Sports data has become the backbone for the survival of many sportsbooks and media agencies. Managers and sports teams have also understood its importance and made it an integral part of strategizing process. The legalization of betting across most of the US will further make sports data providers even more essential for success to run in-game betting. The use of Sports data has been a proven way to improve fan engagement and eventually increase revenue.
Thus, the growth of the sports betting market and the huge potential it holds in the future has created a need for sports data providers and created a surge of new players in the market as well. While small companies are entering the soon-to-be saturated market with innovative offerings but many prominent players exist in the market as well. They are even the official partners for sports data with popular leagues like NBA, NFL.
Over the years they have evolved their data collection methods and stretched their coverage to take it global. But, what do Data providers do? In essence, they collect and distribute sports data to other businesses. But the differentiating factors are mostly the customized solutions and the extensive database they offer. Many even provide customizable widgets and offer a rich historic database along with add-on services like editorials and other visualization tools.
While all that would sound fancy, have you ever given a thought, to what would form as their core offerings, you need to be aware of them all before choosing the right sports data provider for the best sports data and content solutions. To save you time we have done some research on the subject and present to you some of the guiding points you need to know.
When you are aiming to be successful. You have to be perfect in every sense of the word. From your offerings to executions and your approach to the fans. This would evolve sports data too. Powered by sports APIs, sports data would be integrated into your platform which would then be presented to your customers. Thus, the sports data should not only be accurate but reliable as well.
Sports data providers have their own collecting mechanism in place as well as distribution so that they can offer real-time data with the least latency. While some companies rely on students and data journalists to collect the data while the games run live others have automated the process with active checking methods in place to offer reliable data.
Automation of tasks like collection of data has resulted in significantly faster deliveries which have improved the overall process as well from faster betting decisions to real-time data delivery to fantasy apps. Cutting-edge technology is being relied upon to further improve the data collection process from data collection video software to artificial-intelligence-driven technology to secure reliable sports data from popular leagues and make that available to sportsbooks and sports app or website operators.
The use of proper statistics and metrics would be another important factor you need to consider in your evaluation process, the kind of stats you need should match with what the sports data provider is offerings. Most of them would include the popularly demanded stats like live scores, fixtures and scores, line-ups, team standings, player and team stats, and individual historic player data. The list can be quite long as competitions and sports would be different and would require a different kind of data as well.
After accuracy, reliability, and content match comes data quality. One of the most important facts which could have an adverse effect on your business standing and credibility is if the quality of data is poor. When we say quality, we are talking about the completeness of data, and data consistency with no duplication or spurious data. It's the quality, accuracy, and relevancy that would define your offerings as well and would affect the success of your platform.
Now ultimately, the quality of data would also depend on your budget, naturally, if you are willing to pay a higher price you would get better quality of data while smaller sports data company could offer an affordable rate or even cheaper but the quality test would have to be done.
All the points above were focused on the attributes of data and price, now coming onto the integration and delivery aspect, flexible data formats and easy integration systems would make save you a lot of time. Across the industry, there are three data delivery formats used mainly XML, JSON, and CSV, you can choose between any of them. Just consider whether the format you use would allow you to seamlessly integrate data feeds into your existing systems using APIs and widgets which can be customized as per your need.
In the end, other things you could look at are predictive analytics, historic data availability, customer support system, package deals, and free trials. The best sports data feed providers that can be the ideal choice for you is Data Sports Group. We offer a vast sports catalog to choose from, and the use of cutting-edge technology enables us to deliver fast, accurate, reliable, top-notch quality data every time. With customizable Sports API packs and Widgets, we can help you achieve your goals.
