Sports technology giants Hudl are closing in on a deal to buy football analytics company StatsBomb, The Athletic understands.
Hudl is one of the leading performance analytics platforms in football and aims to become a one-stop shop for data, video and analytics services.
The Nebraska-based company acquired video platforms Wyscout and Instat in 2019 and 2022, with the former having dominated the video analytics market for more than a decade.
StatsBomb was founded in 2016 by Charlotte Randall and Ted Knutson, who was previously head of player analysis at Brentford and FC Midtjylland, then owned by Smartodds founder Matthew Benham.
Knutson told X last week that the company’s annual revenue has risen to £10m, but it is understood a board vote decided this was an optimal time to sell the business.
The acquisition of StatsBomb is understood to be motivated by Hudl’s desire to expand its offering to customers. Hudl did not respond when asked for comment by The Athletic.
Just like technology company Apple has single sign-on access to sync multiple products or devices, Hudl offers a similarly diverse range of products to performance analysts to help them optimize their workflow under one umbrella. The challenge they face is that many performance analysts have developed strong relationships with competitors who have earned a reputation as leaders in that corner of the market, where a multi-product approach is often preferred.
StatsBomb’s Egypt-based data collection operation is widely regarded as one of the best engineering in the industry, but their ability to power media products has been limited as they do not currently provide their full data set live .
StatsBomb analysis at its Cairo analysis center (Photo: StatsBomb)
Positioned as a premium brand, the launch of the StatsBomb 360 product in 2021, which added teammate and opponent locations to the 3,400 events collected per match, saw Liverpool become a partner in 2021 and propelled the company into the mainstream. .
Michael Edwards (then Director of Sport), Ian Graham (then Director of Research) and William Spearman (then Chief Data Scientist) integrated the product into their scouting and analysis structures and Statsbomb now provides comprehensive coverage of over 100 football competitions across everyone. the world.
It extends all the way to the National League (fifth tier) in the English pyramid: around three-quarters of Premier League and Championship teams use the service, as do two-thirds of MLS clubs.
An attraction for Hudl is that StatsBomb offers the possibility of replicating its platform in other sports.
StatsBomb launched a football product in June 2022, applying lessons learned from years of experimentation in football to establish a college sports database that boasts tens of thousands of players.
While it hasn’t grown at the rate expected, its entry into the sport offered proof of concept to Hudl, which has more than 200,000 users across more than 40 sports.
Some industry experts, who speak anonymously to protect relationships, have expressed concern that this latest agreement could stifle innovation. Others wonder if this move will see more major clubs move to build in-house products after long resisting the costs involved, unlike Brighton and Brentford, which can freely integrate the existing infrastructure of their owners’ betting companies. .
Brentford and Brighton have taken advantage of analytics in their promotion to the Premier League (Chloe Knott – Danehouse//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
Arsenal remain one of the only clubs to have taken this step when they bought and absorbed analytics company StatDNA into their decision-making process in 2012.
(Header photo: StatsBomb)
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