How IBM is bringing front-office data analysis to Super Bowl fans

More than 110 million Americans are expected to watch Super Bowl XLIX on TV this Sunday. But for many - whether they're Seahawks fans, Patriots fans, or they just really like football - the season won't be over until they've had a chance to study the game's stats the next day.

These stats tell the story behind the story. Especially in recent years, sports fans have gotten even more obsessed with statistics, as fantasy sports have grown from a niche pastime into a multi-billion dollar industry.

But while advanced "Moneyball"-style number-crunching is all the rage in back rooms and front offices, the vast majority of fans don't have the specialized training necessary to analyze giant batches of numbers like the statisticians employed by their favorite teams.

Enter IBM's Watson Analytics, a new cloud-based platform that finds patterns in data and uses that information to make predictions about the future.

Its primary purpose is to help businesses of all kinds make informed decisions, but anyone who'd like to use it can experience the Watson Analytics freemium version. This gives fans access to similar tools that executives of pro sports teams consult to understand, say, how many yards Marshawn Lynch averages after first contact, or in which situations Tom Brady is most likely to throw to Rob Gronkowski.

"We wanted to get it out there in as many people's hands as possible, as quickly as possible," says Marcus Hearne, IBM Watson Analytics' worldwide marketing leader, of the analytics tool. "A powerful thing about it is that you don't have to be a data scientist to take advantage of predictive analytics."

In order to help sports fans get started, IBM uploaded a slew of offensive statistics from the 2014 NFL season (provided by SportsData LLC) into its database. For instructions and a demo of what you can do with NFL stats in Watson Analytics, visit the Watson Analytics Storybook.

From there, fans can explore data visualizations of how certain trends played out during the season - like a weekly breakdown of interceptions thrown by the home and visiting teams - and even ask the system predictive questions like, "Which factors lead to rushing touchdowns?"

Not surprisingly, Hearne says most fans have been using the platform to try to get a leg up on their friends in fantasy football.

For business decision-makers, the software's appeal lies not in its ability to help someone win a fantasy football or Super Bowl trophy, but in the ease with which it performs complex analysis on the factors leading to successful sales or employee retention.

Instead of getting lost in confusing spreadsheets or relying on the company's data science department, business professionals can get the answers they need simply by typing a query like "What drives revenue?" into the Watson Analytics prediction engine.

"What we're doing is enabling a greater amount of people across organizations to get involved and to be analytic in their decision-making," Hearne says, "without having to rely on bottlenecks that exist in these analytics centers of excellence that a lot of organizations have built."

Start using Watson Analytics to analyze your data (sports or otherwise) here.

This post is sponsored by IBM.

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