One of the greatest things about being a student is the opportunity and excuse to network with so many great sports industry executives. Over the past two school years I've spoken with a number of impressive leaders of teams, leagues and other sports-related companies, many of whom I've had the opportunity to meet in person and others with whom I talk periodically on the phone. Included in the former is one of the heads of Bloomberg Sports, which " takes the technology developed by Bloomberg, the leading global provider in data and analytics, and applies them to the vast data analysis opportunities in sports." I took advantage of an offer to come visit Bloomberg's midtown offices when I was in New York last month over Spring Break, and was blown away by what I saw.
First off, the Bloomberg offices (most of which are taken up by the company's core finance-oriented business) are modern and incredible. It's just a great-looking place to work, and just being there made me feel like I was about to see something new and exciting. When I met my contact and he took me into a glass-walled conference room to show me what he and his team had been working on, I wasn't disappointed. First, I got to see the company's new professional baseball tool, which it sells to MLB teams for research and scouting purposes. As the company's website accurately notes, "Bloomberg Sports is at the cutting edge of analytic development and implementation for professional teams by providing a comprehensive, integrated data system for all scouting, player development, and player evaluation operations."
The Bloomberg building in New York City is incredible, inside and out.
For a baseball geek like me, seeing the Bloomberg pro tool was incredible. My contact asked me to name a current pitcher that I liked - I picked Tommy Hanson of the Braves. He picked a hitter - the Mets' David Wright - and up popped a series of beautiful graphics detailing the battles between the two young stars. There were pie charts that showed how often Hanson threw particular pitches on particular counts and how his previous pitch(es) impacted his probability of throwing future ones. You could see a dot denoting the location of every pitch Hanson has every thrown while Wright was batting, what kind of pitch it was and what the result was - absolutely incredible. And Bloomberg's not just providing teams with data - after all, they're getting all of their information from MLBAM. Instead, Bloomberg is synthesizing and outputting this data in a meaningful and clear way so that teams can use it and digest it easily It's brilliant.
Obviously, selling data to MLB teams is a limited market - there are only 30 franchises, so upside is capped. For a huge company like Bloomberg, they're looking for a homerun opportunity out of their Sports division, and they believe that fantasy sports and gambling (internationally) are ways that they can make big money. As you can see on the Bloomberg Sports website, the company is selling products that will help you manage your fantasy baseball teams using their data, and they're launching a European product that will educate soccer fans before they place wagers. While these products are intriguing, are there enough people willing to pay a monthly fee for the data Bloomberg can provide? I'm a huge fantasy baseball and football fan, but even I couldn't see myself paying $9.99 a month for the right to pour through data before setting my weekly lineups. Would you?
Despite my concerns about the company's domestic business model, I absolutely loved my hour-long visit to Bloomberg Sports. I'd highly recommend checking out their website to learn more about their fantasy products, if only to get a vague and simplistic idea about all of the detailed outputs that Bloomberg can, and does, produce for its MLB team customers. While Billy Beane and Bill James may have discovered the power of baseball analytics, Bloomberg Sports is doing an amazing job of bringing it to the masses.