Recently, we had the opportunity to talk with Mark Gorski (JD ‘07), who is the co-founder and CEO of Sports Data Labs as well as an adjunct professor at the CWRU School of Law. Mark’s longstanding interest in sports and experiences as a college athlete led him to pursuing a path in sports after graduating from law school. He has worked in various professional roles including as a sports agent with IMG, and Head of the NBA’s Asia Development group based in Hong Kong. Here, Gorski discusses how his background helped to shape the trajectory of SDL, where the company is heading, and his advice for young professionals hoping to succeed in the entrepreneurship space.
Can you talk about your background and what led you to founding Sports Data Labs?
I left the NBA in 2012 to go work for a London-based company that bought and sold sports media rights and other digital assets on behalf of a variety of global sports rightsholders including the NFL, MLB, Premier League, FIFA, and others. I worked across a variety of sports as SVP of International Corporate Development and Global Head of Partnerships, so I really got to understand the buy-and-sell side of media rights and data assets. I saw where the wind was blowing around opportunities with data and saw athlete data as being the next “big” opportunity in sports. This was, in part, based on my experiences as a former collegiate tennis player and someone who built a career in sports. I always had this belief that if we could understand what was happening with the human body physiologically in any given scenario or activity such as a live sporting event, we would be able to better understand why certain outcomes occurred. Why did that athlete lose the game? Why did the athlete make or miss the shot? What was happening with their body that caused that outcome? And the belief was that if we’re able to better understand and quantify why outcomes occurred, we would be able to use the real-time information about the athlete to predict outcomes with a greater degree of accuracy than ever before. And I thought that would be a game changer not only from a performance standpoint, but really powering a lot of fan engagement opportunities through broadcast, sports betting, and other areas.
So after talking with my roommate from law school Stan Mimoto (JD, MBA ’08) who worked for McKinsey and a variety of technology companies (eBay, Visa) in the Bay area, we decided to start SDL with the initial goal of supporting rights holders with products and services that would support this emerging athlete data ecosystem around collection, control, and distribution of athlete data. At the same time, we had a secondary goal of actually proving that athlete data had predictive value in live events, which at the time was more theoretical as no one actually had the data to prove or disprove it. So, we ended up building technologies that collected unique, continuous, streaming health data from sensors on athletes in live events that had never been collected before in that environment such as in-game heart rate and heart rate variability. And we started in squash with the PSA Squash Tour. The team at the PSA was very forward thinking and tremendous in helping get our company off the ground. The sport itself met our criteria of being played in a controlled environment with limited and definable variables across tournaments, where the activity had a defined beginning and end, and there was a defined outcome for the individual (win or loss). We collected data on athletes in live competition over multiple seasons. Based on that data, we created a digital map of biological responses for each athlete tied to specific activities and outcomes – such as win/loss of a point or a game – so that we would learn about how the body responds in any given scenario or activity. And based upon the learned biological responses and the in-game health data, we used our proprietary AI engine to predict outcomes based on live event data. And what we found was that our in-game prediction models using real-time, continuous, streaming health data currently exhibit a ~10-15% absolute increase in prediction accuracy compared to using traditional statistics alone. Pretty groundbreaking stuff.
How has your law degree shaped the way you approached working in the sports media rights field and shaped the way you developed goals for SDL?
I never formally practiced as a lawyer, but I use my legal background and knowledge I learned at Case Law pretty much every day. I find myself working on a variety of things that require some form of legal training on a daily basis from patents to contracts to negotiations in a variety of sectors including sports, healthcare, insurance, logistics, and other areas. My background has been extremely helpful in helping me be effective in those roles. I feel lucky to have had the early exposure to contracts and other agreements at IMG while I was still in law school – it really helped me wrap my head around how agreements in sports are structured, what the provisions look like, and really helped me get my bearings around what needs to go in these types of agreements to be able to make sure that they're effective for all parties. So it's been invaluable to a lot of the things that I'm doing right now.
I also feel my law degree has helped me become a much better communicator. One thing that you're always doing, no matter what the role is, is selling something. You’re selling an idea to your boss, or your colleagues on where to take your client to dinner, or a potential investor on why they should put capital into your company, or an organization on why they should partner with you. Law school really trains your mind on how to structure communication in a way that leads to more effective outcomes, so I’m grateful to have had that opportunity and those experiences.
What are some exciting milestones or exciting updates that you're looking forward to at Sports Data Labs?
We've secured long-term deals with great partners from the NFLPA to FIFPro to the Cleveland Clinic. We have a really exciting pipeline of opportunities across sports, healthcare, insurance, and logistics. More broadly, the personal data space is really starting to take off. Outside of our technology, patent portfolio, legal and commercial expertise, and long-term partnerships, the legal evolution globally to empower the individual to have more control over their data, as well as the continued recognition of personal data as an asset that the individual controls – has put SDL in very strong position to support individuals— whether that’s an athlete or a patient or everyday citizen —around that collection, control, and monetization of that data. So, even though we started the company a while ago, the space is still early and we're excited to be at the forefront of that growth.
Can you talk about what new doors have opened since partnering with the Cleveland Clinic?
The Cleveland Clinic has been a tremendous partner for us, and our long-term relationship with them – which included an investment in SDL – is expansive and cuts across numerous areas including sports, healthcare, corporate wellness, and military opportunities They are world-renowned experts on the human body across a variety of disciplines, and their expertise ties in well with our original goals of understanding the principal biological drivers of performance and the variables that affect it. Quantifying these drivers is something that is really core to what they (and we) want to be doing in sports, and more broadly in the human performance and longevity space. They are building a new Global Peak Performance Center (GPPC), which is opening in 2027 here in Cleveland, and we are their technology and data partner around collection, consent, and monetization of data. So we're actively working together on building new products for athletes at all levels - pro, amateur, and youth - to support them in understanding their bodies in entirely new ways and performing at their best both on and off the field. This has naturally brought us into new discussions with a variety of organizations in the sports, technology, and human performance spaces.
How else are you looking to expand Sports Data Labs into the healthcare and health data space?
The partnership with Cleveland Clinic, the leading global provider, has provided us with a pathway into healthcare to support patients in a number of ways, including the monetization of their personal data at their election. Given the advancements in AI and demand for data, we believe there is going to be a seismic shift in terms of how your personal data is collected, used, and ultimately monetized in healthcare. It is no secret that personal data is the foundation that allows analytics systems to understand the granular details of how our bodies work and change over time in order to identify and prevent diseases, develop new therapies, predict health outcomes, increase lifespans, and provide guidance for everyday living. It is the lifeblood of multiple trillion-dollar industries including healthcare, insurance, pharma, and sports betting, among many others. However, if you think about how data has been monetized historically within healthcare, it's primarily been in an anonymized format and without any remuneration going back to the individual. And one of the problems with that is that it's really hard to build longitudinal sets of data when you don't know where that data comes from. Our approach, which puts individuals at the epicenter of controlling how their data is collected, processed, and used, creates greater access to personal data and allows for larger, more robust data sets to be developed as the goals of all stakeholders become aligned, while providing individuals with financial incentives to share their information. Our partnership with the Clinic in healthcare is centered around this new approach and providing pathways to support patients in unlocking new value with their data.
You said that you're working with the Cleveland Clinic to develop new products for athletes at all levels. How would a new product for an amateur player look like and what would be the benefits?
Our goal is not just for elite athletes or professional athletes to understand what's happening with their bodies during any given physical activity or why they're performing the way that they are. We want to be providing feedback and insights to everybody at all levels. We’ll be in a position to deliver this value through the athlete performance platform we are building in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic. Our platform will support athletes at all levels in acquiring their data – including real-time information – and consolidating it in one place from disparate sources, as well as obtaining the best insights around their bodies which will be powered by the Clinic. To that end, we’re currently working with the Clinic on codifying the combination of the world’s leading medical research and their institutional knowledge and expertise in areas like orthopedics, sports medicine, cardiology, pulmonology, exercise physiology, neurology, nutrition, psychology, pediatrics, endocrinology, women’s health, and genetics to help enhance the data we collect to support performance optimization, injury prediction and prevention, longevity, wellness, and strength training. Combined with our patented and other proprietary technologies and expertise in this space, we’ll be an exciting position to deliver novel value. Ultimately we’ll leverage AI in a variety of ways to help athletes optimize on nutrition, training, and performance throughout their careers through analysis of their data, and even fundamentally change how services like a second opinion are requested and provided. We don't see that being exclusive to professional athletes and believe all athletes at all levels should be able to use the same tools that the pros use to perform at their best.
When you talk about monetization of patient data at the election of the patient, something that I think about is so many people have used 23andMe, read through long terms and conditions without really reading it, checked a box, and then all of a sudden their genomic data is sold to pharmaceutical companies. How would you contrast what you're doing to something like that?
We’re deploying a completely different model. The current model today where I buy a technology, the technology company collects my data, uses my personal data to create products that they ultimately then sell back to me in one form or another isn’t a long-term sustainable model in our view. It views personal data not as your asset but as another organization’s asset to use, share and control. And this model limits its true value potential. We are building an ecosystem with our partners where your personal data – both identifiable and anonymized – can be used as a form of digital currency that you control. Our view is people will look at their collected data – the totality of the data set including their medical records, wearable sensor data, other data inputs – like they look at their house or another investment: as an asset with tremendous value that can be leveraged for personal use, sold, or transferred in exchange for something else. In the 23andMe model, you, as the individual, do not have control over your data and do not see any monetary compensation. Your data is basically on an auction block right now being treated as someone else’s asset. That doesn’t make sense to us. The goal should be to create larger data sets and incentivize people to want to provide organizations with access to more data. Our model is about putting the individual at the epicenter of their own data and having full control over how it's being used, including whether they want to sell it or not. In our model, the individual shares in the revenue generated from the distribution and monetization of their data. There’s a better model where data is more accessible, better and higher value products are created, and everyone wins. That’s what we’re creating.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
We've been going at this for a while now, and while we've had great successes, it has not been easy getting here. And I think that's the story of most founders I’ve come across. There is no guaranteed secret formula for success on the entrepreneurial journey as everyone’s experiences are different and there are so many variables – both controllable and uncontrollable – at play. However, as an entrepreneur, there are going to be lots of highs and lots of lows on your startup journey, as well as a lot of sacrifices. You’ll at some point have tough conversations with partners, employees, and investors. You’ll be told “no” a lot. You’ll need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. In my experiences, the ones that make it are the people that find a way to dig deep, push through, and continue to grind through the highs and lows. The successful entrepreneurs I’ve seen focus on the things they can control rather than the things they can’t. They are transparent, accountable, laser focused, and reliable. They can see what’s coming around the corner before everyone else. They pick the right team members early on – ones that propel the company forward rather than sink it. And most importantly, they have a mindset that they will not be outworked by anyone. They spend the extra time when no one else wants to. They are relentless in their pursuit of their goals. So if you start with that foundation, you’ll put yourself in a pretty good position to take a real run at whatever you’re pursuing.
Sports Data Labs is one of the CWRU-founded ventures in the CWRU Alumni Venture Fund portfolio.
This article was written by CWRU Alumni Venture Fund Fellow Kayla Klatt, MD-PhD student in the class of 2030.