Swish Analytics New NBA Injury Feed For Fantasy Sports, Betting, Fans and Writers
Swish Analytics launched NBA Injury Feed this week, a software-driven sports technology solution designed to use predictive algorithms and beat writer’s social feedback calculated together to let fantasy basketball players, hoops fans, writers and bettors know the daily reporting injury status of each player. The Sports Techie community blog chatted almost a year ago with co-founder, Bobby Skoff. This time we learned about their newest NBA sports tech tool, the Optimus X lineup daily fantasy projection model and the soon to be released, MLB Predictions, Analytics and Injuries product available by May 1. The injury feed is a first of its kind tool that lets users know if a player is going to play, crucial information for successful fantasy drafting and team roster management, betting and smack talking with your friends over social media and texts.
NBA Injury Feed:
An all-encompassing NBA injury reporting tool. This application solves the daily reporting frenzy of NBA injuries for writers, fans, fantasy players, and sports bettors with natural language processing and machine learning logic.
NBA OPTIMUS X:
OPTIMUS X builds optimized daily fantasy lineups to a user’s exact specifications by leveraging our Daily Fantasy projection models in a customizable interactive tool.
Lead Engineers: Ryan Whiley & Bobby Skoff.
MLB Predictions/Analytics/Injuries Coming Soon!
NBA Injury Feed
Swish Analytics saw a need to fill regarding updated injury statuses for NBA players so they set to develop a real-time feed that compiles information from a curated list of reliable sources across Twitter, RotoWorld and RotoWire. Twitter is considered the timeliest resource however it can also be a source of misinformation.
As a result, not everything is completely automated yet, a small operations team identifies where something goes wrong such as the syntax within a tweet so their job is to manually correct it and enter the correct data into the model. If a tweet mentions that LeBron is out on a shoot around before game time, the product may read the word “out” as meaning he will not play rather than “out” on the court.
Understanding the different injury statuses and Swish consensus derived from the three sources will give you a leg up on fantasy competitors, odds makers and friendly wagers. Much like the NFL and other sport leagues, every injury status is assigned a chance to play percentage. The terms and percentages are as follows: starting (95%), probable (75%), game-time decision (60%), questionable (50%), day-to-day (40%), doubtful (25%), out (5%), and out for season (0%).
By using smarter aggregation such as a time stamp, the percentage of dependable info by people or teams, added together with their frequency of posting, a percentage to play number is calculated. Other factors may ultimately cause the information to be weighted different like the historical return from injury timeframe but for the most part much of the metrics depend on a sources’ Twitter track record.
In hindsight, OKC Head Coach Scott Brooks is notorious for stating inaccurate injury statuses. Spurs Head Coach Popovich will sit every starter from time-to-time in order to rest his veterans and keep their legs fresh for the long playoffs. Don’t get caught starting LeBron James, Keven Durant or Tim Duncan when all you have to do is use the Swish injury feed for the latest details and projections as to who is in or out.
The tech is currently in a BETA test mode phase due to natural language processing problems such as Paul George and George Hill both playing for the Pacers. Once in a while the software intelligence will get confused as to which persons’ status is being talked about since they both have George in their name. The more the models are trained to know the difference, the less chance errors will occur.
The machine learning logic will at times confuse Twitter sources due to random word association confusion leading to incorrect decisions. One way to fix this is to allow users that are willing to correct the status of a player to become a viral content source. The 2.0 version will use human crowdsourcing to produce more accurate and automated data that is people empowered.
The workflow of fantasy sports team owner’s and gamblers just got easier because the page updates automatically every 30 seconds with no need to ever refresh it. The page can be left open all day if wanted so the newest tweets and information are delivered when you need the data. Simply click on a player row for details such as injury info or tweets, the exact time an update last occurred, and the likelihood of getting onto the court that night.
Skoff said, “It is a one-stop tool for the most accurate and timely information about every player in one cohesive and easy-to-navigate location.” As the technology matures, look for improved initial reporting accuracy and status projections.
Optimus X
This robust NBA injury reporting tool is a daily fantasy must use product as a lineup optimization tool. OPTIMUS X builds the best lineups according to a user’s exact specifications. The Daily Fantasy projection models are easy to use and customize to match your needs. This interactive tool helps you lower to risk when deciding who to draft, what players to start, trade for or pick up as a free agent.
MLB
The MLB Bet Recommendation Tool is being tested nonstop and filled with stats of past seasons and a substantial amount of data sets. Look for this MLB predictions tool to be onsite by May 1.
Baseball has many old school bettors that are not convinced that Moneyball data analytics are the difference maker they are made out to be after the movie was released. Swish has 12 engineers calculating arbitrary mathematical formulas that impact baseball.
Knowing starting rotations, batting lineups two hours before the first pitch, and rookies or sleepers who will make an impact is fantasy and betting gold. Mining the newest save and stolen base producers are the kind of competitive edge data you can expect from this new product. Recovery from injuries like tommy john surgery is the kind of long-term injury tracking they will offer that might win you money. Pitch location, arm angle and ballpark effects factors are the types of quantifiable results that fantasy owners need to know. An all-star catcher like the Giants Buster Posey may take off a game per week so you need to know when that happens and who his backup is especially in daily fantasy gaming. Accurately projecting a 5th starters’ numbers might be the ticket to winning it all.
Other Sports
College Football and Basketball are massive business opportunities for Swish, even though gambling is illegal across the U.S. although the state of New Jersey is presently involved in litigation that should they win, will allow sports bets to happen over the web. The amount of money bet on March Madness and bowl games is so significant, as are the millions of bracket contests; Skoff will concentrate company resources on these two industries next.
As far as hockey, the NHL is just beginning to integrate analytics and player tracking technology so look for a product in the next 8-12 months. Internationally, betting on soccer, golf and tennis in Europe is so popular that Swish has them all in the development pipeline.
Horse racing, MMA, and the WNBA are a longer ways out, it depends on the availability and accuracy of data to make is so. Horse betting is actually the only legal sport to bet on in America.
App
Look for an iOS App launch by the next NFL season available at the App Store. Although the finished layout and functionality are under development, a piece of Optimus X will certainly be part of the first rendition. Since their code is written is HTML 5 , it makes things easy for the engineering team to import to other platforms paralleling the apps’ look and feel to the design of site ensuring it is mobile friendly.
Sports Techie, Skoff recommends checking each player’s timeline to verify a specific status. It is up to users to make rational judgments when trying to interpret new updates/tweets, especially when different sources are reporting conflicting information.
I asked Bobby about Super Bowl 49 and how Swish Analytics fared. The Patriot ended up as a successful bet over the Seahawks, even though they were an underdog at first, by kickoff it was nearly an even line. Skoff shared that NFL turnovers make betting a fairly high risk event. The Swish injury tool is not ready for the NFL but plans are for it to be ready in time for the 2015 season if not before then because people need it to help with critical draft decisions.
The sports tech company is focused on servicing daily fantasy players and companies like FanDual and DraftKings with NFL and NBA betting prediction tools. Optimized MLB tools are releasing soon. ESPN, CBS Sports and Fox Sports do not yet offer the same kind of tools that aggregate like Swish products do.
The Swish website has no advertising and relies on organic growth via traffic and a growing user base. The amount of crazy marketing conducted by daily fantasy companies are driving the cost of player acquisition to super high levels so Skoff wants to instead concentrate efforts on building quality products. Next up is a Series A round of financing. With the added money they raise the plan is to enter more sports, create powerful tools and a new app.
Much of the betting space betting is still relatively low tech frequented by non techies. His team of data scientists and engineers are media fans that are passionate believers in sport so building tools, correct models and breaking down data into highly accurate tools is what they do best. This is why Swish hired MLB centric Whiley to engineer the newest products.
I wanted to know if there was a time during the day when a user spike occurred. Skoff answered that high traffic times for the NBA happen between 12 noon and 6 pm PST because most people are visiting the site after work to set lineups for the 7:00 to 7:30 pm EST tip offs. The NFL peaks at 7 and 10 am PST.
The Bottom line is to take in the Vegas lines and see if they are advantageous if you decide to bet. The NBA, NFL and MLB line are always a risk to take on, so make it a small, 35% risk and let Swish Analytics help fans like you win in the future.
See y’all later in Seattle and here in Atlanta.
Sports Techie Social Media Networks
Newest
Sports Techie SportsBlog.com: http://www.sportsblog.com/profile/SportsTechie
Sports Techie Skyword: http://robertroble.skyword.com/
Sports Techie Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user36773456
Sports Techie FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/sportstechienet
Established
Sports Techie Skype: sportstechie
Sports Techie Twitter: @SportsTechieNET: http://twitter.com/SportsTechieNET
THE #SportsTechie Twitter: @THESportsTechie: https://twitter.com/THESportsTechie
Sports Techie Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/SportsTechie
Sports Techie YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sportstechie
Sports Techie Google+: http://gplus.to/SportsTechie Sports Techie Google+ Community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103708211458464405078
Sports Techie (Robert Roble) Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RobertRoble
Sports Techie LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Sports-Techie-2958439
Sports Techie LinkedIn (Robert Roble): https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertroble
Sports Techie Instagram: http://instagram.com/sportstechie
Sports Techie Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/SportsTechie/
Sports Techie Moby Picture: http://www.mobypicture.com/user/sportstechieNET
Sports Techie Myspace (Bob Roble): http://www.myspace.com/549000677
Sports Techie Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86791607@N04/
Sports Techie Vine: https://vine.co/u/906354614369136640
Sports Techie Quora: https://www.quora.com/Bob-Roble
AND
Sports Techie Guy: https://twitter.com/sportstechieguy