Opta Sports, formerly Opta Sportsdata, is a British sports analytics company. Opta provides data for 30 sports in 70 countries, with clients ranging from leagues to broadcasters and betting websites. The company was founded in 1996, and acquired by

Perform Group DAZN Group Limited (formerly Perform Group) is a British sports media company owned by Access Industries. Its flagship property is DAZN, a global sports subscription streaming platform. It also owns a significant minority stake in the leading f ...

in 2013. In turn, it was acquired by

Vista Equity Partners Vista Equity Partners is an American investment firm focused on financing and forwarding software, data, and technology-enabled startup businesses. Vista has invested in hundreds of companies, including Misys, Ping Identity, and Marketo. The ...

and STATS LLC in 2019.

History

Opta Index Limited was founded in 1996 to analyze

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...

football matches and was contracted by

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

for their television broadcasts of the 1996–97 season. The following season, Opta became the official statistics provider for the league itself and became sponsored by Carling. In June 1999, Opta was acquired by internet betting service Sports Internet Group for £3.9 million. BSkyB acquired the Sports Internet Group in 2000 and sold Opta to Sportingstatz Limited, a data service co-founded by Aidan Cooney. Opta debuted its current real-time data collection process for football matches in 2006, leading to an expansion in new data offerings across different sports. In 2011, the company entered the US market when it opened an office in New York and partnered with Major League Soccer. The company was sold to

in 2013 for £40 million. Perform, in turn, spun out its sports data business in 2018 and sold it to

in 2019, merging it with STATS LLC to form

Stats Perform Stats Perform (formerly STATS, LLC and STATS, Inc.) is a sports data and analytics company formed through the combination of Stats and Perform. The company is involved in sports data collection and predictive analysis for use across various spo ...

Clients

Opta data is used in the betting industry, the print and online media, sponsorship, broadcasting and professional performance analysis. Clients include

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

, Arsenal F.C., Oulala Fantasy Football,

The All Blacks The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987, ...

Manchester City F.C. Manchester City Football Club are an English football club based in Manchester that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded in 1880 as St. Mark's (West Gorton), they became Ardwick Association Football ...

, William Hill, Major League Soccer, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

,''

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flag ...

, and

Castrol Castrol is a British oil company that markets industrial and automotive lubricants, offering a wide range of oil, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications. The name ''Castrol'' was originally just the brand name for co ...

Offices

Opta is headquartered in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and has a satellite UK office in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

. Additional offices in Europe are located in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

Bassano del Grappa Bassano del Grappa ( vec, Basan or ''Bassan'', ) is a city and ''comune'', in the Vicenza province, in the region of Veneto, in northern Italy. It bounds the communes of Cassola, Marostica, Solagna, Pove del Grappa, Romano d'Ezzelino, Campolongo ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. The company opened offices in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

in 2011, followed by a new branch in

Montevideo Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

in 2012.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Sports mass media in the United Kingdom Companies based in the City of Westminster British companies established in 2001 Sports records and statistics 2001 establishments in England 2001 in London Data companies