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How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:08 am
by slipstream
If you are creating a website to track sports statistics for players like an online pool. Where would you go and how would you access individual stats for players? Is there a central stat location that gives you access for players?

Re: How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:02 pm
by papa
I think you have to speak to the leading organisation for that sport.

Re: How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:14 pm
by onion2k
papa wrote:I think you have to speak to the leading organisation for that sport.
And have your chequebook handy. Or checkbook if you're American.

Re: How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:08 am
by slipstream
Really?

So even free sites like hockeydb.com pay a lot of money for everyone to use it free? wow..

Re: How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:15 am
by papa
slipstream wrote:Really?

So even free sites like hockeydb.com pay a lot of money for everyone to use it free? wow..
No but common sence:
http://hockeydb.com/copyright.html

That site is done by a guy that has it as an interest. But look up the sport you want to do (hockey I guess) and then speak to the admins on those sites you find that is relevant.

Re: How would you access sports stats?

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:24 am
by onion2k
slipstream wrote:So even free sites like hockeydb.com pay a lot of money for everyone to use it free? wow..
There's 4 possibilities:

1. The stats are available for free from somewhere. It'd be up to you to find where. If they are then it's like there'll be some instructions about how to access them from a language like PHP.

2. They pay for the stats. It's very likely they do. It's a perfectly reasonable business cost, and so long as the cost of the stats is less than the revenue the site makes from adverts/fees it's easy to justify paying.

3. They enter the stats manually. Again, very possible, but very time consuming if you don't have lots of willing volunteers. Also potentially illegal if the stats are copyrighted to a company that runs the sport.

4. They steal the stats. They might be scrapping the HTML of another website, or have found a way to access a data feed they're meant to have paid for. It's a very bad idea in the long term because it is at least copyright infringement and at worst theft.

In fact, that hockeydb.com site tells you where they source the stats from ... http://www.hockeydb.com/credits.html ... it sounds like one guy is putting in a HUGE amount of work collating them all.