Building Unfair Advantages: Analytics at Multi-Sport Organizations

Analytics for a single team is hard enough. Building a shared R&D apparatus across multiple sports inside a single organization is a different problem entirely. Drawing on experience transitioning from leading team-level analytics to running a centralized R&D group, this talk explores what changes when teams begin sharing analytics resources. The talk will focus on how a bias to action, especially in biomechanics, can create durable, cross-sport advantages; why investments that appear sport-specific can compound elsewhere; and how hiring strategies shift when true specialists can't realistically exist. The talk will also touch on how AI may reverse the push toward hyper-specialization, and how organizations can protect competitive advantage through selective openness.