Not just Xs and Os: How sports teams are adopting the modern data stack from Coalesce 2023

“Good tools are good tools, and oftentimes, decision-makers…they just want products that are reliable…”

- Paimon Jaberi, Managing Director of Strategy and Analytics for the Seattle Seahawks

Jesse McCabe from Data Clymer learns how data practitioners working for professional sports teams leverage dbt to solve their unique challenges. The group discusses the benefits of dbt, the role of analytics engineering in their organizations, and their plans around data analytics.

The importance of addressing data challenges in sports analytics

The participants discuss the various challenges they face when dealing with data in the realm of sports analytics. They emphasize the importance of addressing these challenges to make informed business decisions, such as predicting game outcomes or increasing fan engagement.

Keelan Smithers, a Data Product Manager for the NBA, points out that one of the challenges is the lack of standardized practices. "We have a lot of analysts and a lot of offshore consultants that build queries, schedule them, and whatnot, in various sandbox databases…bringing all that into dbt, codifying it, [and] teaching them how to think modularly is a core part of the job," he explains.

Jared Chavez, Senior Data Engineer for Pacers Sports & Entertainment, highlights the difficulty of linking data from various brands and businesses. "Our biggest challenge so far is how do we link all of that together, and there are so many ways that a fan can interact…[and] engage with us throughout the year,” he explains.

Paimon Jaberi, Managing Director of Strategy and Analytics for the Seattle Seahawks, also confirms how difficult it can be to manage priorities in a large organization with various products and services. He shares, “Trying to figure out where to prioritize and organize our time and spend our focus…thinking about what's actually going to help our business as a whole is definitely one of our biggest data challenges.”

Prioritizing data privacy in sports analytics

The group also covers the importance of data privacy in the sports analytics sector. They emphasize how critical it is for their organizations to protect their fans' data and ensure their privacy.

Referencing the growing interest from companies in buying fan data, Jared says, "The biggest thing for us is, ‘How do we best protect you?" Keelan agrees that addressing data privacy helps build trust with fans and consumers.

The role of dbt in addressing data challenges in sports analytics

Keelan, Jared, and Paimon share how they’re utilizing dbt to address their data challenges. They highlight the benefits of improved data reliability, increased efficiency, and better data governance.

Jared explains how dbt helps organizations manage a large number of data sources. "dbt has finally made that a lot easier…it's all visual, especially in [dbt] Cloud. They can see what they're working on," he says.

Keelan shares how dbt helped his organization confront the issue of silent failures in their data models by providing alerts. "At least with this, those things can still happen, but it's a loud failure. We have a Slack bot, you know, yelling at people that the job failed or a test failed..."

Keelan, Jared, and Paimon’s key insights

• Data privacy is a significant concern for sports organizations due to increasing laws and regulations
• The use of dbt has made data analytics more sustainable and reliable for these organizations
• The learning curve for data analytics has reduced significantly, with more analysts now familiar with tools like SQL and dbt
• There is a need for modernization of data tools and processes to improve efficiency and reliability