How to learn the skills to work in sports analytics
When I started my career journey I wanted to work in sports analytics as soon as possible.
It was my dream.
Work for FC Barcelona and help them with scouting, tactics, and even maybe invite Messi over for an asado.
Obviously, that hasn’t happened.
If you’re anything like me you probably have wanted to work in sports your whole life.
The other day I had a conversation with someone who has been working in sports analytics (specifically soccer/football) for a long time.
They made a couple of points about a career in sports and it confirmed a lot of the thoughts I’ve had about working in sports and the skills necessary and actually why I have put off working in sports up to this point.
The reason I am sharing this is because I am currently implementing these skills to one day hopefully make the jump to working in sports analytics, whether that’s for a team, consulting, an organization, or maybe even starting some sort of business myself.
So let’s break down a couple of ways you can learn the skills necessary for sports analytics to not only get a job, but as well be good at the job.
1. Don’t go straight into sports analytics
The truth is sports analytics jobs are very competitive.
Go look at a LinkedIn post when one comes up for a “data scientist” for a team in the second division and it will have 100+ applications.
This is the same for even low-paying, entry-level jobs in sports.
The biggest mistake I think a lot of people make is trying and only focusing on getting a job in sports analysis.
A few years ago I knew a guy named Greg.
Greg was fresh out of an undergraduate degree and wanted to work in sports analytics.
Greg was so focused on getting a job in sports analytics that he ended up spending all of his time only looking at jobs and applying to jobs and he was disappointed when he kept getting rejected for a lot of the common reasons that most people get rejected.
Lack of industry knowledge
Lack of technical skills
Lack of work experience
You get the point.
The truth is this guy Greg was actually me.
When I first came out of school I thought that I would just be able to go straight to working for a top team.
Most people, including myself, will benefit 10 fold by working a different job, maybe in a different industry, and in a different size of company. Maybe that’s working for a top company or just a small startup.
That way you can actually get industry knowledge, build technical skills, and get that work experience that these jobs require and the employers are looking for.
I have been working for a startup for the past 3 and a half years and it has dramatically increased my exposure to skills I didn’t have and I am much more confident that I would be able to make the jump to sports if I wanted to at this point.
Remember, your career is long.
If you aren’t working in sports at the age of 22 you aren’t a failure.
Keep gaining experience and keep working towards that goal.
2. Learn technical skills as fast as possible
Learning the technical skills is really what’s going to set you apart.
Almost everyone I know who works in sports analytics has incredible technical skills.
They can code in Python or R very well.
They have a deep understanding of things like cloud computing, web design, or databases depending on what their job is.
The ones who work as data scientists spend a large chunk of their spare time learning about models, deploying those models to production, and finetuning them.
The hard truth is that if you want to get into sports analytics as a career you are competing with a lot of people who want the same thing.
Learning these skills is what sets you apart.
Let’s look at a job posted a couple of months ago for an analyst role with the USMNT a an example.
Three of the first five things in the minimum qualifications are technical skills.
Data visualization
Coding
Databases
I recommend reading through and taking note every time a new job posting is listed to see what people are looking for in technical skills.
And then go and focus on learning those skills.
This will give you a good idea of what is needed to work at clubs, teams, organizations, etc.
Learning these skills is a lifetime endeavor, but doing so will enable you to do a lot with your career even if you don’t end up in sports.
There’s a lot of really good free and very inexpensive information available online these days (such as my Complete Football Analytics Course 😉 ). Learning is very cheap and it really just depends how much work you want to put into it.
3. Build in public
This idea/motto comes from a movement on Twitter where these “solo-preneuers” are basically building and sharing their progress as they go.
They build software, tools or content and essentially Tweet it and that’s how they do their marketing to get users to their stuff.
For sports analytics, we take a different approach but somewhat of the same idea.
Building and creating an online and public portfolio is truly what you need nowadays to showcase what you can do.
I’ve shared a couple of times about “project based learning” and it truly is the best way to learn new technical skills.
When you build and share your ideas in public you get quick feedback and can learn faster than working in a solo box.
I’ve learned so much faster by sharing what I’ve created or projects that i’m working on and others give me feedback or ideas to improve it.
This causes me to learn new skills in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to before.
A friend of mine who I met through Twitter (I won’t share their name out of privacy for them), followed this exact method.
They started sharing very useful insights about a team they followed. This included data visualizations, scouting reports, podcasts, and videos on things they had built and they grew a very large following and now work for a large club thanks to the work they put out online.
This is just one case of many people I know who have gone from building and sharing things to working for teams and organizations.
Build in public and you unlock the great power of feedback which will help you progress in your learning.
Over the years I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about sports analytics the skills needed and it has consumed a large portion of my time.
Learning skills needed for sports analytics isn’t easy and can take some time.
But if you stick to learning those skills, you’ll set yourself up for great opportunities in your life.