Hosted by Fantasy Data Pros
Before submitting your entry:
Submission must be a Jupyter or R notebook, consisting of no more than 2000 words and 15 tables/figures. Submissions must utilize at the very least data from BBMIII (the 2022 folder under data), although you can also use outside datasets for NFL stats. We prefer you use nfl_data_py if you're using Python, and nflfastR if you're using R.
To submit your entry:
Fork this repository and make a pull request, adding your notebook to the submission folder. Please name the file the title of your submission. Before making your submission, check out the Example Notebook under submissions. It will provide guidelines on how to format the inner contents of your notebook. When making your PR, make sure to include the title of your submission, a brief description of your analysis, and your name / the name of your team and team members.
For example, if the title of your submission is "Analyzing the Effectiveness of Different Structural Drafting Strategies", make sure to name your notebook "Analyzing the Effectiveness of Structural Drafting Strategies.ipynb" (or .rmd).
Your work will be public once submitted via that repository. Good luck!
Data for this competition is located under data. As stated above, for a submission to be valid, you must at least use BBMIII data, although you can use external data sources as well such as nflfastR. A detailed description of the data is located here as a README under that data folder.
Best Ball is a popular fantasy football format where participants draft a team before the start of the season and then the computer sets the optimal lineup based on the best performance of the players each week. Because there is no in-season maintenance, users are able to draft a large volume of teams with no additional work required after the draft.
Each season, Underdog Fantasy releases data related to entries in their Best Ball tournament. In this competition, we challenge you to analyze the data from the first three years of their flagship contest, Best Ball Mania 1-3, and provide insights to improve strategies for BBM4.
The Best Ball Mania 1-3 datasets contain detailed information about the draft, scoring, and weekly performance of each entry in the previous three BBM seasons.
Your task is to use this data to gain insights into the factors that contribute to success in large field tournaments like BBM, such as drafting strategy and structures, player performance, matchup analysis, and portfolio management. You can use any analytical tool or statistical techniques to explore the data.
The goal of this competition is to provide actionable insights to improve community strategies for BBM4, which will be launched after the 2023 NFL Draft. The insights may be used to create new metrics & broader strategies to help sharp BBM participants gain an edge in their entries.
We encourage you to collaborate with other participants, share your insights, and create a community around this competition. The competition is open to anyone with an interest in data analysis and football, regardless of their experience or background.
The winners of this competition will receive cash prizes, recognition, and the opportunity to present their findings to leaders in the fantasy sports industry. Join the Best Ball Data Bowl today and show us your analytical skills!
Your task is to analyze data from Best Ball Mania 1-3 to uncover unique strategies that can be applied in the upcoming BBM4 competition. There are several potential topics that participants can explore, including but not limited to:
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Develop a completely new Best Ball strategy. With the previous editions of Best Ball Mania, several winning strategies have emerged, such as Zero RB and Anchor RB. As a participant, you can analyze past data to develop new and unique insights surrounding Best Ball strategy that could give you and others an edge in Best Ball Mania 4.
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Develop a completely new Best Ball specific metric (eg. advance rates) that can be adopted by the community based on some underlying finding in the BBM data.
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Quantify Best Ball strategy. Best Ball has a unique scoring format that differs from traditional fantasy football, so comparing and contrasting different strategies can provide valuable insights. Participants can explore which strategies yield the best results and identify other strategies that could be adopted. This can include exploring commonly used strategies such as stacking.
As this competition is inspired by the NFL Big Data Bowl, we've taken some of their guidelines and applied them to our competition here:
As a participant, you are encouraged to think creatively and explore unique strategies and insights that can be gained from analyzing the Best Ball Mania 1-3 data. While there are suggested topics such as developing a new Best Ball strategy or metric, participants are free to think outside the box and thoroughly examine one idea rather than several ideas less thoroughly.
Your submission should be a Jupyter or R notebook containing no more than 2,000 words and no more than 15 tables/figures. Your submission will be evaluated based on Originality, Accuracy, Relevance, Clarity, and Data Visualization/Tables, with a score ranging from 0 (low) to 10 (high) for each component.
The judging panel will consist of fantasy football experts who will evaluate the submissions based on the five components above. Participants will have the opportunity to present their findings on a live stream on Peter Overzet's YouTube Channel in August 2023 after the submission deadline.
To be eligible, all notebooks submitted must at least use data from Best Ball Mania 3, and must be made public on or before the submission deadline. If submitted as a team, all team members must be listed as collaborators on all notebooks submitted.
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April 1st: Competition Begins
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May 1st: Prize Announced
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August 1st: Notebook submissions due by this date; Make sure to follow submission guidlines!
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August (Date TBD): Finalist round on Peter Overzet's Youtube channel. Finalists will have the opportunity to present their findings on stream and support their conclusions.
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August (Date TBD): Winning team announced.
Cash Prize of $1,000 for the winner plus merch (pictured below) for anyone who makes a valid submission:
