STEVENS POINT, WI (WSAU) — The 2nd Annual Great Lakes Analytics in Sports Conference will be happening on the campus of UW-Stevens Point on Thursday.
Scott Tappa is the Director of the conference. He says everything started with the rise of “Moneyball” with the Oakland Athletics years ago.
“Who about 15-20 years ago started using advanced math and science to look for under valued aspects of baseball in order to better compete with the teams that were in larger markets and had a lot more money to spend,” he said.
Tappa says he believes the legalization of sports betting will only increase the use of analytics in sports.
Tappa said, “Just like a coach or an athlete or a general manager for a team is trying to gain a competitive advantage by using advanced math and analytics, so might a better when they’re trying to win money.”
Tappa says the university is also discussing having conferences about analytics in agriculture, insurance, and the medical field in the future as well.
The conference is taking place from 8am-5pm. Tappa says last year about 150 people attended. He says he expects about 100 this year only because some of the feedback from last year’s event was there were too many scheduled speakers.
