Sports Data Analytics: An Art and a Science

This short paper highlights the role of sports data analytics in providing credible metrics for complex skills, aiding managers and coaches in decision-making processes. While Sport Science has been successful in contributing to exercise physiology and theories of training adaptions, it is less successful in explaining success in complex sports such as invasion sports. We propose a framework to deal with this complexity and providing meaningful metrices for individual and team performances. We demonstrate its utility by providing an example for individual and an example for team performance.