Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is famous for using advanced, statistical analysis and software to gain a competitive edge in recruiting and to make up for his team’s limited payroll relative to the rest of the league.
Beane, who was portrayed in “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’ 2003 book, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an interview in San Francisco this month that the rest of the league has caught on to a lot of his old data-driven tricks.
“Every baseball team, every sports team, every business — managing large amounts of data is a part of every business now,” Beane said.
So what’s next for Beane? One area to look is health and wellness. Beane is predicting that health tech and artificial intelligence will transform professional sports.
“The healthiest teams in NFL are the most successful,” Beane said. “The correlation between health and success is remarkable. It’s an incredibly strong correlation. Same is true in baseball. So, the frontier for all of us is getting our arms around preventing and minimizing injuries. It’s a lot of lost time to some of our best players and lost revenues. However, the challenge is it’s gotta be data-driven. But getting data on the health history of people is not the easiest thing in the world, due to privacy laws.”
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