Are analytics making pro sports less fun?

Today, sports analytics discussions from the 2011 movie “Moneyball” often seem quaint. The idea of a team using data to find players who may be more valuable than meets the eye (and less expensive) no longer surprises anyone.

“The numbers have won in terms of how sports are trained, practiced, and taught,” said Alex Speier ’98, a Boston Globe sports reporter and author of “Homegrown: How The Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up.” “The number of people who are employed as analysts in sports has exploded.”

One study from MIT found that just 10 data analysts worked across the NBA in 2009. By 2023, there were 132. That same year, the MLB considered limiting how much teams could spend on areas like analytics, in part to ensure competitive equity between more and less wealthy franchises.

That professional sports teams have embraced data analysis is clear. There is less agreement over whether these analytics have made the games more entertaining.

For some the answer is yes. Stat-oriented fans can now find podcasts, or entire alternative broadcasts, devoted to numbers-heavy analysis.

At the same time, some fans, coaches, players, and broadcasters, like Hall of Fame basketball player Charles Barkley, bemoan the role of analytics in the modern game. “That’s why the league sucks,” he said about the widespread increase in three-point shots, which Barkley thinks undercuts the role of play strategy and spontaneity. “I hate analytics.”

In his undergraduate course “Sports Economics,” lecturer Judd Cramer discusses the relationship between analytics and entertainment as a potential principal-agent problem.

“If I own 30 McDonald’s franchises and one of them figures out a new way to make french fries better, I’m super happy,” he said. “But if I’m the MLB and I find out the Rays are trying to get hit by more pitches to score more runs, that’s not good for the league as a whole.”

The same goes for any league. The success of prolific shooting teams like the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets led to leaguewide imitation. (Teams today shoot more than twice the number of three-pointers as 20 years ago.) In baseball, teams prioritize extremely fast pitching and home-run-or-bust batting, leading to more strikeouts and home runs but fewer triples and “finesse” pitchers without explosive power.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred agreed with a league owner who said analytics were a “race to nowhere” and has approved rules aimed at making the game more fast-paced and exciting for fans. The MLB pitch clock has cut around half an hour of idle time per game. The league also increased the size of the bases to encourage more stolen bases.

But while many think teams’ statistical orientation makes games less fun to watch, that reputation may not be fully deserved. As the experts point out, analytics often lead to more scoring.

“More scoring, generally speaking, is more exciting,” said Kevin Rader, a senior preceptor in statistics who has taught “Introduction to Data Science for Sports Analytics.” NFL teams throw much more than they did decades ago. Teams are much likelier to go for it on fourth down, risking a turnover to maintain possession of the ball.

Critics focus on the ubiquity of three-point shots in the NBA game, but the current playing style is also much faster than in decades previous — with more possessions, more passing, and more player movement on offense and defense.

Cramer said that while the analytics departments of individual teams draw ire overall, organizations are mindful of the importance of fan experience. “I think the leagues are now better equipped to figure out what’s bad for the league and clamp down on it,” he said.

The pushback is sometimes successful. With a new rule, the NBA killed a deliberate fouling strategy that stopped fast breaks. Other battles remain undecided, like the NBA’s ongoing struggle to discourage stars from spending too much time sitting out to reduce fatigue and avoid injuries.

And while analytics are often criticized for inspiring stylistic hegemony, that’s not their inevitable outcome. Rader pointed out that when teams approach the game with the same style, it often becomes advantageous to pursue a counterintuitive one.

When most NFL teams shift resources to pass and defend the pass, others have leaned toward running and signing bigger instead of faster players.

“Now, there’s an opening for that diametrically opposed style,” he said.

He also said that there’s a much bigger gray area in analytics than telecasts portray. Certain situations might present two options that are practically a coin flip, like deciding between a long field goal and a short-yardage fourth-down attempt.

After a decision, an announcer might say the analytics supported it. “I think that’s where I get frustrated,” Rader said, “when they make it so cut and dried, black and white.”

For all of the statistics used in professional leagues, many major contributors to success remain difficult to quantify.

Teams are increasingly tracking factors like sleep quality to help athletes avoid injuries, to mixed results. Certain softer factors, like team chemistry — often cited as a reason behind the New York Knicks’ 2025-26 title — are hard to quantify. Rader said analytics are likely headed toward these softer measurements.

Cramer noted that while people complain about rule changes, like one making football kickoffs safer, they generally keep watching. Interest in sports seems to rise each year, along with team valuations.

Speier likes to think of modern discussions of analytics in a historical context. He pointed out that baseball articles from the 1910s reported players bemoaning the rise of home runs and the loss of skill required.

“I think that sports always evolve,” he said, “and it’s a question of what forces push that evolution.”