The application of statistical methods and models for the analysis of sports data has aroused considerable and increasing interest in recent times, as documented by the extensive scientific production on the subject and the publication of statistical analyses applied to data from multiple sports, including football, basketball, volleyball, baseball, tennis, swimming, and many others.
Due to the increasing availability of data and computing power, the research questions that Statistics can answer are increasingly numerous and diverse, for example: forecasting the outcome of a match or a championship, evaluating the factors that determine the success of athletes or teams, analysing sports performance, exploring the athletes’ movements, trajectories and tactics, defining optimal game strategies, evaluating psychological, physiological, physical traits and their association with sports performance.
The range of methods and models used in the literature to achieve these objectives is very wide, covering the areas of statistical and algorithmic modelling, multivariate analysis, data mining, machine learning and, in general, data science.
The activities of the “Sport” thematic area of the SIS-SVQS group are carried out jointly with the initiatives of the project “Big Data analytics in sports” (BDsports, https://bodai.unibs.it/bdsports/) of the Big&Open Data Innovation Laboratory of the University of Brescia and of the Special Interest Group on Sports Statistics of the International Statistical Institute (https://www.isi-web.org/isi-community/committees/sports-statistics).
– Session “Statistics in Sports” (organized by M. Manisera and P. Zuccolotto, bdsports.unibs.it) at the 6th International Conference on Econometrics and Statistics (EcoSta 2023), Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, 1-3 August 2023 (http://www.cmstatistics.org/EcoSta2023/organized.php).
– Sessions “Statistics in Sports” and “Statistics in Football”  (organized by M. Manisera and R. Metulini, bdsports.unibs.it) at the IES2023 Conference – Statistical Methods for Evaluation and Quality: Techniques, Technologies, and Trends (T3), 11th Scientific Meeting of the SIS Group “Statistics for the Evaluation and Quality in Services”, University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 30 August, 2023 (https://meetings3.sis-statistica.org/index.php/IES2023/IES2023).