Analysing data to make sports predictions has long been the preserve of the betting industry. But what if it can also save sports teams huge amounts of money? And not from hedging their bets with the bookies?This was the epiphany that led a Dutch student, Giels Brouwer, to start a company called SciSports five years ago. He was studying business administration at the University of Twente in the Netherlands but dropped out when his own business took off. Today, the company's web platform, Insight, is installed at more than 60 football clubs in 17 countries. A predictive product, DataScouts, has supported clubs in scores of transfers of soccer players - in the process saving massive amounts of money and minimising risk. But the initial spark for this innovation had nothing to with sports."We were passionate football fans," Brouwer told the recent SAS Analytics Experience conference in Amsterdam. "One of the professors at the university told me how they use data and predictions to se...
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