Tokio Marine HCC Innovation & Sports Analytics

On March 20, 2021, the National Football League (NFL) announced the winners of the third annual 2020-21 Big Data Bowl, powered by Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS). The competition was hosted by NFL Network predictive analytics experts and aired on March 18 on NFL.com, along with the NFL's Twitch and YouTube channels.

The NFL Big Data Bowl is the annual sports analytics contest from NFL Football Operations. The competition challenges talented members of the analytics community – from college students to professionals – to contribute to the NFL’s continuing evolution in the use of advanced analytics.

As the NFL captures real-time data for every player, on every play, in every situation — anywhere on the field — the Big Data Bowl is the league’s next step in engaging the analytics community.

Among the finalists in this year’s competition was Tokio Marine HCC - Specialty Group employee, Sydney Robinson. Sydney’s team developed a model using traditional and ‘Next Gen’ statistics to analyze and rethink trends and player performance, and to innovate around the way football is played and coached.

Each finalist presented their respective algorithms to a panel of judges consisting of former Big Data Bowl participants and a data scientist from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Sydney and his team presented their model (WADE: Weighted Assessment of Defender Effectiveness) to the NFL earlier this year. You can view the video recording and read about the model in these links below: 

2021 Big Data Bowl - YouTube Presentation Video

Weighted Assessment of Defender Effectiveness | Model Summary

2020-21 Big Data Bowl Winner Announced | NFL Football Operations