Before Round 23 of the 2023 AFL season, the idea of West Coast forward Jamie Cripps drilling his fifth goal against the Western Bulldogs to seal victory wouldn’t have crossed many people’s minds. Teams starting the penultimate round at the bottom of the ladder aren’t usually competitive with top eight contenders, and the Eagles’ 2-19 record certainly didn’t have anyone expecting too much from them. But it happened, and in the process, the Bulldogs lost their chance to play in the finals.

However if you go by the expected score result – an estimation concept based on the historical scoring average from each position on the ground – the Bulldogs would win the game. The bot that does these calculations and automatically publishes them on X (formerly Twitter), declared an expected final score of 81.6 to 81.4 in the Bulldogs’ favour. Not a convincing win, but the victory they needed to secure a spot in the final eight.

Sport within itself is inherently interesting. That’s why nearly 24,000 people — most of them Bulldogs fans — flocked to Marvel Stadium that Sunday afternoon. The spectacle of sport and the suspense of who might win has captivated fans and players alike for centuries. Despite this, the rise in stats and data generation in sport continues its attempt to take the guessing out of performance.

Expected score generators are becoming more common right around the world, with trackers for the English Premier League such as @xGPhilosophy on X and understat gaining plenty of traction with fans as just some of many new stat-generating technologies that are making their way into mainstream sports talk. In 1999, when Champion Data became the official stat tracking partner of the AFL, this level of stat tracking and datafication would have been impossible to envisage.

Stats are frequently put to use by fans, clubs and media organisations. Technologies like expected scores enable clubs to get a different perspective on the performance of their team, give media organisations another discussion point at the end of the round, and give fans the heartbreaking insight that their team could have won a game if they capitalised on their opportunities.

AFL analyst at Champion Data Louie Kebakovski has been working with the stat tracking giant since 2007, and tells upstart that providing data to AFL clubs, coaches and media broadcasters takes priority over bringing more enjoyment to the game for fans.

“Our mission at Champion Data is to tell the story of the game and the only way to do this accurately and effectively is through data,” he says.

“Knowing why a team is winning or why they are losing can be done by analysing the data. Alternatively, measuring player performance is also done through data, providing a benchmark where you can compare players based on the position they play.”

With 20 years of stat tracking behind them, the AFL is now known as the most data rich sport in the world. But it’s not just the best of the best that have a wealth of data following them everywhere they go – even country football has started to integrate stats into their leagues across the nation.

Just last year, the Riddell District Football Netball League (RDFNL) became the first community league to invest equally in the collection of stats for both their men’s and women’s senior competitions.

As this is the inaugural year that the RDFNL has tracked stats, the league CEO Jordan Doyle wasn’t sure how long it would take to see changes in the competition, but says it’s come quicker than he could have anticipated. Doyle tells upstart that he expects clubs will be able to identify “deficiencies or weaknesses” in their own play, which at its base level has already changed the makeup of the competition.

“The difference between the top and the bottom [teams] has definitely closed,” he says.

At this stage, none of the data can be collated without some human involvement. However, considering the growth of initiatives such as the expected score concept, the automation of sports data is becoming more prevalent. As sport continues its evolution in technology, Kebakovski says that Champion Data is bound to adapt with it.

“We are looking at automating some of our match day processes but that is a long way away,” he says.

“We have also taken a huge step forward recently with AI and analysis with some of our internal tasks.”

As for the RDFNL, which relies on the video footage they send to Premier Data for their stats tracking, Doyle is looking at the bigger picture. Although he understands the expansive limits that tracking can reach, he’s far more interested in what stats can do to grow the new women’s competition.

“We had three clubs come across from other leagues and then three new clubs ourselves,” he says.

“They didn’t have access to [stats] previously in their other leagues, so it was a point of difference for us.”

It took until 1965 for official disposal numbers in the AFL to be recorded, but since then the wealth of stats available has grown every year. Kebakovski doesn’t believe they’ll be slowing down any time soon, instead indicating they’re keeping a close eye on emerging trends in the game to take things further.

“At Champion Data we continue to evolve and will always look to enhance our ability to analyse the game – whether that be through new metrics or finding better ways to analyse the game.”

Photo: Stock Exchange Board by Pixabay available HERE and used under a Creative Commons license. This image has not been modified.