This is a good list, but as others have said, is not the level of detail I'm talking about. Take the NBA for example. Let's look at this: http://toddwschneider

This is a good list, but as others have said, is not the level of detail I'm talking about. Take the NBA for example. Let's look at this: http://toddwschneider.com/posts/ballr-interactive-nba-shot-charts-with-r-and-shiny/ http://toddwschneider.com/posts/ballr-interactive-nba-shot-c... - this is able to give you super detailed analysis thanks to the NBA's stats API. The equivalent from Opta is thousands a year per competition. I was fortunate enough to get to play with detailed Opta data and ChyronHego data as part of a Man City hack day a couple of years ago. The latter data simply isn't commercially available. For cricket, you can do something interesting with ball by ball data, but ideally you want ball tracking data. You want to know speed of release, length, speed and movement after the ball has pitched, and speed after interaction with the batsman along with angles, etc. - and that's just to get started. Ideally you want positional data on fielders, etc. too. Don't get me wrong, this is a great starting set to get people interested, but there's a way to go for high-quality data being accessible to the hobbyist or academic researcher (although I believe Opta gives academics discounts to help make them "the" standard for clubs, etc.)