Sport Performance Analytics major
Sport performance analytics encapsulates collecting, analyzing and interpreting data as it pertains to the sports industry. The major has a range of applications in the sports industry from quantitative research, improving athlete performance, developing better strategies, and preventing injury.
Why major in sport performance analytics?
Due to rapid advancements in technology, the amount and sophistication of data collected from athletes and professional and collegiate teams has increased drastically. This intersection of sports and technology creates a need for professionals who can accurately analyze and interpret complex data. With the ability to make sense of these metrics, professionals with this skill set can communicate with coaches, athletic trainers and athletes, to improve performance and achieve a competitive advantage. Students with a sport performance analytics degree can thrive in professional and college sports, sports media companies, wearable technology companies, sports gambling companies, and sporting goods manufacturers. In addition to athletics, analysts with the ability to understand performance data can also excel in the business world in fields such as advertising, business administration, and economics. Students with a degree in sport performance analytics are well-prepared for jobs across many disciplines.
What makes our program unique?
UD will teach you the full scope of sport performance analytics, ranging from proper data collection to interpreting and communicating statistics to decision makers in real time. Our students are exposed to both the theoretical and experiential sides of sport performance analytics through our rigorous course load and well-established opportunities with UD Athletics. Classes such as Strategy and Behavior (APEC310) and Predictive Analysis with Athletics Data (SPAX402) will teach you with statistical and analytical skills, while the internship and experiential classes, such as Wearable Technology and Performance Analysis (SPAX403), will prepare you to use your statistical techniques in real-world situations.
You can also choose from a variety of minors to combine with your sport performance analytics degree to enhance your learning. Examples include:
- Statistical data analytics,
- Business analytics,
- Game studies and Esports,
- Sport management,
- Strength and conditioning, and
- Advertising.
Will the sport performance analytics major prepare me for a career in data science?
Absolutely. A major in sport performance analytics will prepare you for careers not only in data science pertaining to the sport industry, but also in various other fields. You will understand the mathematics behind data science and how to interpret statistical data, a skillset sought in many career fields from business to scientific research. Sport performance analysts use data from a wide range of sports to give players a competitive advantage from predicting the best defensive efforts in basketball to evaluating the impact that a court surface has on a tennis match. We provide you with the technical background in mathematics, statistics, and computer science that you need to be a data scientist. UD’s sport performance analytics major provides the depth of knowledge in advanced statistical techniques coupled with a hands-on program with UD Athletics that prepares you for a career in sports analytics.
Career Outcomes
Career paths
- Quantitative sports researcher
Sports statistician
Data scientist
Game operations associate
Risk assessment analyst
Sports statistical analyst
Sports sales analyst
Quantitative analyst, predictive modeling
Business analyst
Market research analyst
Sports journalist
Sports commentator
Graduate school paths
- Data science
Sport analytics
Sport management
Business analytics
Biostatistics
Economics
Education statistics
The job market for this major is really strong. When we were developing this major, we went out and we talked to potential employers, and they were excited about our combination of rigorous analytical background with that hands-on experience that the students are going to get with UD Athletics, and they saw that as a real opportunity that was going to bring the skills that they need from their employees.
Department Chair, Applied Economics and Statistics
Courses and planning
Course highlights
Students use data from a variety of disciplines to explore topics in statistical data analysis, estimation, and inference. Instructors cover graphical displays; measures of position, central tendency, and variability; basic probability rules; discrete probability distributions; binomial distribution; normal and standard normal probability distributions; sampling distributions; the t distribution; confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for one mean or proportion; confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for two means or proportions; correlation and simple linear regression.
This course will familiarize students with concepts of game theory and related theories of strategy and human behavior from economics that is required for the sport performance analytics major. It will focus on applications to show the use of strategic environments and game theoretic analysis across a wide range of settings. Students will develop a set of tools for analyzing strategic situations to optimize strategy in sporting and other contexts.
This course explores the growing and popular field of sport analytics. Topics covered include player performance and management, team performance and management, wearable technologies, sport marketing analytics, sport gambling, and game day operations and strategies. Students will engage in various learning experiences that expose them to the career opportunities available in sport analytics along with the future sport analytics trends.
This course will familiarize students with the core concepts and methodologies of performance analytics to implement within sport.
Predictive Analysis with Athletics Data introduces students to the principles, methodologies, and tools used in predictive analysis within the context of athletics data. Students will learn how to collect, clean, process, analyze, and interpret data related to sports performance, injury prediction, player scouting, and team strategy.
This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of how wearable devices intersect with performance analysis in various sectors, including health, sport, and athlete development. Through this course, students will explore the functionalities of different wearable technologies, learn data collection methods, and analyze the gathered data to enhance performance in different domains.
A 4-Year Plan
This sample shows just one possible pathway to earning a bachelor of science degree in sport performance analytics in four years. This plan does not replace the advice of your advisor.
Related student organizations
Learn more
Associate Director, CANR Undergraduate Recruitment