BOSTON (AP) — Long before Jessica Gelman dated everyone from professional sports executives to former President Barack Obama, she was a college basketball player and a psychology student at Harvard trying to identify the qualities of athletes who performed well under pressure.
“I believe the reason so many of us love sports is because in many cases it exceeds our expectations of what people can do,” Gelman said. “It’s the attempt to understand the seemingly unexplainable.”
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Over the past three decades, Gelman has been doing just that and more, as she transformed her passion for sports and data into one of the top voices in the sports analytics industry.
She’s celebrating her 10th anniversary as CEO of Kraft Analytics Group and next week will host the 20th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which she co-founded in 2006 with Philadelphia 76ers president Daryl Morey.
The gathering has grown from an idea while they were in class together, to a small workshop for a few hundred people, to this year’s annual conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, bringing together 2,500 people from 42 states, 31 countries, 130 academic institutions, 80 teams and sports leagues.
“That’s exactly what I thought. It’s ironic,” Gelman said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine sports analytics would become what it is now, but this is a unique time where technology continues to advance and the rapid growth of people, data and the amount of data available becomes more accessible.”
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Gelman calls Morey a “complementary yin and yang,” and she feels like they are like the captains of a ship setting sail.
“We never thought it would come to this,” Morey said. “We just caught the tiger by its tail as it took off.”
All the digital data in the world is believed to double every two years, making the annual rally even more important in the digitally driven world of sport.
“There was interest, there was attraction, there was understanding, and we were having all these conversations in the middle of a snowstorm in Boston. So I think we’re on to something,” Gelman said.
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The conference has been able to attract avid data analysts as well as voices in tech, sports business and entertainment because Gelman said it has worked hard to curate a list of speakers and panels around current topics and issues facing the industry.
While discussions about diversity in sports dominated the headlines and airwaves in 2022, there were multiple sessions on diversity, equity and inclusion, from discussing the NFL’s Rooney Rule to discussing transgender athletes.
This year’s line-up features a panel titled “Fierce Bash,” which will celebrate LGBT+ inclusion in sports and feature Harrison Browne, the first openly transgender professional hockey player.
Other events include a one-on-one discussion between Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer and WNBA superstar Sue Bird and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, as well as a panel discussion surrounding the rise of prediction markets, which are currently embroiled in court challenges regarding their ability to be regulated like legal sports betting. The panel will feature Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins will also participate in a separate session.
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The two-day conference also serves as a venue for companies in the sports industry to recruit future employees among MIT Sloan School of Management students to help plan and run the conference.
Business leaders such as Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin use the event to network and recruit.
Evan Wasch, NBA executive vice president of strategy and development and a former MIT Sloan School of Management student, will participate in a panel discussing how artificial intelligence can reshape officiating in professional sports. Other former student leaders and MIT Sloan graduates returning as panelists include Allison Katz-Mayfield, who currently leads ticketing, hospitality and beverage strategy for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“People have been touched by this conference throughout their careers, so I think they also want to be a part of coming back and giving back,” Gelman said.
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As for keeping the conference fresh and relevant, Morey said it’s more about staying true to its origins.
“I think we’ve stopped having this framework of trying to get ahead of ourselves. I think once we beat Obama (in 2018) we felt like, unless you get Taylor Swift or the Pope, it’s going to be difficult,” Morey said. “We don’t want to be a conference that feels stale every time we come. So I think that’s something we focus on every year, and that’s how we stay true to its geeky roots.”
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