Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player & Henry Chadwick
January 17, 1861

In Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player (1861) it is stated that, ‘in order to obtain an accurate estimate of a player’s skill, an analysis, both of his play at the bat and in the field, should be made, inclusive of the way in which he was put out’. Further to…
Read moreLawn Tennis Manual – Hints for Scoring
January 17, 1885

In the Lawn Tennis Manual (1885), in a section entitled ‘Hints for Scoring’, the writer advocates the use of a detailed scoring system, ‘which records the character of every played ball, whether it be a fault, a served ball, a returned ball, a volleyed return, together with the number of…
Read moreTennis Ranking System
April 17, 1890
In the April 1890 edition of Outing, William Strunk Jr. presented his idea for notating tennis matches, which he suggested had been tested in a tennis tournament of 1889. He outlined it was ‘designed for the recording of tournaments and championship games, with a view to assigning each player a…
Read moreNew York Times – Tennis Report
July 18, 1891
In July 1981, an anonymous reporter for the New York Times provided statistics on placed balls, aces won on outs by opponent, aces won on hits into net by opponent, aces won on double faults and total points won.
Read moreThe First Heat Map?
March 18, 1897

A world championship bout in 1897 between Corbett and Fitzsimons is presented in the San Francisco Call on 19th March 1897, the day after the fight. A pictorial representation of this fight also appeared in a New York newspaper. The analysis was conducted by boxing Professor James Connors. Connors used…
Read moreOuting – University Football (Gridiron)
January 18, 1900

In the January 1900 edition OUting, a comprehensive statistical analysis of University Football (Gridiron) was presented for the games between Yale and Princeton, and Yale and Harvard, showing not only the frequency of key events, but also estimated distances for rushing and punts.
Read moreLa Petite Gironde (Rugby)
March 18, 1907

A collaboration between two French journalists results in a remarkable notation analysis of rugby football. The analysis is extremely comprehensive, listing game time, pitch location and ideographic symbols, to provide the reader with an indication of key match events, such as scrums, lineouts, stoppages, fouls, penalties, tries and various types…
Read moreWeighted Olympic Gold
June 19, 1908

British reporters calculated national standings based on a point system — five for gold, three for silver and one for bronze. *https://web.archive.org/web/20080827043408/http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-hardaway22-2008aug22,0,52982.story
Read moreAssociation Football Chart
January 18, 1910

In 1910, David F. Barrett, a reporter for the St Loui Star, presented an article on association football, expressing concern that, ‘all that the average soccer fan pays attention to in the game is the number of goals scored and who scores them. He pays no attention whatsoever to the…
Read moreTouching Second: The Science of Baseball
April 18, 1910

Hugh Fullerton’s notaations appear in a book, Touching Second: The Science of Baseball, he co-authored with ex-baseball start John J. Evers. In a chapter written by Fullerton, he provides not only an example of his own ideographic notation system, but also evidence of undertaking notations of baseball much earlier than…
Read moreElias Sports Bureau
January 23, 1913

Perhaps the first sports data company Elias was founded by brother Al and Walter Munro. Then in his 40’s he wanted to see if he could make a living keeping and selling his baseball statistics. Although the company got off to a slow start in 1917 the Associated Press signed…
Read moreLloyd Messersmith’s – Distance Traversed Basketball
January 18, 1931

This paper, Messersmith, L L & Corey, S 1931, ‘The Distance Traversed by a Basketball Player’, Research Quarterly, II, 2, pp. 57-60. is one of a number Messersmith et al., would go on to publish between 1931-1944. There is a wonderful paper written about Messersmith’s career and contribution to Notational Analysis…
Read moreEarly Recording of Shot (Soccer)
January 18, 1937

Jurryt’s post shares a record of shots taken in the Western Europe v Central Europe football game played to celebrate Olympic Day in the Netherlands on 20 June 1937. He asks if this is the first example of a record of shots taken in association football.
Read moreMLB – First Full-Time Statistician Hired
January 18, 1947

It was in 1947 that Mr. Roth, a native of Montreal who had worked as a statistician for the Canadiens and the National Hockey League, approached Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, with a proposition that would transform somewhat how the game was played. Wouldn’t it help a manager,…
Read moreCharles Reep joins Brentford
September 18, 1950

Probably the most influential and certainly the most controversial notational analyst in Britain is Charles Reep who died in 2002 (Pollard, 2002) having devoted over 50 years to analysing soccer (and other sports) in great detail. Whilst most of his work remains unpublished his legacy remains as the primary advocate…
Read moreDecades Before Moneyball, The Dallas Cowboys Used Advanced Stats To Win Super Bowls
January 17, 1960

Salam Qureishi grew up in India and knew nothing about football — or America. And yet in the early 1960s, Qureishi, a computer programmer and statistician, helped the Dallas Cowboys overhaul their scouting system, replacing hunches with hard numbers. The result: five Super Bowl appearances and two titles. FiveThirtyEight and…
Read moreSkill & Chance in Association Football
January 18, 1968

Charles Reep’s first published paper produced the finding that the structure of soccer is determined by near constants (Reep and Benjamin, 1968) and his work is thought to have influenced many researchers and football coaches e.g. Charles Hughes, who was the Assistant Director of Coaching for the Football Association (Hughes, 1987);…
Read moreMeasuring Clutch
January 23, 1969

Two brothers rented time on an IBM 1620 mainframe to pick a knot that had confounded baseball fans for generations, and still does: just what a “clutch” player is, and how that can be measured. The Mills brothers published their approach in a thin, Reader’s Digest-sized book title, Player Win…
Read moreSociety for American Baseball Research
March 19, 1971

The organization became an entity with (Robert) Davids’ March 19, 1971, letter: This letter is being addressed to about 25-30 persons interested in baseball history and statistical research (I use the term “statistorians”). You are an addressee because I have seen your name in The Sporting News in past years,…
Read moreBill James Publishes First Baseball abstract
January 17, 1977

Editors considered James’s pieces so unusual that few believed them suitable for their readers. In an effort to reach a wider audience, James self-published an annual book titled The Bill James Baseball Abstract beginning in 1977. The first edition of the book presented 80 pages of in-depth statistics compiled from…
Read moreSTATS Inc is Founded
January 2, 1981

The acronym STATS stands for Sports Team Analysis & Tracking System. The Oakland A’s (not for the last time in their history would be ahead of the curve) became STATS first customer. They signed a $75,000 deal before STATS had a computer programme. The final system, built for the Apple…
Read moreCentre for Performance Analysis is Established
January 20, 1992

The CPA was established in 1992, with an initial vision to provide support services for the flourishing of elite Welsh sport. The diversity of clients serviced by the CPA attests to the success of extending services to the United Kingdom as a whole and internationally. Within a short time the…
Read moreInfostrada Sport Launches
January 19, 1995

Infostrada Sports was founded by Philip Hennemann and partners in the Netherlands in 1995. The initial aim was to collect data on all sports in order to build up and maintain the ultimate historical archive and provide services to media and professional sports organisations. The first contract with the International…
Read moreOpta Index
January 18, 1996

The Opta brand is first associated with the Premier League through the launch of a ranking system, The Opta Index. This was seen on Sky Sports Monday Night Football. In 2002; Aidan Cooney’s Sportingstatz business purchases the assets of Opta from BSkyB. Current senior members of the operational management team…
Read moreProzone Sports Launches
January 18, 1998

Prozone Sports is founded in 1998, promising to Changing the way you Think About Sport. Prozone are one of the first companies to offer tracking of physical performance through a camera system.
Read moreFootball Live
August 1, 2001

Football Live was the name given to the project and computer system created and utilised by PA Sport to collect Real Time Statistics from major English & Scottish Football Matches and distribute to most leading media organisations. At the time of its operation, more than 99% of all football statistics displayed across Print,…
Read moreMoneyball Book Released
June 17, 2003

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a book by Michael Lewis, published in 2003, about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane. Its focus is the team’s analytical, evidence-based, sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team, despite Oakland’s disadvantaged revenue situation.
Read moreSportsVu Launched
January 2, 2005

SportVU was created in 2005 by Israeli scientists, Gal Oz and Miky Tamir, who had a background in missile tracking and advanced optical recognition. They had previously used some of that same science to track soccer matches in Israel. SportVU was featured at national trade shows NAB 2007, in Las…
Read moreDartfish Wins an Emmy
January 20, 2005

Dartfish was founded in 1999 as InMotion Technologies, Ltd to commercially develop SimulCam and other digital imaging applications. In 2005 They were an Emmy winner for The George Wensel Outstanding Innovative Technical Achievement Award
Read morePITCHf/x
October 3, 2006

PITCHf/x, created and maintained by Sportvision, is a system that tracks the speeds and trajectories of pitched baseballs. This system, which made its debut in the 2006 MLB playoffs, is installed in every MLB stadium. The data from the system is often used by broadcasters to show a visual representation or…
Read morePerform acquires Opta
July 10, 2013

Digital sports media group PERFORM today announces the acquisition of sports data company Opta for c. £40m.
Read more1st OptaPro Forum
February 6, 2014

The first OptaPro Analytics forum is held in London. It brings together a host of bloggers, fanalysts and club analysts to discuss football analysis. This event is designed to bring together the best analytical practitioners in sport, whether they are amateur writers or represent professional organisations. You can read…
Read moreStats LLC acquires ProZone Sports
May 1, 2015

Stats LLC has acquired U.K.-based athlete-performance and analytics outfit Prozone, marking the company’s fourth acquisition in the last eight months and third since February. Prozone, active in scouting and video tracking in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, will become part of Illinois-based Stats and greatly expand the company’s international reach….
Read moreGracenote acquires Infostrada
May 28, 2015

Infostrada is acquired by U.S.-based Gracenote, a subsidiary of Tribune Media Company. With this acquisition, Infostrada Sports is now part of the world’s leading entertainment and sports data company.
Read moreThis information would not be possible without a whole host of people but I want to mark 3 sources in particular.
- Keith Lyons work on the Clyde Street Blog is especially fascinating and thorough.
- The paper “A history of sports notational analysis: a journey into the nineteenth century” Eaves, Simon J. Source: International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, Volume 15, Number 3, December 2015, pp. 1160-1176(17)
- The Numbers Game, a fascinating book by Alan Schwarz
If you think there is a key moment that should be added, or have found an error please contact me robcarroll @ thevideoanalyst.com with the details and any links.