It’s pretty hard to stay grounded when a major film is made about your life, harder still when a two-time winner of the Sexiest Man Alive award is cast to play you.
But Billy Beane shows no signs of letting Brad Pitt and Moneyball go to his head. He carries himself with a relaxed humility, freely admitting that “my success has been driven by having really smart people around me”.
He’s joined in Belfast by one of those smart people: Luke Bornn, a scientific adviser for Teamworks and former Harvard statistics professor whose career spans Italian football side Roma, the NBA team Sacramento Kings, and a French football club, Toulouse FC, where he oversaw a data-driven rebuild.
When The Athletic spoke to the pair, they were eagerly awaiting The Open Championship at Royal Portrush, golf’s fourth and final major of 2025. But before soaking up Scottie Scheffler’s masterclass, they sat down for an hour for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on:
With data now deeply embedded across modern sport, it’s easy to forget just how radical Billy Beane’s approach was as general manager at the Oakland Athletics. A former player, not a number-cruncher, he wasn’t the obvious figurehead for sport’s analytics revolution.
