4 ms·

This is not new. Sports betting has been legal in most parts of the World for some time. Football data in Europe is so expensive, very good businesses like Opta

This is not new. Sports betting has been legal in most parts of the World for some time. Football data in Europe is so expensive, very good businesses like Opta can make a very nice living from it. Go get a quote for them for Premier League games alone: thousands a year for only some of the data. For years, people getting into sports analytics have done so via baseball (and the Sabremetrics community), and the NBA because the data has not been seen of commercial utility. It's been collected by fans. That will change dramatically, but it should be resisted. Leagues and players should embrace open data because it will in the long-term lead to analysis that helps them, but more importantly, fosters a deeper interest in their game and therefore makes their own careers more valuable.

Spooky23 8y ago
I think it will also discourage the type of cheating that is almost certainly coming with our society’s new, open embrace of gambling.
- eeeuo 8y ago
  This ... doesn't make a lot of sense. American athletes that matchfix will not be using American gambling sites that work heavily in tandem with the FBI. It would be an extremely dumb cheater that only began to cheat because they could conveniently bet on a site in a state that has jurisdiction over them.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    Most people generally don't have great opsec and forsight when committing crimes. I guarantee you or me would get caught in an attempted scheme because of a single mistake.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Insider trading happens all of the time, despite it being pretty easy for authorities to track down the participants when they care to do so. You don’t even have to match fix to alter behavior in a way that has a financial return for things like fantasy sports that are stat based.
    - eeeuo 8y ago
      I'm not suggesting that match fixing(or point shaving or spot fixing) does not happen. There's a mountain of evidence to the contrary. I just don't think there will be a massive increase because Americans sites allow gambling. Asian sites move billions of dollars a year in largely unregulated betting markets. Athletes that wanted to cheat could already do so in relative safety. They would be foolish to start cheating in a situation where both the likelihood of them being caught is increased and the consequences of them being caught is worse.
phillc73 8y ago
> Football data in Europe is so expensive Depending on which data you need, there are already some good sources of free football data.[1][2][3] Someone has also conveniently wrapped much of this in an R library.[4] Football is actually one of the better sports in terms of easily obtainable data at no cost. Rugby is much more difficult to find extensive datasets, although there are some interesting attempts.[5] Decent cricket data also exists in a few places[6], but generally requires faster and more regular updating. However, there are R libraries for cricket data too.[7] This one scrapes from the ESPN Cricinfo site. It is possible to obtain horse racing data for the UK and Ireland at a reasonable price, for personal use[8] and Hong Kong does a great job of making a huge volume of horse racing data available at no cost, but not in a particularly machine usable format (extensive scraping required). Sadly, other large racing jurisdictions such as Australia and the US don't have anything free, or even reasonably priced, as far as I'm aware. Ray Paulick has covered this as a general problem for the sport for a few years now.[9] [1]http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php [2]https://github.com/openfootball https://github.com/openfootball [3]https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData [4]https://github.com/dashee87/footballR https://github.com/dashee87/footballR [5]http://api.drop22.net/ http://api.drop22.net/ [6]https://cricsheet.org/ https://cricsheet.org/ [7]https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr [8]https://www.betwise.co.uk/ https://www.betwise.co.uk/ [9] https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse-racing-statistics-and-data-locked-away-from-most-players-and-fans/ https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse-rac...
- eeeuo 8y ago
  I would argue that almost all of that information in your post is stats not data. The type of data that people in this thread are talking about would be more in-line with detailed positional information about each of the players on a football pitch over 90 minutes. In a cricket context, it would be more along the lines of the exact release angle and speed for each of the bowlers. This type of information is clearly available, as Michael Caley is able to quickly generate xG maps for an entire game[1], but I do not believe it's public. Your [9] link points out that much more information is available to baseball betters, but even baseball has a significant walled garden in terms of data. For example, the raw data used to generate the stats in [2] is not open to the public. [1] https://twitter.com/caley_graphics https://twitter.com/caley_graphics [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk
psynapse 8y ago
Opta data cost is nothing compared to RunningBall (also part of the Perform group). RunningBall is all the real time data - you pretty much can't run an in-game book without it. It practically runs the in-game betting world.

Spooky23 8y ago

I think it will also discourage the type of cheating that is almost certainly coming with our society’s new, open embrace of gambling.

eeeuo 8y ago
This ... doesn't make a lot of sense. American athletes that matchfix will not be using American gambling sites that work heavily in tandem with the FBI. It would be an extremely dumb cheater that only began to cheat because they could conveniently bet on a site in a state that has jurisdiction over them.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Most people generally don't have great opsec and forsight when committing crimes. I guarantee you or me would get caught in an attempted scheme because of a single mistake.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Insider trading happens all of the time, despite it being pretty easy for authorities to track down the participants when they care to do so. You don’t even have to match fix to alter behavior in a way that has a financial return for things like fantasy sports that are stat based.
  - eeeuo 8y ago
    I'm not suggesting that match fixing(or point shaving or spot fixing) does not happen. There's a mountain of evidence to the contrary. I just don't think there will be a massive increase because Americans sites allow gambling. Asian sites move billions of dollars a year in largely unregulated betting markets. Athletes that wanted to cheat could already do so in relative safety. They would be foolish to start cheating in a situation where both the likelihood of them being caught is increased and the consequences of them being caught is worse.

phillc73 8y ago

> Football data in Europe is so expensive Depending on which data you need, there are already some good sources of free football data.[1][2][3] Someone has also conveniently wrapped much of this in an R library.[4] Football is actually one of the better sports in terms of easily obtainable data at no cost. Rugby is much more difficult to find extensive datasets, although there are some interesting attempts.[5] Decent cricket data also exists in a few places[6], but generally requires faster and more regular updating. However, there are R libraries for cricket data too.[7] This one scrapes from the ESPN Cricinfo site. It is possible to obtain horse racing data for the UK and Ireland at a reasonable price, for personal use[8] and Hong Kong does a great job of making a huge volume of horse racing data available at no cost, but not in a particularly machine usable format (extensive scraping required). Sadly, other large racing jurisdictions such as Australia and the US don't have anything free, or even reasonably priced, as far as I'm aware. Ray Paulick has covered this as a general problem for the sport for a few years now.[9] [1]http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php [2]https://github.com/openfootball https://github.com/openfootball [3]https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData [4]https://github.com/dashee87/footballR https://github.com/dashee87/footballR [5]http://api.drop22.net/ http://api.drop22.net/ [6]https://cricsheet.org/ https://cricsheet.org/ [7]https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr [8]https://www.betwise.co.uk/ https://www.betwise.co.uk/ [9] https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse-racing-statistics-and-data-locked-away-from-most-players-and-fans/ https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse-rac...

eeeuo 8y ago
I would argue that almost all of that information in your post is stats not data. The type of data that people in this thread are talking about would be more in-line with detailed positional information about each of the players on a football pitch over 90 minutes. In a cricket context, it would be more along the lines of the exact release angle and speed for each of the bowlers. This type of information is clearly available, as Michael Caley is able to quickly generate xG maps for an entire game[1], but I do not believe it's public. Your [9] link points out that much more information is available to baseball betters, but even baseball has a significant walled garden in terms of data. For example, the raw data used to generate the stats in [2] is not open to the public. [1] https://twitter.com/caley_graphics https://twitter.com/caley_graphics [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk

psynapse 8y ago

Opta data cost is nothing compared to RunningBall (also part of the Perform group). RunningBall is all the real time data - you pretty much can't run an in-game book without it. It practically runs the in-game betting world.