Analytics in the Canadian Sport Industry
A Macro-Level Analysis of Online Job Advertisements
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18060/29316Keywords:
sport analytics, job postings, documents, Canadian sport systemAbstract
This study examined analytics job advertisements in the Canadian sport industry. Grounded in signaling theory, job advertisements were collected during each week of the 2023 calendar year from a selection of online job-search websites. Data were analyzed via a codebook thematic analysis. One hundred eighty-five analytics job advertisements were found, most in the for-profit sport industry, at the lower level of the organizational hierarchy, full-time, and in-person at organizational headquarters. Variations are also observed in the frequency of posted jobs during the calendar year. Contributions include a landscape view of analytics jobs to support their prevalence and growth in the sport industry and advance discussions about their relevance for the operations of for-profit, non-profit, and public sport organizations. In practice, the findings provide strategies for job seekers to navigate the market and for practitioners to frame analytics job advertisements.
References
References
Alamar, B. C. (2024). Sports analytics: A guide for coaches, managers, and other decision makers. Columbia University Press.
Asher, D. (2010). Cracking the hidden job market: How to find opportunity in any economy. Ten
Speed Press.
Bouchet, A., Troilo, M., Urban, T. L., Mondello, M., & Sutton, W. A. (2020). Business analytics, revenue management and sport: evidence from the field. International Journal of Revenue Management, 11(4), 277-296. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJRM.2020.110634
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.
Braun, V., Clarke., V., Hayfield, N., & Terry, G. (2019). Thematic analysis. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences (pp. 843-860). Springer.
Connelly, B. L., Certo, S. T., Ireland, R. D., & Reutzel, C. R. (2011). Signaling theory: A review and assessment. Journal of Management, 37(1), 39-67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310388419
Custance, C. (2024). The franchise: The business of building winning teams. Simon & Schuster.
Davenport, T. H. (2014a). Analytics in sports: The new science of winning. International Institute for Analytics. https://studylib.net/doc/8079544/analytics-in-sports--the-new-science-of-winning
Davenport, T. H. (2014b). What businesses can learn from sports analytics. MIT Sloan Management Review, 55(4), 10-13.
Fernandes, C., Vescovi, J. D., Norman, R., Bradish, C. L., Taback, N., & Chan, T. C. (2024). Equity, diversity, and inclusion in sports analytics. Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 20(2), 87-111. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2204.00896
Finch, D. J., O’Reilly, N., Legg, D., Levallet, N., & Fody, E. (2022). So you want to work in sports? An exploratory study of sport business employability. Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, 12(2), 117-134.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-02-2021-0013
Freeman, L. A. (2016). The impact of analytics utilization on team performance: Comparisons
within and across the US professional sports leagues. Journal of International Technology and Information Management, 25(3), 137-160. https://doi.org/10.58729/1941-6679.1322
Fried, G., & Mumcu, C. (Eds.). (2016). Sport analytics: A data-driven approach to sport business and management. Taylor & Francis.
Gardner, A., & Love, A. (2023). From the classroom to the industry: An exploration of sport management students’ transitions to employment. Sport Management Education Journal, 18(1), 31-42.
Green, F. (2021). Winning with data in the business of sports: CRM and analytics. Routledge.
Greene, D., Beard, N., Clegg, T., & Weight, E. (2023). The visible body and the invisible organization: Information asymmetry and college athletics data. Big Data & Society, 10(1), 20539517231179197.
Hansen, K. (2008). A foot in the door: networking your way into the hidden job market. Ten Speed Press.
Hayduk, T. (2023). Business analytics in sport organizations. In M.L. Naraine,, T. Hayduk III, & J.P. Doyle, The Routledge handbook of digital sport management (1st ed., pp. 245–254). Routledge.
Kim, J. (2022). Perspectives on the sports analytics revolution: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 14(4), 1-10.
Lewis, M. (2003). Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game. W.W. Norton.
Lindt, K., Wallrodt, S., & Thieme, L. (2024). A high-performance sports career as a signal in the job application process. German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12662-024-00987-x
MacLean, D. (2023). Draft day: How hockey teams pick winners or get left behind. Simon & Schuster.
Manley, A., & Williams, S. (2022). ‘We’re not run on numbers, we’re people, we’re emotional people’: Exploring the experiences and lived consequences of emerging technologies, organizational surveillance and control among elite professionals. Organization, 29(4), 692-713. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508419890078
Mathison, D., & Finney, M. I. (2009). Unlock the hidden job market: 6 steps to a successful job search when times are tough. FT Press.
McHale, I. (2018). Sports business analytics: The past, the present and the future. In S. Chadwick, D. Parnell, P. Widdop, & C. Anagnostopoulos (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of football business and management (pp. 246-257). Routledge.
Megdal, H. (2016). The Cardinals way: How one team embraced tradition and Moneyball at the same time. Macmillan.
Millington, B., & Millington, R. (2015). ‘The datafication of everything’: Toward a sociology of sport and big data. Sociology of Sport Journal, 32(2), 140-160.
Millington, B., Naraine, M. L., Wanless, L., Safai, P., & Manley, A. (2025). Sport and the promise of artificial intelligence: Human and machine futures. Sociology of Sport Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2024-0150
Mondello, M., & Kamke, C. (2014). The introduction and application of sports analytics in professional sport organizations. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 6(2), 1-12.
Naraine, M. L., Hayduk, T., & Doyle, J. P. (2023). Routledge handbook of digital sport management. Routledge.
Narayanan, S., & Pifer, N. D. (2023). An xG of their own: Using expected goals to explore the analytical shortcomings of misapplied gender schemas in football. Journal of Sport Management, 38(2), 92-109. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2023-0022
Melton, E. N., & MacCharles, J. D. (2021). Examining sport marketing through a rainbow lens. Sport Management Review, 24(3), 421-438.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2021.1880742
Millington, B., Naraine, M. L., Wanless, L., Safai, P., & Manley, A. (2025). Sport and the promise of artificial intelligence: Human and machine futures. Sociology of Sport Journal, 1-10. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2024-0150
Mongeon, K., Hedlund, D., & Spalding, R. (2017). Analytics in the sport industry. In P. Pedersen & L. Thibault (eds.), Contemporary sport management (6th ed.) (pp. 418-441). Human Kinetics.
Moore, K., & Khan, M. H. (2020). Signalling organizational commitment to employability through job advertisements: The communication of HRD practices to young inexperienced job seekers. Human Resource Development International, 23(1), 25-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2019.1679569
Morgan, G., & Magnusen, M. (2022). Sport isn’t sacred and analytics isn’t new: Challenging common notions about sports analytics. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 14(4), 11-15.
Morgulev, E., Azar, O., & Lidor, R. (2018). Sports analytics and the big-data era. International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, 5(4), 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41060-017-0093-7
Morrow, S., & Howieson, B. (2014). The new business of football: A study of current and aspirant football club managers. Journal of Sport Management, 28(5), 515-528. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2013-0134
Parnell, D., Bond, A. J., Widdop, P., Groom, R., & Cockayne, D. (2023). Recruitment in elite football: A network approach. European Sport Management Quarterly, 23(5), 1370-1386. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2021.2011942
Ross, S. R., McCullough, B .P., & Williams, A. S. (2022). Developing a professional perspective. In P.M. Pedersen & L. Thibault, Contemporary Sport Management (7th ed.) (pp. 35-57). Human Kinetics.
Schoenfeld, B. (2023). Game of edges: The analytics revolution and the future of professional sports. WW Norton & Company.
Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355-374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010
Thibault, L. (2017). Canada: An evolving sport system. In J. Scheerder, A. Willem, & E. Claes (Eds.), Sport policy systems and sport federations: A cross-national perspective (pp. 65-87). Palgrave Macmillan.
Troilo, M., & Bouchet, A. (2022). Professional sports organizations and business analytics: Monopoly power vs debt financing. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 14(4), 16-21.
Troilo, M., Bouchet, A., Urban, T. L., & Sutton, W. A. (2016). Perception, reality, and the adoption of business analytics: Evidence from North American professional sport organizations. Omega, 59, 72-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2015.05.011
Walker, N. A., Agyemang, K. J., Washington, M., Hindman, L. C., & MacCharles, J. (2020). Getting an internship in the sport industry: The institutionalization of privilege. Sport Management Education Journal, 15(1), 20-33. https://doi.org/10.1123/smej.2019-0061
Wallrodt, S., & Thieme, L. (2020). The role of sports volunteering as a signal in the job application process. European Sport Management Quarterly, 20(3), 255-275. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2019.1598457
Wanless, L., & Naraine, M. L. (2023). Analogous forecasting for predicting sport innovation diffusion: From business analytics to natural language processing. Journal of Sport Management, 37, 191-202. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2022-0026
Watanabe, N. M., Shapiro, S., & Drayer, J. (2021). Big data and analytics in sport management. Journal of Sport Management, 35(3), 197–202. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2021-0067
Weight, E. A., Taylor, E., Huml, M. R., & Dixon, M. A. (2021). Working in the sport industry: A classification of human capital archetypes. Journal of Sport Management, 35(4), 364-378. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2020-0070
Winston, W. L., Nestler, S., & Pelechrinis, K. (2022). Mathletics: How gamblers, managers, and fans use mathematics in sports. Princeton University Press.
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research: Design and applications (6th ed.). SAGE.
Zdroik, J., & Babiak, K. (2017). Networking with a purpose: Men and women’s perception of career networking in sport NGBs. Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, 7(3), 234-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-11-2015-0036
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Erik L. Lachance, Brad Millington, Michael L. Naraine
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright to articles published in Sport Innovation Journal is retained by the author(s).
