Edition 07: Modern Sports Data

Where does it come from and who are the major players?

Aug 02, 2021

Hey all! Good morning and welcome to another Monday AM edition of The Handle! This week, we wanted to take a deep dive into the various places to find sports data, both to show our readers where they can go for various sports to find the best data, and to illuminate just how massive the landscape has truly become.

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Sports data has taken leaps and bounds from the printed box score era. Now, there are live data providers, data analysis sites, and data consulting firms.

We are going to focus on a few different types of data, but it’s truly impossible to show how far the industry has come in just a short newsletter. The first type of data we are going to focus on is the “official” live data. These are the companies licensed by the professional leagues to provide third-party data to sportsbooks and pay handsomely for that right. They are worth billions of dollars, and the exclusive partnerships they have make live wagering possible. Also, we are going to look at more fan-oriented data. This data is provided in either a free or paid format for fans who are hoping to go beyond just the box score. Often, fans can use this data to better inform their betting, even if publicly available data itself is not enough to beat the market. Note, while box scores are valuable, we are going to focus on advanced sources of data that are still relatively accessible for fans, rather than box scores that are obtained from ESPN and are not easily transformed from observation to conclusion.

With that intro, let’s dive into the biggest names in providing official league data.

League Official Data

Sportradar is a global sports data and broadcast solutions company based out of Switzerland. The company, founded by CEO Carsten Koerl, called off its potential SPAC deal with LA Dodgers minority owner Todd Boehly’s SPAC Horizon Acquisition Corp II in June 2021 (would have valued at $10B) and is currently exploring an IPO. Sportradar is the exclusive provider for MLB, NHL, UEFA, and Nascar data, as well as officially providing real-time data for the NBA. The company’s API is a data source for both player movement tracking data and box scores for a multitude of partners including CBS Sports, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Draftkings, Fanduel, and Yahoo Sports.

Sportradar has acquired a few companies in 2021, most prominently Synergy Sports, to bolster their data intelligence and tech stack. Synergy is the definitive market leader in video and data analytics within basketball around the globe with their FIBA partnership and within the U.S. collegiate and professional basketball ecosystem. Over 90% of NCAA D1 baseball utilizes Synergy’s software as well. Just last week, Sportradar partnered with Bally’s Corp. in a five-year partnership allowing Bally’s to access sportsbook technology and proprietary league data.

U.K. sports betting-data firm Genius Sports Group ($GENI) went public on the NYSE in April 2021 via SPAC (dMY Technology Group II), and is currently trading at a ~$3B market cap. Genius distributes live-play data to a variety of different partners including the NFL, PGA Tour, and English Premier League. In May 2021, Genius Sports purchased Second Spectrum in a $200M deal to bolster their AI tracking and enhance end-to-end real-time data insights. A week prior in early May, Genius Sports also purchased FanHub to expand their free-to-play (F2P) offerings. These F2P offerings allow Genius to boost the interactive nature of their sports betting footprint and tailor marketing and promotional campaigns to allow users to get the most out of their viewing and fan experience. Both the FanHub & Second Spectrum deals come within two weeks of 2020 earnings results, where the company announced a $30.3M net loss as revenue increased 30.6% YoY to ~$150M. On April 6th, 2021, Genius Sports replaced Sportradar as the NFL’s exclusive official data provider in a massive long-term deal ($120M annually over 6 years).

The newly agreed-upon deal represents a 6x annual increase from Sportradar’s $20M annual agreement with the NFL and subsequently, a sizable hike in the fee charged to operators pre-match and in-play revenues. Genius Sports is asking for 4% of pre-match revenues and 6% of in-play revenues, in comparison to Sportradar’s previous asking price of 1.5%. Many states, as well as official partners of the league and teams, require the use of official league data, so there has been pushback and outcry over the perceived monopolistic characteristics of Genius’ negotiation tactics.

Stats Perform (formerly Stats, LCC and STATS, Inc.) is a sports data collection and content company leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to help fans, teams, and leagues enhance and innovate the sporting experience. In 2019, STATS merged with Perform Content following its sale to Vista Equity expanding its event coverage and reach. Stats Perform has long-term partnerships in place with many leagues including the Premier League, WTA, FIBA, La Liga, and AELTC. Stats Perform has been shifting alongside the industry by leveraging its longstanding history in data analytics to remain uniquely positioned to changes in consumer behavior. Traditionally a B2B business, SP has been eyeing media and fan engagement attempting to leverage their AI technology to focus efforts on the holistic game experience. SP is able to tell data-driven stories utilizing their event data, Opta data, and tracking data. Stats Perform is aligning with the rapidly growing presence of sports betting in the general sports ecosystem, with partnerships including William Hill & Bet 365.

Now, a casual fan likely won’t interact with the above firms, even if they have heard of them and some products they use are utilizing their data collection. Below, we are going to focus on firms accessible to the casual fan or bettor that can be used to augment models, become more informed, and enable a deeper understanding of the relevant sport.

Fan Focused Data

Kenpom: Ken Pomeroy really started it all with modern CBB analytics. He began building his site and publicizing his work in graduate school at the University of Wyoming in the late 1990s. At the end of the 2003-04 season, Ken began producing a more modern version of rating with components on both sides of the ball which is featured prominently on his site currently. Coaches began utilizing Kenpom, adding credibility and notoriety to his site including Brad Steven’s during Butler’s run to the 2010 Final Four and leading to a Kenpom feature in the New York Times. He’s created a proprietary algorithm based on the Pythagorean calculation for expected winning percentage.

Kenpom.com is a simple site containing stats focusing on offensive and defensive efficiency while factoring in strength of schedule. Word on the street is most books just copy his projections for their CBB openers, so no pressure KenPom.

Here's an ESPN story about KenPom's profound influence on the CBB betting market.

Pro Football Focus: PFF was founded in England by Neil Hornsby in the mid-2000s. Cris Collinsworth discovered PFF while doing research and was so impressed with the breadth of knowledge and analysis that he purchased the majority share of PFF within a month of finding the site. In 2009, Hornsby was contacted by the NY Giants Director of Analytics looking to work with PFF data to track player participation and the company took off from there. Customized data and statistical analysis began to trickle their way into the football ecosystem on all fronts, ranging from NCAA D1 games to NFL games

What makes PFF so unique is that every player on every play of every game is tracked and charted, with grades then applied to utilize standard criteria. Each player is given a grade of -2 to +2 in 0.5 increments, with 0 being the average grade. These grades allow PFF’s 600+ full and part-time analysts to compare players and assess performance accurately given content and taking into account process and other external factors on any given play. PFF has an understanding that no two plays are created equal, so the grades are based on the development of the play itself rather than strictly the result. Pro Football focus churns out articles via premium and free content, ranging from sports betting, fantasy, DFS, draft, collegiate, and other NFL pieces. PFF is generally thought of as the gold standard for football analytics content.

Stathead and parent company Sports Reference LLC have reliable and prominent subsidiaries across multiple sports, including Pro Football Reference, Basketball Reference, and more. These tools offer a look back into traditional box scores and advanced stat history of various sports empowering anybody to deeper comprehend games they love.

Pro-Football-Reference is a one-stop shop for historical football data, with team and individual box scores dating back to the 1920 APFA season. Essentially the football almanac.

Basketball-Reference is a one-stop shop for all historical basketball data, dating back to the 1946 BAA season’s statistical records.

nflfastR: If you wanna learn to code, there is endless data available here that you can use to make your own models and do your own analysis. There is even a tutorial created by Ben Baldwin on how to get started with R located here. Nothing is more powerful than having the data at your fingertips and being able to find the answer to any question you have yourself.

FanGraphs: FanGraphs spearheads making advanced baseball analytics available to fans. Now, people have different opinions about the impact of analytics on baseball (I hate the three true outcomes), but FanGraphs is the place to go to understand how your favorite team is stacking up in the current era of baseball.

HockeyViz: HockeyViz is the center of the hockey analytics universe. It gives you easy access to advanced analytics, predictive models, and beautiful visualizations. They even have specific team breakdowns to get a sense of how your favorite team is performing.

Data Golf: Datagolf is the pinnacle of sports golf data. It has predictive models as well as the ability to build your own tools from scratch. Through statistics such as strokes gained, you can greatly improve your understanding of the game of golf.

Team Focused Data

Stats Bomb: Stats Bomb is probably the highest quality of work you can find out there right now. The majority is non-public and focused on soccer. Teams in the highest level of soccer use Stats Bomb to help gain the smallest of edges and are willing to pay handsomely for that privilege. Stats Bomb is looking to expand into other sports, so be on the lookout for any future work from them. They also offer paid packages for data for predictive modeling

Conclusion

It’s clear that this industry is still in its infancy. Tracking data for many sports is still not publicly available and, when it is, exists in an extremely rudimentary form. Many fans still think of passer rating as the gold standard for QB evaluation, and in all sports, fans and broadcasters have a significant amount of trouble moving away from ~shudder~ volume-based stats. Understanding data and analytics on a more nuanced process-driven level is key to evaluating individual and team performance going forward. And we’re just barely reaching the tip of the iceberg.

As fans and bettors, we encourage you to find the best data and understand it, even if you are not modeling outcomes. It helps even a casual bettor understand what variables matter and what is purely noise. It even has helped me optimize my gameplay in Madden. If we missed any big data players in your favorite sport, feel free to give us a shout! Here’s to being more informed fans and bettors!

Miscellaneous Recent Consumption:

Sports Data Resources
- Brendan Kent, formerly of Draftkings and the Portland Timbers, is the host of the Measurables Podcast. He has had many reputable and informative episodes with guests in the sports analytics industry, definitely check him out!