How to start your sports analytics career?

What's the best way to get a job in sports analytics?

Landing a job in sports analytics is not easy because it's a very niche group of potential employers and because it's a dream job. However, there are ways to increase your odds by A LOT.
You must know that most people dream of getting a job in sports but really few actually work towards that. That's your edge.

The best tips to get a job in sports analytics:

1 - Do something that you can show

If you don't know anyone in the sports world, your best tool is to create something by yourself to show that you CAN do the job and that you are worth having an interview. Lots of options depending on what you feel more confident.

• Get some data and analyze it, create a model predicting who will win, get some insights that you find interesting/curious. Someone else will think the same way.
• If you are more into BI create a good dashboard, or a nice visualization as shown in a previous newsletter.
• If you are more technical, you can reproduce a paper or blog from someone else, even better if you tweak it or for a different use case (That's what I did for my master's degree!)
• If you are more into backend, you can create an API for data, or ETL for data engineering.
• ANYTHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO! JUST DO IT AND SHOW IT. By show it, I mean, put it on your resume, share it in LinkedIn, share it Twitter. Social media is your friend. And be ready to talk about it if someone gets interested.

2 - Actively look for jobs

It's easy to say there aren't many opportunities, all of them receive hundreds of resumes and any other excuse you might think. Although those arguments are essentially true, you can find workarounds. As in any of these jobs, if you are not always looking for solutions, you will have a hard time. A few ideas:

• Don't expect to get advertised about the jobs. If you are not doing anything and you expect them to appear, you will get few opportunities and with plenty of competition. As you got alerted, everyone else too.
• Look for them. How? Well, obviously www.sportsjobs.online but any other resource is also good. Go to LinkedIn, google, get another board, check directly in some organizations you like, etc. Most people don't do this. You should. Bookmark a few and regularly do a search.
• Increase your network. X (Twitter) has a lot of people in sports analytics, usually not influencer, just low profile guys doing the job. Add one, then check who they follow, follow the lead. That people will post when a position is open and I guarantee you they receive much less resumes that you would expect.
• Bonus: engage with them! Ask them tips, ask them any resource they use, ask them if they know about any position open, etc.
• Don't focus only in your dream job. Chances are that you are not going to be the data guy in your favorite home team. But there are plenty of teams or organizations working with sports data. Aim for ANY job that resonates to you. Then you can jump but the first one is the most important.
• Sports analytics is not only for a team! There are plenty of consultancy companies (Zelus is top notch, I shared the podcast of Daniel Lee last week). Maybe Zelus is hard to get into but follow them, see what they do, and look for other like them.
• The betting world also exists! Maybe it's not your first thought but betting is highly increasing and they do need sports analytics. They need to put the odds, update them, do analytics on the different bets they allow, etc etc. Also you can create a model yourself. Be creative! Plenty of places to use your knowledge.

3 - Engage

Increase your network. Talk to people, go to conferences if you can, join online spaces, discords, LinkedIn groups, follow people on X (Twitter) etc. It's hard work but once yo find a cool group and see other people doing what YOU want to do you will get motivated. Also you will learn a lot and people will start to know you. It's an industry where getting into is not super easy but if you show the will and you show people you really want it and you can help them, then you will get in. If you do some work your odds increase by a lot and I mean it.

I'm rooting for you. Once you see that someone answers you on Twitter, that someone likes some content you created, you will get more motivated and the wheel will start turning.

Keep checking the newsletter. I will provide resources to help you! Such as people to follow, websites with material, companies to keep an eye on, etc. Good luck!