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Welcome sports and data lovers to this week's #SportsVizSunday round-up; showcasing the visualisations created across the #SportsVizSunday community in the last week, in addition to those sporting data viz that we have noticed along.
Before we get into the viz, I couldn't start the weekly round-up without a shout-out to our #SportsVizSunday founding father, James Smith. For those of you that don't know James, he is a massive Chelsea fan. Now whilst normally that may be the start of a heated debate on why, for Spencer, Arsenal is the better team, or for me, the lower leagues of English football are obviously where the real fans can be found; this week it is cause for well deserved celebration. Last night was the 2021 Champions League Final (in Portugal, don't get me started on that one!), and James' beloved Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-0 to lift the trophy. Congrats James, we hope you enjoyed the win.
And of course, for golf fans, let's also give a shout out to Phil Mickleson, who became the oldest ever winner of a Major at Kiawah Island; watching Phil turn back the years was pretty inspiring, especially the majesty of his short play... although I will be the first to admit it also filled with me with a little bit of trepidation ahead of this summer's Ryder Cup (go Europe).
Right, enough of the weekly sports news, this is a data viz round-up after all. Let's jump into the recent content created as part of our May #SportsVizSunday challenge, the Kentucky Derby.
Nicolas Mieszaly went all in with his 'History of the Kentucky Derby', a curved timeline of the 'Run for the Roses' which also offered insights relating to the triple crown, gender of the jockey, celebrity owners and so much more. What I really liked were the visual cues on the viz that were presented in a way that didn't overpower the design.
Also a hat-tip to Brett Stupakevich who has been using Tibco this month to explore Kentucky Derby insights; thanks Brett for expanding #SportsVizSunday into another data viz platform and community of users.
For those of you still wanting to participate in our May challenge, you have a couple of days left, and the data can be found on our 'Monthly Challenges' page.
Away from the monthly challenge there were plenty of vizzes created that caught the eye. First up we had Shangruff Raina celebrate the Stephen Curry's 2020-21 NBA season, including some great call out information about Stephen and also his 2020-21 key stats.
If you are a #SportsVizSunday regular you will likely be familiar with the work of Dave Roberts, the lover of all things Burnley (that Lancashire footballing power-house who recently celebrated their 5th successive season in the Premier League). This time Dave treated us to a non clarets viz, instead he visualised every direct free kick attempt at goal during this season's Premier League campaign!
Keeping with the subject of the Premier League, how could I not congratulate fans of the Hammers this week? Believe it or not there are a few well known West Ham fans in the #DataFam, and this week one of them created a fantastic view of their Europa League qualifying season. No, it wasn't Jeremy Poole.... come on Jeremy, it's been 2 years since your last viz! ;) ... but rather the 'King of Reddit' Bo McCready. I really liked the use of colour to easily identify the result of each game and the timeline of each individual match.
Also this week, myself and CJ Mayes completed a viz collaboration exploring Manchester United's quirky 2020-21 season. This project had been a few months in the making, with me regularly joking to CJ how Man U rarely seemed to turn up in the first half of games and relied on second half comebacks to win, especially away from home. Thanks to CJ's amazing Python skills to obtain the data relating to every goal involving a Man U game this season (check out the blog) we were able to leverage Tableau Map Layers to visualise not only the goals but also the 'flow' of matches and call out those comeback wins. I will let you decide if we did a decent job at it or not, but I would just like to say thank you to CJ for such an enjoyable collaboration.
On Wednesday my data viz juices were satisfied when I spotted this analysis of Liverpool's centre back partnerships, by Jon Manuel. I love the use of the upset plot (for those of you wanting to know more about them, check out this blog post by Chris Love) and would encourage you all to check it out as an example of sporting analysis at its best.
Sneaking in, just in time for this week's round-up, Tony ElHabr prepared us for the Champions League final by exploring if domestic results had impacted the outcome of previous finals, the answer? Absolutely not.... well ok after last night, maybe that is a bit less of a definitive statement now!
Beyond the shores of the beautiful game there were some other sports showcased by the #SportsVizSunday community this week. Our very own Chris Westlake visualised the squad for the forthcoming Lions tour of South Africa.
Finally this week, I am delighted to be able to share another amazing tennis viz by Tableau superstar Priyanka Dobhal. Her analysis of Maiden Grand Slam Winners is fantastic and little touches like the labelling, for me really finished the viz off perfectly.
So that's all folks, another amazing week both on and off the field. Over the coming days, keep your eyes peeled for details of our June 2021 #SportsVizSunday challenge... it may or may not be a celebration of the Euro's... 'Its Coming Home, its coming, football's coming home'.
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