Episodes
Friday Oct 06, 2023
The Impact of Moneyball: 20 Years Later
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Bill James - Former Senior Baseball Operations Advisor Boston Red Sox
Michael Lewis - Author & Journalist
Shane Battier - Former Vice President, Analytics and Basketball Development, Miami Heat; 2012 & 2013 NBA Champion, Miami Heat
Daryl Morey - President of Basketball Operations, Philadelphia 76ers
Jackie MacMullan (moderator) - Retired Senior Writer
When Moneyball was published in 2003, no one could have predicted its monumental impact across business, sports, culture, and beyond. Now, twenty years later, the book, and later the blockbuster movie, sparked a renaissance that has totally changed how organizations think about and use data. Jackie MacMullen will lead a discussion with Michael Lewis, Bill James, and Shane Battier as the group reflects on the impact and legacy of Moneyball - and analytics driven thinking - over the last two decades.
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Michael Rubin - CEO, Fanatics
DeMaurice Smith - Executive Director - National Football League Players Association (NFLPA)
Tamika Tremaglio - Executive Director, National Basketball Players Association (NBPA)
Jessica Gelman (moderator) - CEO, Kraft Analytics Group (KAGR)
Over the past 5 years, we’ve seen a massive shift in how players are directly engaging with fans, investing into business, and using their platform to affect societal change. As players step into their collective power, the NBAPA, NFLPA, and partners like Fanatics are redefining the role and impact of player influence within and across the sports industry. Featuring DeMaurice Smith (NFLPA Executive Director), Tamika Tremaglio (NBPA, Executive Director), and Michael Rubin (CEO of Fanatics), Jessica Gelman will guide a discussion on how these industry innovators are adjusting their business models, creating new business lines, driving the future of fan interactivity and have altered the player power landscape to innovate sports.
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Changing the Game: How the Sports Industry is Accelerating Progress in DEI
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Stef Strack - Founder & CEO, Voice in Sport, and Voice in Sport Foundation
Billy Bean - SVP | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion & Special Assistant to the Commissioner, Major League Baseball (MLB)
Sola Winley - EVP Office of the Commissioner and Chief DEI Officer, Major League Soccer (MLS)
Jonathan Beane - Senior Vice President, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, NFL
Katie Burke (moderator) - Chief People Officer, HubSpot
Sports organizations are prioritizing and developing programs to broaden DEI. However, despite increased discussion, media attention, and data supporting diversity, women, people of color, non-binary, and LGBTQ leaders continue to be underrepresented in sports from entry-level to most glaringly in the executive branch. Importantly, leagues are investing heavily in equaling the playing field from employees to vendors to partners with a diversity priority. Over the past few years, major sports leagues have created new policies, hired DEI leaders, and shared their representations from business to team to front office. This panel brings together the league leaders who are driving change at the macro and team-level to increase representation. Moderated by Katie Burke, regarded as a leading voice of culture at Hubspot, learn what is working, what the data says, and how much more we need to do to accelerate representation of diversity, equity, and inclusion in sports.
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Jessica Berman - Commissioner, National Women’s Soccer League
Johanna Faries - Senior Vice President/General Manager of Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard
Jackie MacMullan (moderator) - Retired Senior Writer
Sports has long been a microcosm for society at large and given the public visibility athletes, teams, and leagues expected to lead on all aspects of culture. From players to fans to ownership expectations, it is more critical than ever that organizations listen, respond, and set a path towards evolution. Led by Jackie MacMullan, listen in as Jessica Berman (NWSL Commissioner) and Johanna Faries (Senior Vice President/General Manager of Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard) discuss the process of defining a path forward as organizations invest heavily in cultures to set new precedents, ensure employee, fan, and player satisfaction and improve the organization’s outcomes. With many competing stakeholders, this panel will feature perspectives from all angles of cultural change within and around the sports industry.
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Entrepreneurship for Impact: Athletes Making a Mark
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Friday Oct 06, 2023
Sue Bird - WNBA Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, Co-Founder of A Touch More and Togethxr
Brian Westbrook - Managing Director of Athlete Entrepreneur Network, underdog venture team
Lindsay Kagawa Colas - Executive Vice President, Talent + The Collective, Wasserman
Michele Steele (moderator) - Reporter, ESPN
Star athletes develop strong name recognition for their feats on the field, but their professional athletic careers represent just a fraction of their lives. After retirement (or sometimes even before), athletes embark on numerous different pathways, often using their platform and lessons learned in their playing careers to make an impact on the broader world. This panel convenes star athletes and one of the most prominent agents in sports for a discussion centered on entrepreneurship and investment as a means to drive positive change.
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Performance Under Pressure
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Sue Bird - WNBA Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, Co-Founder of A Touch More and Togethxr
Brad Stevens - President of Basketball Operations, Boston Celtics
Steve Magness - Performance Coach, Author
Michael Lewis (moderator) - Author & Journalist
Pressure in sports comes in many forms and some people "have it." Listen in as legendary clutch performer Sue Bird shares how she handles the highest-pressure moments on the court and in boardrooms, how former coach and now team architect Brad Stevens defines the value of performance under pressure for his players, and how performance coach Steve Magness studies the science of these skills to drive performance improvement. Can the "clutch ability" be measured? How do we define clutch? End of shot clock, end of game, importance of the game? How do athletes prepare to perform under pressure mentally and physically? Join this myth-busting discussion led by Michael Lewis as leaders in this area attempt to answer what truly makes the best athletes perform under pressure.
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Lessons From The Edge: Understanding Humans In The Pursuit of Peak Performance
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Olav Aleksander Bu - Co-Founder, Head of Performance for Norway Triathlon, Santara Technology
Chris Cassidy - Retired NASA Astronaut & NAVY Seal, President and CEO, National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation
Roberta Groner - Professional Runner, USATF and RRCA Coach
Steve Magness (moderator) - Performance Coach, Author
What do space flight and endurance sports have in common? Both demand the highest level of physical and mental performance, requiring astronauts and athletes alike to push their limits and strive for peak performance. Achieving this goal requires a comprehensive approach that integrates training, recovery, nutrition, and perhaps most important of all mental toughness. This panel will explore what peak human performance means and whether or not it is attainable, drawing on the insights and expertise of Olav Aleksander Bu (coach of Ironman World Champions Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden), Chris Cassidy (former Navy Seal and NASA Astronaut), and Roberta Gronder (American Distance Runner). Join Author and Performance Coach, Steve Magness as he leans on his experience to sift through the complexities and understand what matters most in the pursuit for peak human performance.
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Sports and Technology: Bringing Performance to the Next Level
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Tracey Kitt - Chief Technology Officer, Sony's Sports Businesses
Megan Schroeder - Senior Director, Performance Science, Los Angeles Dodgers
Michael D'Auria - Chief Commercial Officer, Second Spectrum
Christina Chase (moderator) - Co-Founder, Managing Director MIT Sports Lab
The rapid rise of the use of analytics in sports has created demand for new and unique datasets that can help provide an edge over the competition. With the commercialization of motion capture technology, player and object movements can be analyzed and recreated down to the finest detail. For sports teams and leagues, this revolutionary new age of data capture has unlocked so many possibilities in terms of player evaluation, game strategy, and coaching. Furthermore, this advanced data capture has changed the way that games are officiated and administered, providing a path to fairer outcomes. Led by MIT's Christina Chase, hear from Tracey Kitt (Sony's Sports Businesses), Megan Schroeder (LA Dodgers) and Mike D'Auria (Second Spectrum) to learn more about how these exciting technologies are being applied in the sports industry.
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
The Ultimate Team Sport: Building Better Football Rosters with Analytics
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Steve Palazzolo - Head of Product for the Football Division, Pro Football Focus (PFF)
Thomas Dimitroff - CEO, SumerSports
Kevin Demoff - Chief Operating Officer, Los Angeles Rams
Jacqueline Davidson - Senior Director of Football Research, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Seth Walder (moderator) - Analytics Writer, ESPN
Football teams across the NFL are using analytics to build an edge over their competition, with improved roster construction being a chief use case. This has also created numerous opportunities for companies to build solutions that provide teams with the data and analytics they need to truly create an edge. Super Bowl winning executives and leaders from SumerSports and PFF convene on this panel to discuss how teams are currently using analytics to build that edge. Potential areas of discussion include how teams are building through the draft, how to prioritize cap allocation to the correct players and positions, approaches to free agency, and the handling of all the variables that come with trading. Panelists will touch on how teams are deploying analytics today, what has and hasn’t worked well in the league thus far, and where teams will be putting more of their analytics focus in the coming years.
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Soccer’s Analytics Frontier
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Saturday Sep 23, 2023
Omar Chaudhuri - Chief Intelligence Officer, Twenty First Group
Sarah Rudd - Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, src | ftbl
Mladen Sormaz - Director of Football Analytics, 777 Partners Football Group
John Muller (moderator) - Senior Writer, The Athletic
Soccer is both perhaps the most "unsolvable" major sport and earlier in the analytics adoption curve at the club level, making it an extremely exciting time for the global leaders pushing the boundaries of soccer analytics. The beautiful game's analytics research grows more fascinating by the year, with concepts like expected possession value models, pitch control, talent development, set piece optimization, and more gaining more traction. Meanwhile, clubs have become massive businesses, spending hundreds of millions of pounds on individual players while still unsure of how to integrate even basic analytical insights into their decision-making processes. This panel gathers the sport's brightest minds from the world's leading clubs, analytics consultancies, data providers, and researchers to truly dig into soccer's analytics frontier.