Big data in sports

I came across a really cool youtube video from the amazing numberphile series that detailed how companies are already analyzing sports and farming huge amounts of data from sport events like football matches. In fact, these guys are basically farming data from events like the world cup, and then hoping that among that mountain of data lies some insights that could prove useful to football clubs–or football bookies :).

This of course reminds me of the my first glimpse of big data in sports from Moneyball. It was a classic underdog true story that was soon made into a movie starring Brad Pitt (just like every other great true story). I wonder if Football clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid are using these big data farms to enable some useful analysis.