Sports Analytics

Watch the Superbowl? This week’s review looks at how sports analytics can be leveraged to improve leadership and decision making.

Posted on February 10, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers

Alamar, Benjamin. Columbia, 2024
184p bibl index, 9780231205207 $26.95, 9780231555890

From Artificial Intelligence to the Women’s National Basketball Association, Alamar, a respected expert on sports analytics, continues the theme of the original edition (Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers, Columbia, 2013), with enhanced illustrative materials and chapter dialogue. The nine brief chapters provide a unique and insightful combination of theory and practical application in the use of organizational data to enhance organizational leadership and create a competitive advantage and market sustainability. Every aspect of the sporting industry creates data that can be used to create value. To that end, from player recruitment to product marketing and the value of corporate relations and community involvement, Alamar illustrates how the strategic use of sports analytics can harness the power of the information. As a reference or a guide, this is an important addition to the field’s literature.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, practitioners, and two-year technical programs.
Reviewer: S. R. Kahn, emeritus, University of Cincinnati
Subject: Science & Technology – Sports & Recreation
Choice Issue: Mar 2025

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