When Argentina and France squared off in the football World Cup final, they had one secret weapon in common: both were wearing data and analytics technology provided by Melbourne-based Catapult Sports. Catapult is now one of the world’s largest sports technology companies, with revenues exceeding $100 million and growing quickly. More than 3,000 teams in over 100 countries rely on Catapult’s data and analytics software to keep players fit and healthy, maximize performance, drive tactical decision-making, and ultimately win championships.

The competitive advantage has become so great that often entire leagues adopt Catapult, including the NFL in America, as well as the AFL and NRL locally. It’s also a fixture in the English Premier League, NBA basketball, Formula One racing, and dozens of other sports. Even tennis great Andy Murray swears by it.

The smartest businesses are now learning how to maximize the value of analytics from pro sports and adapting these winning techniques to their own organizations. Whether winning a championship or market share, identifying the right data to capture, and then extracting the most valuable, actionable insights is the key to victory.

• How and why data become so central to elite sports
• Teams use different modalities to maximize performance (eg: AFL)
• Integrating data streams drives almost magical insights
• New data can reveal unexpected competitive advantages (eg: NFL)
• Using data to tell an engaging narrative (eg: NRL/Ch9)
• Fun and interesting discoveries and their impact on teams/athletes