The modules on our Sport Analytics and Artificial Intelligence MSc have been carefully put together to give you the most up-to-date and relevant set of skills and knowledge for progressing in your chosen career.

Compulsory modules

This module will provide foundational skills in python and R to clean, prepare, and visualise sports data including spatial distributions, heatmaps, and other visual representations. Foundational statistical skills will also be introduced to understand data patterns and relationships between variables. Module examples will be derived using sporting data from major leagues such as the NBA, MLB, EPL, and IPL.

The aim of this module is to give students an opportunity to explore grand challenges facing our global society and to propose imaginative solutions to specific challenges in one or more country.

Students will critically reflect on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals and think about how Loughborough University's Creating Better Futures. Together Strategy might contribute to them.

Students will engage with ideas and approaches to possible solutions from their own programme and gain diverse insights from Loughborough University London's interdisciplinary ecosystem. This will involve solution-oriented thinking and a balance between criticality and possibility, leading to a deep understanding of grand challenges and imagining creative responses to them.

Optional modules

The aims of this module are to:

  • Introduce students to the foundational concepts of data processing and their use in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
  • Enable students to gain background knowledge necessary to understand and develop different algorithms in AI and Data analytics.

This module will focus on regression-based analysis as a primary tool in sport analytics and the various applications in sport. Correlation and regression analysis in python will be introduced, followed by examples of multiple regression model applications, such as what variables impact half-marathon finishing time for runners, or examining the variables that impact player valuation in football.

Compulsory modules

The aims of this module are to:

  • Become familiar with a range of research methodologies to better understand the role and adoption of insight and research in the sport business industry.
  • Examine the scope and size of the sport business industry globally and the challenges this brings for insight and research.

The aims of this module are to demonstrate how various sport properties are leveraging new media and new technologies, specifically, the Internet and mobile technology. In doing this it will use analytics to study a wide variety of issues affecting the sport industry.

The aims of this module are to give the student the opportunity to study a subject, business problem or research question in depth and to research the issues surrounding the subject or background to the problem.

The module will equip the student with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding for their individual research project and they will be guided through the two options available to them to complete their dissertation:

  • A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choice.
  • A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments.

Students will achieve a high level of understanding in the subject area and produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss this research in depth and with rigour.

Optional modules

Choose one of:

Advances in machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing are forging new responses to global challenges from climate change to the creation of resilient supply chains. A.I. is also changing how creative industries innovate and transforming performance analytics and injury prediction in sport.

Despite its extraordinary potential, A.I. raises profound concerns about the displacement of jobs, the respect for privacy and intellectual property and the risks of algorithmic discrimination. The growing possibility of general A.I. also poses fundamental questions about the future of humanity in a world of super intelligence.

The aim of this module is to examine the evolving societal consequences of A.I. and to explore how governments, international organisations and civil society groups are trying to create safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems.

This module will focus on the uses of machine learning and AI in sport and the models that can be used to analyse data. Examples of models such as Decision Trees, Random Forest, and Logistic Regression will be introduced and discussed. Students will finish the module by learning how to combine models into a machine learning pipeline containing various datasets in order to solve a problem.

Choose one of:

The aims of this module are to:

  • Provide students with an opportunity to be exposed to project-based teamwork in diverse settings (understood in this context as involving a range of multidisciplinary, multicultural and demographic elements in differing configurations), aiming to strengthen their cooperative and collaborative working skills and competence, while raising awareness and appreciation of diversity itself.
  • Provide students with hands on experience of identifying, framing and resolving practice oriented and real-world based challenges and problems, using creativity, critical enquiry and appropriate tools to achieve valuable and relevant solutions.
  • Support the development of students' ability to engage in critical enquiry and individual reflection, as well as to apply individual strengths and skills, building on their own educational backgrounds.
  • Provide students with opportunities for networking with stakeholders, organisations and corporations, aiming to enhance the competence and skills needed to connect to relevant parties and build up future professional opportunities.

The aims of this module are to:

  • Examine the nature of sports integrity and the threats to it presented by the manipulation of sporting outcomes and corrupt governance practices in both national and international contexts, including key legal and regulatory areas.
  • Develop a greater awareness of ethical issues in relation to combatting sport integrity issues.
  • Explain the role of the board, and senior management, in providing organisational leadership and implementing cultural change, with particular emphasis on composition and values-based leadership models.
  • Consider the importance of professional conduct, athlete reputation and public confidence in sport.
  • Critically review a range of legal and regulatory issues in sport.

Compulsory modules

The aims of this module are to give the student the opportunity to study a subject, business problem or research question in depth and to research the issues surrounding the subject or background to the problem.

The module will equip the student with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding for their individual research project and they will be guided through the two options available to them to complete their dissertation:

  • A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choice.
  • A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments.

Students will achieve a high level of understanding in the subject area and produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss this research in depth and with rigour.