basketball | OSMGuy Sports Data Visualization

Can You Beat My Quarter’s March Madness Picks?

Posted by Ryan Sleeper
/ March 15, 2012

March Madness is back! It’s that time of year when the so-called experts add to their growing library of evidence that proves they don’t know much more than we do. A time when office bracketology guy loses the office pool to women that have never watched an entire game of basketball in their lives.

While perhaps the least effective way of determining the best team in the sport, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship tournament sure is fun. To prove the randomness of the competition, last year we flipped a quarter to determine how a coin would fare picking games after round one. Last year, the quarter tied me and was in the 93rd percentile of brackets nationwide.

This year, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and actually entered a bracket picked by one of my quarters - a 1990-issued quarter to be exact; the same year the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels defeated Duke for the title. Here’s how it worked....
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Facebook Engagement Rates of the World’s Most Popular Sports Teams

Posted by Ryan Sleeper
/ December 12, 2011

This week, the Los Angeles Lakers became the first North American sports franchise to reach 11 million fans on Facebook. The accomplishment makes the Lakers fourth in the world in terms of Facebook popularity for sports teams, behind the European football clubs FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Manchester United; each of which have roughly twice as many Facebook fans as the Lakers.

Number of Facebook fans / likes has long been the standard for which most sports teams, and other business entities, measure their success on the social networking site. In recent months however, savvy online sports marketers have been using additional key performance indicators to measure the pulse of their audiences. Facebook is constantly changing how content is delivered to users, and like it or not, messages from business pages are often never delivered to a fan’s feed at all. In the case of FC Barcelona, what good are 23 million+ fans if you do not know how those fans are consuming and engaging with your brand?

When you look at how many people are talking about each sports team compared to how many likes they have accumulated, and the rate at which their fans are talking about them (mentions divided by the number of fans), a much different picture of who the most popular sports team on Facebook is emerges....
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142 Million Reasons The NBA Is Not Fixed

Posted by Ryan Sleeper
/ June 12, 2011

The NBA has gained a reputation in recent years as being the closest thing we have in the United States to a fixed league. The accusations actually date back to 1985, when many argued that the first NBA Lottery was fixed in favor of the New York Knicks getting to draft Patrick Ewing out of Georgetown. If you watched Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals between the Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers, you know that the NBA has fixed games in the past. Claims from Tim Donaghy that the NBA regularly fixes high profile games, including the aforementioned between the Kings and Lakers, were substantiated by an FBI investigation.

Earlier this year, we argued right here at Online Sports Marketing Guy that the 2011 NBA Slam Dunk Competition was fixed so that Blake Griffin could film his Kia Optima commercial in the final round. I stand by that position, and it is a constant reminder that even if they never do, the NBA does have the ability, and the willingness, to fix contests.

However, today I am here to offer 142 million reasons the NBA is not fixed....
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NBA Conference Finals Star Power Breakdown

Posted by Ryan Sleeper
/ May 17, 2011

A couple of months ago, I discussed how the NBA is devolving into MLB. Now that we have reached the NBA’s version of the “Final Four”, I thought it would be interesting to breakdown the star power of the team’s playing in the NBA Conference Finals. This data can be used to support or dispute my fear that competitive balance is slipping in the NBA.

Everybody compares the newly formed Miami Heat to the New York Yankees as basketball’s version of a traveling all-star team. Could there possibly be a team left in the playoffs with as much star power as a team with Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh?
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The NBA: Where Not Seeing Playoff Games on NBA TV Happens

Posted by Ryan Sleeper
/ April 30, 2011

Showing playoff games on a niche network, much less elimination basketball, is simply bush league. In a time when the NBA is poised to make huge strides on the king of American sports while they squabble over how to divide their success, David Stern and company completely drop the roundball. All the NBA had to do was put the most competitively balanced playoffs I can ever remember on display for all of the country to see, but instead, they put them on NBA TV.
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Can You Beat My Quarter’s March Madness Picks?

142 Million Reasons The NBA Is Not Fixed

NBA Conference Finals Star Power Breakdown

The NBA: Where Not Seeing Playoff Games on NBA TV Happens

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