CHICAGO – November 6, 2017 – STATS, the worldwide leader in sports data and intelligence, commissioned the Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to provide the industry’s first independent measurement study of live sports data feed services.
With technology and media partners in mind and its own standing at stake, STATS invested in an extensive data feed evaluation alongside two competitors – one North America-based and one Europe-based. The focus of the study was to create industry standard measurements around quality tied to the two core market requirements: accuracy and speed. STATS provides various tiers of data coverage for more than 600 leagues across 65-plus sports, and for the study Northwestern elected to focus on the NBA and English Premier League. Speed and accuracy were measured through 40 websites associated with one of the three providers from six locations across the globe.
STATS’ data feed reported the events of NBA games with 99.9 percent accuracy while competitors referred to in the study as P2 (93.3) and P3 (60.6) fell well short. For Premier League matches, the STATS data feed delivered 99.6 percent accuracy while P2 (66.5) and P3 (85.1) again reported far fewer events.
Given the comprehensive data media partners strive to provide fans across multiple points of access, it’s also imperative to deliver the data in as close to real-time as possible. While also delivering the highest level of accuracy, STATS’ reporting time for the Premier League was nearly twice as fast as P3. With Premier League results, STATS’ median end-to-end delay was 66.04 seconds. P3 clocked in nearly a minute later at 119.25. P2 was at 30.16, but with a drastically limited number of reported events, limiting the ability for customers to use the data effectively.
“Our technology and media customers rely on us to provide the fastest and most accurate in-game data,” said STATS CEO Kenneth Fuchs. “Until now there was no way of measuring how one provider’s assertions measure against another. Whether with our athlete-tracking solutions or data feeds, we’re making a continued point of investing in the objectively generated confirmation necessary to create industry standards and benchmarks. We’ve always prided ourselves on our quality at STATS – and now Northwestern’s independent study has validated what our clients already know when they test us head-to-head – STATS has the best solution when looking for depth, breadth, speed and accuracy in sports data.”
Northwestern’s “What’s the Score?”: A First Look at Sports Data Feed Services provides a more in-depth look into the study. For more on STATS cloud-based processing solution STATS Now, refer to STATS Data Feeds: How They Measure Up.