The NBA will host its first ever ‘hackathon’ for undergraduate and graduate students. They will host a full day event that will center around teams of college students analyzing provided data sets to discover new trends and discovery’s within the NBA’s growing market. According to a phone conversation Ian Levy of Fansided had with NBA’s Director of Basketball Analytics, Jason Rosenfeld, Levy found out that this program is being used by the NBA as a way to integrate their fans ideas into their programs:
“Our fans continue to show an increasing level of interest in data and analytics which provides a level of engagement. We think that by bringing together some of the most talented young minds for a full day to build tools and develop solutions in the field of basketball analytics, we can continue to innovate, which is something that the NBA has embraced for a very long time.”
“We don’t want to reveal the question but it’s going to be around a hot topic in the league, the type of thing that the league office and teams would want to know,” said Rosenfeld.
Rosenfeld was clear that the hope was to see something new in the first run of this event, saying, “Through taking a unique and fresh look at the analytics we hope the results ultimately shed light on new ways to approach our game.”
Another way the NBA has began to grow and globalize its market. The NBA is arguably one of the best professional sports organizations at integrating their marketing and analytics with their fans, and they are showing it with the Hackathon.
If you are looking to apply to the program and the full day event, you can apply here.
