Steven Houston of Williams Advanced Engineering to speak at 2020 OptaPro Forum

Stats Perform, the revolutionary leader in sport AI and data, is delighted to announce that Steven Houston, Business Dynamics Manager at Williams Advanced Engineering, will deliver the guest talk at the 2020 OptaPro Forum.

After welcoming leading analytics practitioners from the NBA (Dean Oliver and Luke Bornn), NFL (Dennis Lock) and MLB (Mike Fitzgerald) to speak at previous Forums, Houston will draw on his experiences of working across different sports to provide insights into what football departments can learn from high-performance analytical processes pioneered in Formula 1.

After starting his career within Insurance, Houston moved into professional sport as an intern for an NBA team and subsequently spent a number of years working as an international scouting consultant. He then moved on to professional football, spending three years at Chelsea as Head of Technical Scouting and Data Analysis before moving to Germany in 2011, working as Head of Technical Scouting and Recruitment for Bundesliga side Hamburger SV. His most recent role in football was with Sunderland, joining them in 2014, where he spent over two years as Head of Scouting.

In his current role at Williams Advanced Engineering, Houston supports leading businesses across a diverse range of industries and other sports to help improve team performance through implementing a Formula 1 approach to operations, data analytics and innovation, as well as developing a high-performance culture.

Houston's talk at the 2020 OptaPro Forum will discuss transferable insights, challenges around translating analytical findings in a real-time environment and consider what football can learn from F1 and Motorsport in relation to the application of analytics.

"Having attended the Forum previously, I am delighted to have the opportunity to reconnect with some old faces and share my experiences of working in a new industry where the application of data analytics is a key driving force behind innovation," Houston said after confirming his guest talk at the Forum, which will take place in London on 5th February. "There are a number of challenges faced by analysts in F1, such as being able to identify key performance trends from complex outputs in a matter of seconds, which is something I am sure their counterparts in football can relate to.

"By providing some insights into our processes, I hope I can offer a different perspective on how to approach common challenges which could benefit departments across different levels of elite football."

First held in 2014, the OptaPro Forum connects the football analytics industry through showcasing the most innovative applications of analytics that focus on informing decision-making across performance analysis and recruitment.

An event attended by 300 people from over 50 clubs around the world, the Forum has become a crucial cog in the development of football analytics, influencing how teams understand and analyse the game.

About Stats Perform

Stats Perform collects the richest sports data in the world and transforms it through revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the most in-depth insights for media and technology, betting and team performance. With company roots dating back almost 40 years, Stats Perform embraces and solves the dynamic nature of sport ? be that for digital and broadcast media with differentiated storytelling, tech companies with reliable and fast data to power their innovations, sportsbooks with in-play betting and integrity services, or teams with first-of-its-kind AI analysis software. As the leading sports data and AI company, Stats Perform works with the top global sports media, tech companies, sportsbooks, teams and leagues. For more information, visit?StatsPerform.com