Why the U.S. is a Great Place to Study & Work in Sports Analytics

Updated: November 10, 2022

The Dream that Never Fades

When we grow older we realize that some of our dreams will never become reality. The love never goes away; it just looks a little different. For Kshaunish Kapoor, sports was always the focus, whether he was a child at home mesmerized by cricket and soccer players he admired or the young adult with a talent for basketball who saw his dream to play professional sports come true. Even his dreams reached their limits.

When there was no reasonable avenue for Kshaun to continue as an athlete, a change of perspective opened a world of possibility. While Kshaun took his athletic career as far as he could, his career in sports was just starting.

The World of Sports Analytics

“The sports industry in the United States is the most commercial, the most developed, the most structured and systematic. And just thinking of getting involved in that space was the reason behind me deciding to get a degree in the U.S. and study in the U.S.”

Data is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. As Kshaun himself put it, “All businesses want to make decisions that reduce the element of risk and increase the element of success.” Sports analytics is a relatively new field, but it’s one that’s important on both the commercial and performance sides of sports.

At Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where Kshaun is currently working on his Master’s in Applied Data Science with a specialization in Sports Analytics, he’s learning the hard skills needed to be an analyst with the supplementary knowledge to apply his skills in sports.

Sports analytics uses data to understand correlations, many of which lead to new marketing tactics, improved player performance, and even the prevention of injuries. In the U.S., sport is big business, so using data analytics is the pathway to reducing risk and increasing success. There are few places better to start a sports analytics career.

“There’s so much opportunity to get involved, whether that’s through volunteering or internships or even just attending matches and seeing the scale at which they operate.”