Sports knowledge management and data mining

Introduction Vast amounts of sports data are routinely collected about players, coaching decisions and game events. Making sense of this data is important to those seeking an edge. By transforming this data into actionable knowledge, scouts, managers and coaches can have a better idea of what to expect from opponents and be able to use a player draft more effectively. With millions of dollars riding on the many decisions made within a sports franchise (Lewis, 2003), the sports environment is ideal for data mining and knowledge management approaches. While the application these approaches to the sports environment may be unique and the focus of this chapter, the topics of data mining and knowledge management should certainly be well known to the reader and form the basis of the approaches we discuss.