Football, the body that markets and matches data for the English Premier League and Football League in England and the Scottish Professional Football League, has appointed Digital Sports Media group Perform as their official and exclusive supplier of live data to the betting industry.
Beginning with the upcoming 2013/14 season, the three-year deal will mark the first time that a firm has been appointed to specifically collect and distribute live data feeds from the games exclusively for bookmakers.
Perform’s official data collectors will attend more than 3,000 matches and distribute data via bespoke hand-held personal digital assistants. Collectors will deliver up to 880 data points each match to bookmaker clients.
The move comes shortly after Perform agreed a deal to acquire Opta, the official media data collection and distribution partner for DataCo.
David Folker, general manager of DataCo, said: “We recognise the betting sector has very specific needs and speed and accuracy of data is critical to the success of their business. Perform has a very credible track record in providing high volumes of data in real time and has the scouting network and technical infrastructure to really deliver.”
Simon Denyer, joint-chief executive officer at Perform, added: “This is an extremely exciting development in the evolution of our content offering to the bookmaker sector. We have a number of exciting product developments in the pipeline for both bookmakers’ trading and consumer services that will further enhance their in-play offerings and we look forward to introducing them over the coming months.”
Perform already supplies a range of live data from events to the global betting sector through Runningball, a sports data provider that it acquired last year. The company also streams coverage of more than 16,000 live video events per year to over 40 bookmakers though the Watch&Bet and Watch&Trade services.
