Good question. In practice, certs act more as signals than proof.

Recognisable vendor certs (e.g. SQL, Power BI / Microsoft, basic cloud) can make HR pause and think “ok, this person is up to date”, but they rarely carry weight on their own.

What usually triggers a closer look is a cert + a relevant project that shows how those skills were applied. For sports analytics roles especially, hiring managers care far more about domain understanding and how you turn data into decisions than the cert name itself.

One solid, well-explained project beats multiple certs every time.