Sports data giant Stats buys Bloomberg Sports

STATS was recently sold by Fox Sports and the Associated Press to the SF-based private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners. The rumored sale price was around $200M.

We work with STATS data daily and their products are excellent, albeit very expensive.

I can't wait for the day when sports statistics are easily accessible to amateurs. I'd rather not illegally scrape basketball-reference and just pay somebody to get an api.

STATS is the company behind SportVU, and one of the fastest growing sports analytics outfits out there. Despite knowing this, it still surprised me to see them grab Bloomberg sports, particularly since Bloomberg only created that business four years ago. I see this as a kind of acquiescence. They couldn't see themselves challenging STATS, so they may as well may a few bucks off of what they had created.

I think this also speaks to the network effects of entering into contracts with a large number of sports franchises. At a certain point, if a number of teams are benefiting from your analytics, everyone else is going to want them as well. When it comes to sports statistics, the last teams to adopt are often the most tradition bound and least advanced in terms of metrics. They're also the last teams who would try an up-and-comer without having had major upheaval in their ownership or front office situation. Rather, they'll run with what seems to be working elsewhere, and probably half-ass the implementation.

Why do they make it so difficult to access the data? There's a single page with a couple paragraphs about the API but nothing more. I'm assuming you have to pay some money, but it doesn't say how or how much!