By Paul Nicholson
May 6 – US sports data specialists STATS LLC has continued on the acquisition trail with the addition of UK-based Prozone, specialists in game and player performance tracking. Last September STATS acquired Bloomberg Sports. The enhanced capabilities of the group will lead to new product, and potentially real time stats for football clubs, ‘moneyball’ style.
The Prozone acquisition fills in a significant gap in the STATS portfolio. Gary Walrath, CEO of STATS, said: “This deal has been a long time coming…STATS has been a market leader in analytics for a while in the major US team sports like American Football and the NBA. Prozone brings us strength in the soccer markets.”
STATS has ambition to be market leader in what Walrath calls the “Big 9 sports”, seven of them are team sports and with the Prozone acquisition STATS has a significant lead in five of the seven team sports (American Football, baseball, basketball, ice-hockey and soccer).
Prozone also fills in the gaps geographically for STATS. “A motivation for this deal was also the remarkable and complimentary geographical strength of Prozone,” said Walrath.
Prozone’s core markets are the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany and South Africa, markets where STATS have less depth.
While the STATS and Prozone are in the same data analysis business, they have differing product sets. STATS has media expertise and powerful real-time data driving content and textual analytics, while Prozone focuses on tracking player performance to provide analytics that will give clubs a competitive advantage.
It is the adding together of the real time data capabilities and player tracking analytics that starts to push the boundaries of new product possibilities. Bloomberg Sports pioneered this area with its market-leading products for baseball.
“Combining the media strengths and real time data of STATS, and our expertise in dealing with coaches, players, and technical staff is what makes this a great match,” said Ryan Patterson, managing director of Prozone. Prozone has a database of more than 100,000 players, and it captures proprietary data from over 12,000 sporting events a year.
No figures have been released for the value of the deal that was financed via STATS’ private equity owners Vista Equity Partners, a US-based firm with more than $14 billion in capital commitments. Vista focuses its investment in software, data and technology-based organisations.
The impression is that STATS is on a roll and, with Vista prepared to bankroll expansion, it wants to move fast. Further acquisitions in the sector could be on the cards as STATS flexes its new found muscle.
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