Billy Beane, the Moneyball man, is launching the first "blank cheque" company aiming to buy a sports team. The plan is to raise $575 million on the New York Stock Exchange https://t.co/h3cavfyVEi
Oil's thunderous price drop in historical perspective; this is the biggest % fall for Brent, and first fall of 20% or more, since January 1991, when a coalition of the willing was fighting Iraq over Kuwait. This is a very, very big deal.
This is a really good read on both how to think about building an analytics team to support a hockey organization and also some of the best minds in this space right now—> https://t.co/p4TUDTPLji
An NHL GM insisting that analytics are second to watching the games, and then literally not watching Victor Rask's games before acquiring him, is just a perfect summation of the analytics vs eye test "debate."
There is no sport that's hardest for a team to win the championship. It's either harder for the best team to win, or harder for the underdog to win.
Hockey, for example, is a relatively harder sport for the best team to win, which means it is relatively *easier* for underdogs.
This is the Premier League over time. The top 6-7 teams are getting stronger, and everybody else is getting weaker. Each dot shows a season, ordered left to right chronologically within a league position band.