Paris Saint-Germain and École Polytechnique launch the “Sports Analytics Challenge”
Thousands of students worldwide are invited to take part in a data chal-lenge for the chance to join a team of researchers at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris and work alongside the Paris Saint-Germain Per-formance Department.
Today, Paris Saint-Germain and École Polytechnique launch the “Sports Analytics Challenge”, an elite project that invites candidates from all over the world to take part in a data science and sports performance challenge. This project, which associates a world-class teaching and research establishment with a top-level sports club, is a unique and innovative idea for exploring the ways in which big data can be used to improve sports performance. At the end of this challenge, the first of its kind, the win-ning data analyst will join École Polytechnique to work in close collaboration with Paris Saint-Germain.
Algorithms for analyzing and improving performance
Over a ten-week period, participants will be asked to study the OPTA data provided and answer questions from the Club’s experts about sports performance. They must demonstrate their ability to respond to these questions by developing algorithms that generate the raw data for recommendations that could help optimize the sports per-formance of the Club’s first team.
Following this selection process, five finalists will be invited to present their project to Paris Saint-Germain experts and École Polytechnique researchers during the second edition of “Striving for Excellence”, the Club’s international conference dedicated to sports performance, which will be held at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris on May 20-21, 2019 and attended by around a hundred world-renowned experts and research-ers.
An exclusive job combining academic and sporting excellence
The most brilliant analyst, whose project manages to impress the judges and fulfils all of their requirements, will be awarded a grant from the Club to carry out a research project in École Polytechnique’s Centre for Applied Mathematics (CMAP – Joint Re-search Laboratory between the CNRS and École Polytechnique). With the help of this grant, the winning student will be able to dedicate their time to analyzing the Club’s sports performance data, and might well revolutionize the Club’s performance analysis methods.
Since 2011, Paris Saint-Germain have made innovation a strategic cornerstone for the Club’s development. Their Performance Department, created in 2012, works with the first team to analyze their game data and identify the keys to sporting success. The Club also aims to be a pioneer in terms of technology and digital transformation. The inno-vations recently adopted include: Digital Overlay technology rolled out in the Parc des Princes stadium thanks to partner AIM Sports, a dedicated application on Google As-sistant, and the launch of an innovative blockchain strategy with socios.com.
In 2018, École Polytechnique embarked on an ambitious project to carry out top-level scientific research in the fields of sports and parasports, in view of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Their aim is to become a worldwide leader in these fields, by developing scientific collaborations with the best academic institutions and joining forces with elite sports partners.