official data

Jakub Myszkorowski, STATSCORE: How sports organisations can increase profits through official data

Let’s start with an obvious truth. Diversifying incomes has to follow both changes to technology and the evolution of customer demands. This is the only way that organisations, in any walk of life, can remain profitable by answering to the market’s needs. 

Now, unsurprisingly, sports leagues and organisations fall under the same rules. This has, naturally, forced a change in their approach to official data over the last decade.

When you look at the history of sport, it is quite easy to spot the game changing moment. Popularisation of TV and the access to sports for all that wished to watch games but did not fancy going to the stadiums or lived too far away. This was the first step. 

The second step came with the personalisation of this experience, which was an effect of changing access to the home entertainment from one TV set that gathered whole families to smaller screens from individual devices (PC, laptop, mobile). 

This process did impact the idea of watching a game together, but also allowed everyone to gain almost uninterrupted access to sports events from all over the world, and for an unlimited time. 

As a result of these two key steps, sports organisations have been rewarded with an unforeseen level of income driven by the official TV rights contracts. 

Just imagine that the worth of English Premier League (EPL) TV rights for just three years (2019-22) is almost €5 billion! At the same time, BT Sport has to pay more than €400 million per season for the right to broadcast UEFA Champions League. 

This is quite a serious amount to share with the clubs and yet still, it leaves the organisation with enough additional resources to keep on rising and winning an interest in more markets. 

Of course, EPL or UEFA Champions League make for great examples as they remain far ahead of the competition in terms of generated turnover from the official rights, but the model is common for all the sports competitions all over the world. 

Once the professional leagues learned how to earn from making their footage available to the market, they realised that there is far more to offer. And the first obvious choice is the official sports data, which consists of live scores and sophisticated performance stats. 

The first demand was to collect both of these types of data in an organised and methodological way that allows it to be fast, accurate and unified for all games. Since the leagues did not have the proper resources to do so, they invited professional organisations to come into the game to secure these solutions. Enter STATSCORE

The Katowice based company now provides official stats for PGNiG Superliga, Slovnaft Handball Extraliga, Polska Hokej Liga and Futsal Ekstraklasa. The official data contracts stipulate that no other scouts other than those certified by the league can enter the venues to collect the stats. 

OK, so once you have the stats what’s next? Do you end up happy to display these statistics on the TV? Well, it would be such a waste of great data to limit it only to this one use. Especially, when you realise that the data is the Holy Grail for betting. 

Today you can not imagine offering odds for any of the top competitions without using the official stats, which you can get access to only via the official providers. This is how the shortcut from the professional sport to betting is built as they speak the common language of statistics. 

Once the betting organisations access the official data, they get the assurance that they have the fastest and the most accurate stats, which is reflected in their odds quality. This is a must-have to make sure that the fans are served with better and more engaging tools.

Official data also delivers a tempting offer for all kinds of fantasy games for desktop and mobiles. Since many of the sports organisations still need guidance in handling their relationship with this type of data users, STATSCORE offers our expertise and know-how to help professional leagues secure their rights and build successful cooperation with external partners.

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