The 2024 edition of the StatsBomb Conference will be held at Old Trafford, Manchester on Friday 11th October 2024.

There will be presentations from industry experts in analytics from across the sporting spectrum, as well as moderated panels and sessions with football professionals operating at clubs in the best leagues in the world.

StatsBomb has always had a close connection to the wider analytics community and it’s important to us that this group is represented at this conference. For that reason, we’re once again inviting you to send us your research proposals. The best submissions will be offered the chance to write a paper using exclusive StatsBomb data and present it to an audience of industry professionals.

As with much of life, football involves many trade-offs. How much time should I spend coaching defence instead of attack in training this week? Should we spend our remaining budget on a young 3rd choice winger or use it to offer a current player a new deal? We want this year’s research to focus on trade-offs. This will ensure the research is grounded in the difficult decisions coaches, analysts and executives make at clubs every day.

Examples include:

• Player skill trade-offs: to what extent should a particular team accept deficiencies in one area to improve in another?
• Is a long throw specialist worth it versus a midfielder who is much better at dribbling?
• Tactical trade-offs, "under what conditions is it better to attempt action A over action B?”
• Is a long diagonal worth it versus a sideways pass to the other CB in space? Is this always the case

We’ll be looking for proposals employing novel methods that are able to produce actionable analysis and compelling visualisations to communicate your findings. We are most interested in submissions that focus on deeper analysis of specific questions, but we are open to any submissions.