For any baseball team, making the World Series is a pretty dependable way to boost revenue. But when the Boston Red Sox seemed a long fly ball from this goal, the team still had something else going for it other than slugger David Ortiz: big data analytics.
The Sox have implemented several cloud-based technologies from providers such as Host Analytics, MicroStrategy and Microsoft Dynamics to slice and dice data on ticket sales, as well as revenue from merchandise, food and parking. The tools also help the company reduce expenses, by pinpointing how many ticket takers, ushers and security personnel it will need for a particular game or game series, based on past experience.The World Series champs access voluminous structured and unstructured game data on the weather, the opposing team, the day and time of the week and various pre-game promotions. Algorithms let then the team forecast how best to allocate resources based on expected fluctuations in demand.