Top Sporting Minds to Meet in Manchester for New Data-Driven Conference

MANCHESTER, U.K. - Feb. 7, 2025 - PRLog -- Data, machine learning, analytics, and visualisation are more influential than ever on the games we love.

Manchester – with its rich sporting heritage, history of innovation, and thriving tech community – is the perfect place to showcase the new tools and techniques sharpening the competitive edge of teams across the world, and shaping the future of every aspect of sports performance.

That's according to John Carney, a Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer, and Founder of PyDataMCR – the hub for Manchester's thriving data science community founded in 2018.

The not-for-profit conference, taking place on Tuesday 18th March at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, grew out of conversations at PyDataMCR about the intersection of sports and data in the City.

Field of Play Conference is for everyone, from sports analytics and data science professionals to Sporting Directors, and will demonstrate how attendees can bring data into their workflows, take their analytics to the next level, and implement new techniques and data solutions to solve problems.

John Carney said: "As a community, we recognised that while there are a couple of UK sports data analytics conferences, they weren't necessarily meeting the needs of their intended audiences.

"They are primarily vehicles for advertising, can be expensive and insular, and are almost always about football.

"We wanted to create something new with Field of Play, providing as much value as possible to the community by sharing insights from researchers on the cutting edge of sports data, and providing a platform for collaboration across all disciplines and levels."

The conference will bring speakers from top sporting clubs such as Manchester United; data science and analytics professionals from the world of sport, and even a mystery speaker, to the stage to talk all things data and sports.

Speaker list:

• Chris Shumba, Head of Data Operations – Manchester United FC
• Nicole Kozlova, International Footballer and Data Scientist – Glasgow City / Ukraine National Team
• Chris Fonnesbeck, Baseball Quant, Data Scientist and Professor – PyMC Labs
• Ida Hӧglund Persson, Decision Scientist – Twelve Football
• Daisy Christodoulou, Author – I Can't Stop Thinking About VAR
• Billy Fitton, Data, Engineering & Tech Lead, Ineos Grenadiers
• MYSTERY SPEAKER, The Best Premier League Fantasy Football Player in the world? Probably

Field of Play is about bringing together people from different sports and disciplines to spark conversations about how to use data more effectively, to make better decisions and ultimately see better results on the pitch, field, and track.

For more information about Field of Play, and to purchase tickets, visit: https://www.fieldofplay.co.uk