What Rugby Can Teach Us About the Power of Data

The data revolution goes beyond sports. Global big data market revenue was valued at $163.5 billion in 2021, with expected growth to $473.6 billion by 2030, according to a report from Acumen Research. The industry with the biggest share of the market is financial services.

That growth trend is reflected in market data growth at CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace. In recent years, as the firm’s ability to collect, store and distribute data expanded, market data consumption and analysis from its clients grew along with the variety of clients needing data.

One of the biggest areas of growth has come from the cloud. In November 2021, CME Group and Google Cloud announced a 10-year strategic partnership to accelerate the move to the cloud and transform how global derivatives markets operate with technology.

“There has especially been an increased interest in our cloud native distribution of data via the Google Cloud Platform,” said Trey Berre, Managing Director and Global Head of Data Services at CME Group. “While many firms today are just beginning to set down the path of the cloud adoption journey, some have established themselves as almost entirely cloud native.”

Visitors to the CME Group Datamine hub have grown to more than 500,000 visits per year from over 160 countries. More than 11,000 users access the firm’s historical data each year.

“We have lots of different data types our customers want,” said David Gresky, Senior Director and Global Head of Data Sales at CME Group.  “It’s kind of like the weather. One person might just want to know the current temperature. Someone else might want the know relative humidity. It’s the same thing with the markets.”

Lee said Saracens’ data analytics efforts are applied in three primary areas: recruitment, opposition analysis and the team's analysis. The team aggregates data and tracks around 900 different metrics on every player in the league, information that can be applied to scouting and recruiting (one might infer that data analytics has been good for Saracens, which was 13-2 and sitting atop the Premiership Rugby standings as of early March).

“Our system allows me to look at the player performances match-by-match and apply various statistical analyses to understand their opposition's behavior,” Lee said. “We produce graphs, performance profiles and other visual representations that illustrate our team's performance based on certain metrics and compare that to league averages. I can put together a bullet-point narrative of the key themes. Where do we rank highly? Where do we rank poorly?”

Among in-game examples where analytics is applied, after the two teams line up, Lee tracks “gainline momentum,” or how much ball carriers are gaining past the line. There’s also “speed of ball” and certain efficiency metrics that indicate how effective a team’s attack is. Data collected on “rucks” (formed when at least one player from each team are in contact, on their feet and over the ball on the ground) “helps us determine how quickly we respond, bounce back into the game, cause turnovers and exert line speed.”

Access to more and more data can be a valuable resource, but Lee noted that it’s not just a quest for quantity – quality matters. Used properly, data should “tell a story” humans can understand and apply toward real-world action, whether the subject is a rugby team or the financial markets.

“Data is nothing without context,” Lee said. “It's a little bit like Sherlock Holmes collecting clues. You find one bit of data, then you find another bit that's related to the first one, and then another, and then you can start telling a story.”