This past Friday and Saturday, the Boston Expo Center hosted The Fifth Annual M.I.T. Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC). ESPN’s Bill “Sports Guy” Simmon’s dubbed the event Dorkapalooza in 2009 and surprisingly the community seemed to embrace this moniker.  While the yearly conference has evolved in attendance and attention, its core mission has remained the same as stated in this January 17, 2007 conference press release

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., January 17, 2007 — The first ever MIT Sloan Sports Business Conference will bring together leading sports industry executives from major U.S. professional leagues, academics and MBAs to explore the increasing role of analytics in the sports industry.

“This conference will bring together for the first time sports industry leaders from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL who are integrating an analytical approach into their personnel decisions and business operations,” says conference co-chair Daryl Morey, MIT Sloan MBA ’00 and a former instructor of the popular Analytical Sports Management Course at MIT Sloan. “In the sports industry, competitive advantage is critical. Our goal is to provide a unique opportunity to meet and learn from top sports industry leaders who are creating advantage by using these methods.”

Fast-forward 5 years and they’ve accomplished the following:

• 5 Straight Years of Sold Out Registrations – 1500 people attended this year with a wait list of 400 plus 500 viewers on the live webcast feed.

• Still Student Run – from a handful of volunteers to a student army of 40+ in 2011

• Social Media Savvy – The #SSAC hashtag reached No. 10 globally as a trending topic on Twitter

• Marquis Sponsors – ESPN, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and Titleist were among the 15 2011 sponsors

• Expansion – The conference has expanded to two days and has grown from 14 to 21 panels.  They’ve also added a Business Case Competition (First Pitch), and Trade Show.

Like any successful endeavor, the conference takes its direction from it 2 co-founders Jessica Gelman & Daryl Morey.  Jessica Gelman is the The Kraft Sports Group’s Vice President of Customer Marketing & Strategy. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in psychology from Harvard College and was honored as Harvard Female Athlete of the Year after leading Harvard to consecutive Ivy League Basketball Championships and NCAA Tournament appearances.  Basically, she’ll beat you on the court with a killer jump shot and off with her HBS MBA.

Daryl “Moreyball” Morey is currently the Head of Basketball Operations for the NBA’s Houston Rockets after serving for three years as the SVP Operations for the Boston Celtics.   He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science with an emphasis on statistics from Northwestern University, as well as an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Morey also served as the professor for the MIT Sloan class, “Analytical Sports Management.”  (a class that essentially evolved into the conference).  Daryl’s extremely bright and has a disarming sense of humor – think Bill Simmons with a degree from MIT.

While they both are clearly educated and accomplished individuals, their success has been built on great teams.  They’ve created a model where students, stat geeks and existing sports execs intermingle and learn from each other.

One additional key to the success of the program is that they consistently provide outstanding, quality content.  Starting with great speakers, this year’s conference had Wyc Grousbeck, Mark Cuban, Malcolm Gladwell, Apolo Ohno, Jonathan Kraft & countless others (see full list here).  Marquis names are great but how they are used is another story.  The 2011 panels ranged from Birth to Stardom: Developing the Modern Athlete in 10,000 hours.  In this Malcolm Gladwell-moderated panel, they discussed the modern athlete and debated the age-old question of nature vs. nurture. Do our stars have innate, natural ability, or are they developed due to the combination of training, early identification, and almost obsessive focus on performance?  My favorite quote from panel: “A lot of what we call talent is the desire to practice.” –Malcolm Gladwell.   You can checkout all of the panels here

Overall, this conference has evolved from a handful of pure stat geeks in a classroom talking in code to a can’t miss event for anyone working in Sports or looking to.

As it was a stats conference, I’ll leave you with 10 of my favorite stats from the conference:

1. Ticketmaster Analytics – if you went to a Jay-Z concert, you are 4x more likely to go to an NBA game. Kid Rock skewed to NASCAR
2. 70% of attendees text while at a game, 52% check scores, 34% share on Facebook, 10% tweet.
3. Top sports leagues on Facebook (by # of pages): NBA (7.6M), NFL (2.6M), NHL (1.4M), MLB (280K)
4. Sports stadiums & arenas No. 2 place checked in on Facebook after airports
5. Scoring the first goal in the #premiership guarantees win or draw 90% of the time ! Wow ! #socceranalytics
6. Pats spent $70M in enhancing the roads around Gillette stadium
7. Only 3% of NFL fans have actually attended an NFL game in person
8. “Soft, selfish or stupid. You can be one of these things, but you can’t be two.” – Jeff Van Gundy
9. Statistically it makes sense to cheat & take NCAA sanctions. Win % .562 before penalty, .508 during, .542 after penalties end.
10. If you add up his 3Bs and HRs Carl Crawford is clearing the bases 30 times a year, we take that very seriously.

You can learn more about the M.I.T. Sloan Sports Analytics Conference here and follow them on Twitter @SloanSportsConf