Meet Meghan Chayka, a diehard Bills fan and ‘perennial nerd’ with a passion for sports analytics

Meghan Chayka is a marvel with data and analytics, particularly in how those elements mesh into the game of hockey.

She’s a co-founder and CEO of Stathletes, an analytics company that tracks and distributes data to hockey leagues across the world to help maximize performance.

She’s also a professed and proud member of Bills Mafia.

Chayka endeared herself to the Bills’ fan base in July, when she was an analyst on ESPN’s broadcast of the NHL draft. As Chayka discussed the Buffalo Sabres’ first-round selection of Jiri Kulich with the broadcast panel, she sent well wishes to Sabres co-owner Kim Pegula, who continues to recover from an undisclosed illness.

Then, she made a bold – and popular – declaration.

“I think the Buffalo Sabres are an amazing organization, and I think the Buffalo Bills are going to win the Super Bowl,” she said during the broadcast.

People are also reading…

She didn’t say it simply to curry favor. Chayka grew up in Jordan, Ont., just west of St. Catharines, Ont., and Sundays in the Chayka house have been reserved for the Bills, led by her father, Terry, who also is an avid Bills fan.

“We grew up in a house consumed by sports,” Chayka said. “That was on the docket, every week.”

Chayka spoke with The Buffalo News earlier this summer about how she became a Bills fan, how she’s become a leader in sports analytics and if, in fact, she stands by her nationally televised declaration that the Bills will win the Super Bowl.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Buffalo News: You’re from the Niagara region of Ontario, so how did you become a Bills fan?

Meghan Chayka: I wasn’t old enough to remember the early 1990s, but my dad was a Bills fan. You’re a fan of the Toronto teams and the Bills and maybe the Sabres, but I grew up following the NFL. Even in analytics, Mike Lopez, who’s the NFL’s director of football data and analytics, I follow him and greatly admire him, and I always keep an eye on what happens in American football. It’s such a major following – the fandom, the sportsbooks, engagement, it’s such a massive sport and there are so many leagues that draw inspiration from it.

TBN: What is the first memory you have of a Bills game?

Chayka: It was just that it was a part of the rotation in our house. It was one of the teams I followed or talked about or heard people talk about. Southern Ontario is way more of a hotbed for religious Bills fans. They’ll watch it at someone’s house or make the same meal each week for the games. There’s a lot of things Canadians do for the Bills. It was a given to be a Bills fan.

A recent thing stands out to me. I did a media training day with the rookies at a Bills camp four or five years ago (at Highmark Stadium). We went on the field, I went into the press conferences and got the whole tour and spent the two days there. Laura Okmin, who oversees GALvanize (a media training and mentoring program for women in sports), I worked with her and said, “Do you think this will benefit me?” She was like “Come on down!” I got to see behind the scenes and helped improve my skills on the business side, so it was such a great experience.

TBN: You’re known for being an analytics guru of sorts in hockey. Have you always been mathematically inclined? Or is that just a part of what you do in analytics?

Chayka: Yes! Growing up, I always loved math and stats and took more of the quantitative side of economics and finance. I’m a data scientist in residence at the University of Toronto. I love the intersection of sports and tech and data. Going back to the NFL, Mike Lopez does the Big Data Bowl, and I’ve done the Big Data Cup, releasing women’s hockey data so people can work with it, and added that for women’s hockey. There was a lot of excitement about that. I’m a perennial nerd, but I want to give back, whether it’s teaching or working alongside other people to make various things, like the Big Data Cup, possible, so that young analysts can get their start and maybe get hired by a team.

TBN: What is the biggest misconception regarding analytics in sports? Conversely, how does it help teams, players, organizations, get closer to maximizing potential and effort and strategy?

Chayka: That’s a hard question, sometimes people think it’s simpler than it is, or more complex than what it is. It’s like another field. More data is always a good thing. More understanding about what’s going on, on a project or on the ice. Sometimes there’s pushback from more of the old guard but I don’t see that anymore in sports. When we started Stathletes, we saw more hesitancy, like the scouts in “Moneyball.” But if you use different technologies to improve processes, and data is weaved into it, there’s more compelling cases for accuracy and efficiency, and building smarter, and better departments we can use, for fan engagement and media, and help open a better understanding of a sport.

It’s more of the process: understanding a data perspective of what’s going on with players and communicating that and making decisions from that. We’re seeing leagues and other entities, like media or sports books, looking for more data content and being driven by it. It’s not just someone’s opinion. It’s very consumable and very fan-friendly. I see it becoming more ingrained in sports.

It’s an evolution. You don’t stop and say, “We have enough data, so we understand it.”

TBN: You didn’t get your start in sports, though. You worked with John Deere and in the corporate world, so how did you find your way into sports analytics?

Chayka: The industry takes you where you have interest and impact. I wanted to understand how Fortune 500 companies work, and started a startup, so I had a lot of different industry experiences and I understood how to build a business and had that experience.

When you’re smaller, you can be nimble and structure a company to see what’s more efficient. I learned the way I liked to work, and I like new challenges and risk, and I’m a good profile for an entrepreneur. I won some competitions and awards on business plans, so I was inclined to do that, and it was a building process. It was combining opportunities, and I saw that 13-14 years ago there wasn’t data for hockey. I saw that window of opportunity and had a great team that helped me reach that level, and I’m so humbled that’s how my career took me.

My career took me in the direction of sports, tech and hockey, and I’ve met so many people and I’m so happy this is where my career took me.

TBN: Is this something you’d want to do in football? Have you offered analytics advice to the Bills? Or are you sticking to hockey, where you have a strong niche?

Chayka: We’re definitely very focused on hockey and international work (at Stathletes). We’re focused on making hockey better, but I have conversations with all sorts of people in the NFL and MLB and NBA and there’s a lot of cross-pollination that happens. It’s not my goal to work in other sports. I want to build Stathletes into what we want as a company. But sharing best practices is something we do.

TBN: About the ESPN broadcast of the NHL draft. Did you expect or plan to give a shoutout to the Bills and predict they were going to win the Super Bowl?

Chayka: It was totally off the cuff! Go Bills!

TBN: Have you crunched the numbers on the probabilities of the Bills winning the Super Bowl this year?

Chayka: I’ve definitely seen the odds, and they’re No. 1 in the sports books.  

You are never 100 percent, but this has to be one of the best years in 20 years to give Bills fans a ton of excitement. I’m really looking forward to it. You can’t get a better feeling when you know you’re going in and having such a contending team, have a great quarterback and so many key players in so many positions.

Bills games are always such a fun experience, and the fans are next level. I took friends from the United Kingdom to a game – a lawyer and an actuary – and they said “Well, this is an experience.” It was everything about what was outside of the stadium. The general fandom, you can’t describe it. They have a bit of that in (United Kingdom) soccer, where you’re part of a pack. Extreme engagement in the NFL, too, and it goes to the in-person experience.

Feed your obsession. Start every morning with a guide to the latest news from One Bills Drive and stay informed about what is going on elsewhere in the NFL.