The business applications of this technology are massive. The Freakonomics blog post includes this example:
Consumption of beer, for example, varies greatly with the temperature. “For every 1 degree hotter it is, Anheuser-Busch sells 1 percent more product,” says Kirk. And since beer is often made and bottled months in advance, the sooner they can know how hot it will be in May, the sooner they can plan accordingly. Unlike a lot of professional predictors, WTI’s business model has a built-in incentive structure: “Our clients are making multi-million dollar decisions based on our forecasts. If we’re not right, they’re not coming back.”While the company features a clearly outdated website, they have recently launched WeatherTrends360 offering weather forecasts of up to one month in advance, for free. The Freakonomics blog states that a mobile app is on its way as well.
The connection to sports here is obvious. While it would be difficult to base an entire schedule of a sport mostly played outside on these predictions, it could assist in a big way with special events like the SuperBowl, hockey's Winter Classic, or MLB's All-Star Game.
With major business at stake for their clients, and a chance to earn terrific revenues from the value they're providing, I imagine that this isn't the last we'll here of WeatherTrends. It's also an example of how the many, many factors that are part of "sports" make it such an attractive market and easy fit for many up-and-coming technologies - or in this case, algorithms.
