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I currently use sportradar. People will definitely use a sports data API -- but you would have to beat sportradar somewhere (either on developer experience, pri

I currently use sportradar. People will definitely use a sports data API -- but you would have to beat sportradar somewhere (either on developer experience, price, accuracy, feature set, number of sports covered, etc...) to make a viable business out of it.

romellogoodman 10y ago
That's what I was thinking. The easiest way to beat them would be price and developer experience. The price tag of the data is a little pricey and the docs seem hard to understand. What are the biggest short comings you've found with the service?
- AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
  You probably won't beat them for B2B. The service is good but not great, but the switching costs are too high that even if your service was better in some way you wouldn't win any customers. They're competent and get the job done and with B2B if you have an existing foothold that's normally enough. The service is definitely too expensive, the data is occasionally wrong and I have to hound them to fix it, and the developer experience is surely lacking, but at the end of the day a working JSON API of sports data is a working JSON API of sports data, all the other stuff is just noise. The proper way to beat sportradar would be to find a way to pursue a B2C model instead of a B2B model. i.e. instead of 3k a month to license the data if there was some way to pay $25/month for a similar experience you might be able to capture a much larger market share that sportradar prices out. If you could get college kids hacking on sports stats to use your service because it's the only thing they can afford you might be able to grow that into something.
  - romellogoodman 10y ago
    Yeah thats what I was thinking, a very low entry point. I don't see any problems associated with only charging $15-25/month to access the data. One thing that I have been wondering is, how do I get away with using the data without the leagues intervening? Or do they not own the data because the stats are publicly accessible
    - AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
      You can use the stats without the league's permission for sure. Check out http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html if you want the actual legal grounds for why you can use stats.

romellogoodman 10y ago

That's what I was thinking. The easiest way to beat them would be price and developer experience. The price tag of the data is a little pricey and the docs seem hard to understand. What are the biggest short comings you've found with the service?

AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
You probably won't beat them for B2B. The service is good but not great, but the switching costs are too high that even if your service was better in some way you wouldn't win any customers. They're competent and get the job done and with B2B if you have an existing foothold that's normally enough. The service is definitely too expensive, the data is occasionally wrong and I have to hound them to fix it, and the developer experience is surely lacking, but at the end of the day a working JSON API of sports data is a working JSON API of sports data, all the other stuff is just noise. The proper way to beat sportradar would be to find a way to pursue a B2C model instead of a B2B model. i.e. instead of 3k a month to license the data if there was some way to pay $25/month for a similar experience you might be able to capture a much larger market share that sportradar prices out. If you could get college kids hacking on sports stats to use your service because it's the only thing they can afford you might be able to grow that into something.
- romellogoodman 10y ago
  Yeah thats what I was thinking, a very low entry point. I don't see any problems associated with only charging $15-25/month to access the data. One thing that I have been wondering is, how do I get away with using the data without the leagues intervening? Or do they not own the data because the stats are publicly accessible
  - AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
    You can use the stats without the league's permission for sure. Check out http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/nba.html if you want the actual legal grounds for why you can use stats.