MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference still raising the bar as it celebrates 20th anniversary

BOSTON (AP) — Long before Jessica Gelman was rubbing elbows with everyone from professional sports executives to former President Barack Obama, she was a college basketball player and psychology student at Harvard trying to identify the qualities of athletes who perform so well under pressure.

“I believe that the reason that so many of us love sports is because in many cases, it’s beyond our expectation of what people can do,” Gelman said. “It was this trying to understand what was seemingly inexplainable.”

For the past three decades, Gelman has been doing that and more as she morphed her passion for sports and data into becoming one of the top voices in the sports analytics industry.

She’s celebrating her 10th year as CEO of the Kraft Analytics Group and next week will mark the 20th MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which she co-founded alongside Philadelphia 76ers President Daryl Morey in 2006.

That gathering has gone from a brainchild they had while teaching a class together, to a small seminar for a few hundred, to an annual conference that this year will take over the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and bring together 2,500 people from 42 states, 31 countries, 130 academic institutions and 80 teams and sports leagues.

“This is exactly what I thought it was going to become. That’s dripping with sarcasm,” Gelman said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that sports analytics would become what it has become, but it is a unique period in time where technology has been advancing and more accessible to people, data and the rapid growth of the amount of data that’s available.”

Morey, who Gelman called her “complimentary Yin-Yang,” feels like they were sort of the captains of a ship that was rearing to set sail.

“We could have never thought it would become this,” Morey said. “We just were holding the tiger by the tail as it took off.”

At a time when all the world’s digital data is believed to double every two years, it’s made the annual assemblage even more essential in a sports world driven by numbers.

“There’s an interest, a draw, an understanding, and we’re having all these conversations while we’re in the middle of a snowstorm in Boston. So I guess we’re onto something,” Gelman said.

The reason the conference has been able to attract ardent number crunchers as well as voices across technology, sports business and entertainment is because Gelman said it has strived to put together a roster of speakers and panel discussions centered around current topics and issues facing the industry.

In 2022, when discussions of about diversity in sports filled headlines and airwaves, the conference featured multiple sessions on diversity, equity and inclusion, from a discussion of the NFL’s Rooney Rule to one on transgender athletes.

This year’s lineup has a panel titled “Heated Revelry” which will celebrate LGBT+ inclusion in sports and feature Harrison Browne, who was the first openly transgender pro hockey player.

Other offerings include Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and WNBA great Sue Bird’s 1-on-1 discussion with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, as well as a panel centered around the rise of prediction markets, which are currently embroiled in court challenges regarding their ability to be regulated like legal sports gambling. That panel will feature Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins will also take part in a separate session.

The two-day conference has also become a place where companies across the sports industry have found future employees among the MIT Sloan School of Management students that help plan and run it.

Business leaders like Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin have used the event for both networking and recruiting.

Former MIT Sloan student Evan Wasch, the NBA’s executive vice president of strategy and growth, will be on a panel looking at how artificial intelligence is reshaping officiating across professional sports. Other former student leaders and MIT Sloan graduates who have returned as panelists include Allison Katz-Mayfield, who currently runs ticketing, hospitality and beverage strategies for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“People have been touched by the conference over their careers, so I think they also want to be part of coming back and giving back,” Gelman said.

As far as what the plan is to keep the conference fresh and relevant going forward, Morey said it’s more about just being true to its origins.

“I think we’ve stopped that framing to try and top ourselves. I think once we hit Obama (in 2018), we were like, it’s going to be hard, unless you get Taylor Swift or the Pope,” Morey said. “What we don’t want to be is a conference that doesn’t feel fresh every time you come. So I think that’s something that we focus on every year, which is how do we keep this to its sort of geek roots.”

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