have gotten valet parking right behind a billionaire. Sad news bears.

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