by kScope guest contributor Tyler York,Marketing and Customer Development, Betable
It’s becoming clear that casino games are the next big social game genre.
Take a look at the image above, provided by Kontagent. Casino games are surpassing farm games as the darlings of social networks: The growth of monthly active users (MAUs) for farm games is slowing, while that of social casino games is generating higher revenues–seven times, to be precise–than the casual games category.
On the surface, probably not much. But, when it comes to analytics, Beane changed the game for baseball. Colaco could be doing the same for business.
Moneyball is based on Michael Lewis’s book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Faced with a relatively meager budget, Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) uses a groundbreaking, sabermetric approach—the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence that measures in-game activity—to recruit a competitive baseball team. (Read more on how sabermetrics works.)
Beane goes against convention, taking advantage of more empirical gauges of player performance to build a team that could successfully compete in Major League Baseball. He analyzes stats that are not generally considered top priority in the traditional scouting process. While most managers pored over stats like running speed, stolen bases and batting averages, the sabermetric approach, developed by baseball statistician Bill James, predicts other factors are better indicators of a player’s offensive success, e.g., on-base and slugging percentages.
Beane basically stared the “old guard” of baseball recruiting in the face and said, “Suck it.” And it worked.
Using sabermetrics, the Oakland A’s were able to put together a competitive team on a $41 million salary; by comparison, the New York Yankees spent more than $125 million in payroll in the same 2002 season. It paid off: the Athletics led a 20-game winning streak, and Beane shifted the paradigm of baseball scouting forever.
When it comes to Web business analytics, it’s not a bad idea to take a page out of the Moneyball book. Sometimes you have to look at data through a different lens in order to better make predictions and optimize opportunities. In baseball, Beane approached player stats differently and got different results. In business, data scientists like Colaco say there’s a similar shift happening in the world of Web 3.0.
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