Stats Perform (formerly STATS, LLC and STATS, Inc.) is a sports AI company formed through the combination of Stats and Perform. The company is involved in sports data collection and predictive analysis for use across various sports sectors including professional team performance, digital, media, broadcast and betting. The company began investing in AI in 2015. It has nearly 400* patents for sports AI, 140+ AI models and 8 foundational Generative AI models which power advanced analysis for its clients. Its clients include media outlets, sports leagues and teams,

fantasy sports A fantasy sport (also known less commonly as rotisserie or roto) is a game, often played using the internet, where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams composed of proxies of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete ba ...

and

sports betting Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. Sports bettors place their wagers either legally, through a sportsbook or bookmaker (colloquially known as "bookies"), or illegally through priva ...

services. As of 2023, the company covers 500,000+ matches and 3,900 competitions annually and produces an infinite number of datapoints per game. Stats Perform is headquartered in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, with other office locations including

Limerick Limerick ( ; ) is a city in western Ireland, in County Limerick. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. W ...

, Aveiro,

Castelfranco Veneto Castelfranco Veneto () is a town and (municipality) of Veneto, northern Italy, in the province of Treviso. It is the third largest municipality in the province by population after the capital Treviso and Conegliano. It is centrally located betwe ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

Graz Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...

Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area. As of 2021, Katowice has an official population of 286,960, and a resident population estimate of around 315,000. K ...

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. Until STATS, LLC's merger with Perform in 2019, its headquarters were in

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. Due to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

, all Chicago based employees moved to a remote work environment, and in 2023, the Chicago office officially closed. In addition to their offices, Stats Perform have full-time staff all over the globe operating in local markets including the United States, Sydney,

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

, Buenos Aires, Singapore, Thailand, Dubai, and

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

History

STATS, Inc. was founded in April 1981 by John Dewan, who became the company's CEO. The company name is an acronym for "Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems." STATS was an outgrowth of the grassroots non-profit Project Scoresheet, a volunteer network created to collect

baseball statistics Baseball statistics include a variety of metrics used to evaluate player and team performance in the sport of baseball. Because the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and player activity is characteristically distinguishable ind ...

. Perform Group was originally formed in 2007 via the merger of Premium TV Limited and Inform Group. It was originally involved in content distribution, subscription, advertising and sponsorship, and technology and production. In 2013, Perform Group acquired

Opta Sports Opta Sports, formerly Opta Sportsdata and more commonly known as Opta, is a British sports analytics company. Opta provides data for more than 30 sports in over 70 countries, with clients ranging from leagues and federations to broadcasters and ...

. Opta was founded in 1996 and remains part of Stats Perform. In 2019, Stats merged with Perform Content following its sale to parent company Vista Equity Partners.

Vista Equity Partners ownership, merger with Perform Content

In June 2014, Fox Sports and the AP sold STATS LLC to Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm. In early 2015, STATS acquired the wire services

The Sports Network The Sports Network (TSN) is a Canadian English language discretionary sports specialty channel owned by the Sports Network Inc., a subsidiary of CTV Specialty Television, which is also a joint venture of Bell Media (70%), also owned by BCE ...

and Prozone. Vista Equity Partners also acquired Automated Insights, a company involved in using natural-language generation based on

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

(including in particular, generating wire reports on sporting events from raw statistics). In April 2019, Vista Equity Partners announced its intent to acquire Perform Content, the former sports data subsidiary of Perform Group. The company was selling the property to focus more on its sports streaming service

DAZN DAZN (; pronounced "da zone") is a British Over-the-top media service, over-the-top sports Sports broadcasting, streaming and entertainment platform. Founded in 2007 as Perform Group via the merger of Premium TV Limited and Inform Group, it is o ...

. It was stated that

DAZN Group DAZN (; pronounced "da zone") is a British Over-the-top media service, over-the-top sports Sports broadcasting, streaming and entertainment platform. Founded in 2007 as Perform Group via the merger of Premium TV Limited and Inform Group, it is o ...

would retain a "significant minority stake" in the surviving entity, which was to focus strongly on the use of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

. On 15 July 2019, it was announced that the merged company would be known as Stats Perform, and operate under STATS CEO Carl Mergele. He stated that the company would " arnessthe power of immense amounts of sports data with unparalleled AI technology". In October 2020 Stats Perform experienced a three week outage affecting key customers, including Yahoo! Sports. Yahoo! Sports apologized for this outage "While we have never experienced an outage like this in our 20-year-plus history, you deserve better and we expect better of ourselves." In December 2020 Stats Perform acquired Thuuz Sports’ AI-powered fan engagement tools. In July 2021 Stats Perform acquired 13strides, a visual content studio for sport. In March 2023 Stats Perform is sued for allegedly stealing exclusive soccer data. Rival IMG argues that Stats Perform uses “spies” at games of the English Premier League (EPL) and other European leagues to collect data for which IMG has exclusive rights.

Partnerships with leagues and Federations

Over its history, Stats Perform has built several long-term partnerships with global sports leagues and federations to collect and commercialise sports data, streaming and AI capabilities. These include Premier League, WTA,

FIBA The International Basketball Federation (FIBA ; French language, French: ) is an association of national organizations which governs the sport of basketball worldwide. FIBA defines the rules of basketball, specifies the Basketball equipment ...

La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known as the Primera División or La Liga, and officially known as LaLiga EA Sports for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Spain and the highest ...

and

Serie A The Serie A (), officially known as Serie A Enilive in Italy and Serie A Made in Italy abroad for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Italy and the highest tier of the Italian football league system. Establish ...

. However, in October 2024 Stats Perform abruptly moved to withdraw from its agreement for betting rights to Italy’s Serie A, shocking staff on both sides of the deal. This after the two parties spent months going back and forward on contractual points. As well as commercial services, Stats Perform also provides integrity services to major leagues to help in the prevention, detection and response to match manipulation.

Opta

Opta Index Limited was founded in 1996 to analyse

Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

football matches and was contracted by

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...

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. The company was sold to Perform Group in 2013 for £40 million and remains part of Stats Perform. Today the Opta brand, its stats and Opta AI predictions are seen in sports media all over the world.

References

External links

* {{official website, statsperform.com Sports records and statistics Companies based in Chicago American companies established in 1981 Sports mass media in the United States Data companies