Episode 014 features Dr. Howard Hamilton from Soccermetrics Research chatting with Dave about the most valuable data analysis metrics available in the round ball game. Dr. Hamilton is a former aerospace engineer who uses his mathematical ability to view sports data in a way that few others can. In this episode they chat about the past, present, and future of Soccer analysis.

Punting Insights You'll Find

How to break soccer down into an actionable set of data.

Which stats to look at to get a supreme advantage.

The most valuable high-level measurements of a defensive player.

Dr. Hamilton's biggest recommended change to the soccer analysis industry.

How to identify promising players that most people overlook.

A crystal ball view into the future of soccer betting.

Today's Guest:

Dr. Howard Hamilton - Soccermetrics Research

Dr. Hamilton's Closing Tip:

" Any innovation that happens in football analytics will happen outside of the football clubs. "

Get the Transcript:

Episode 014: Dave Chats About Soccer Data Analysis With Dr. Howard Hamilton

Welcome to Betting 360, your number one source for horse racing and sports betting insights. Coming around the bend is your host David Duffield, with another expert view to give you the winning edge.

David: Hi this is David Duffield and welcome to another edition of the Betting 360 Podcast. Our special guest today is Dr Howard Hamilton. He’s the founder and the CEO of Soccermetrics Research, that’s Soccermetrics.net. And we’ve looked at, or we know about the growth of analytics across all the different sports, and also just the increased importance of analysis of data in horse racing as well. So I wanted to get his take on the boom of analytics in soccer, because it’s such a fluid game, it’s such a complex game, and also such a low scoring one. So it’s important to find out how data can be used and to get some insights and from our perspective if there’s any betting pointers. To see undervalued players, undervalued teams, and really narrow down on that, so let’s have a chat with Dr Howard Hamilton.

Thanks very much for joining us today Howard.

Howard: Hi Dave. Thanks for having me on and hello to everyone else in Australia.

David: Yeah looking forward to having a chat. Certainly a different perspective to a lot of what we cover. So just to get started, what motivated you to move from being an aerospace engineer through to football analytics?

Howard: Well, football’s always been an interest of mine. I’ve had a couple of sites on soccer in North America. And I had always come to football with an analytical view, come to sport in general with an analytical view. And I took a look at what passed for statistical analysis in football, and I thought it was very primitive at the time. And I had my own ideas given my background as an aerospace engineer, and software programming, mathematical modelling, things like that. And I think the issue with doing analysis in sports and other areas, is that if you think of the problem and how to set it up, you can express the problem in the language of mathematics. And I was more comfortable, I was a lot more comfortable in that world than a lot of other people in the football analytics space. I thought had something to contribute, and that’s how Soccermetrics got started.

David: You guys over there have the same battle as us in Australia. That ‘football’ to us is often Australian Rules or Rugby League, football to many in America is NFL, but it’s that interchangeable term soccer versus football.

Howard: Yeah. It’s an interesting question, when I started Soccermetrics, Soccermetrics is a contraction of Soccersabermetrics. I could use the word Sabermetrics because it’s specific to baseball. But there is some relationship, there is some relationship to that. I think Soccermetrics, the word Soccermetrics, just reflects the fact that a lot of these statistical analysis that happens in sport,