Sports technology giants Hudl are closing in on a deal to purchase football analytics company StatsBomb, The Athletic understands.
Hudl are one of the leading performance analysis platforms in football and are aiming 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, the former having dominated the video analysis market for over a decade.
StatsBomb was founded in 2016 by Charlotte Randall and Ted Knutson, who was previously head of player analytics at Brentford and FC Midtjylland, then-owned by Smartodds founder Matthew Benham.
Knutson said on X last week that the company’s annual revenues have grown to £10million but it is understood that a board vote decided that this was an optimal time to sell the business.
The acquisition of StatsBomb is understood to be motivated by Hudl’s desire to expand their offering to clients. Hudl did not respond when requested for comment by The Athletic.
Much like technology company Apple have a single sign-in access to sync up across multiple products or devices, Hudl offers a similar diverse range of products to performance analysts to help streamline their workflow under one umbrella. The challenge they face is that many performance analysts have developed strong relations with competitors who have built a reputation as the leaders in that corner of the market, where a multi-product approach is often preferred.
StatsBomb’s data collection operation based in Egypt is widely regarded as among the best engineering in the industry, but they have been limited in their ability to power media products as they do not currently provide live match data.
StatsBomb analysis at their Cairo analysis hub (Photo: StatsBomb)
Positioned as a premium brand, the launch of the StatsBomb 360 product in 2021 — which added teammate and opposition locations to the 3,400 events collected per match — saw Liverpool become partners in 2021 and propelled the company into the mainstream.
Michael Edwards (then-Sporting Director), Ian Graham (then-Director of Research) and William Spearman (then-Lead Data Scientist) integrated the product into their scouting and analysis structures and Statsbomb now provide full coverage of more than 100 football competitions across the world.
It extends down to the National League (fifth tier) in the English pyramid with around three-quarters of the Premier League and Championship’s teams using the service, as well as two-thirds of MLS clubs.
An attraction to Hudl is that StatsBomb offer the ability to replicate their platform in other sports.
StatsBomb launched an American football product in June 2022, applying lessons learned from years of experimenting in football to establish a college sport database boasting tens of thousands of players.
While it has not grown at the rate expected, their entry into the sport did offer proof of concept to Hudl, who have more than 200,000 users across more than 40 sports.
Some industry insiders, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, have voiced concerns that this latest deal could stifle innovation. Others wonder whether this move will see more top clubs move to build in-house products having long resisted the costs involved — unlike Brighton and Brentford who can freely integrate the existing infrastructure from their owners’ betting companies.
Brentford and Brighton have both harnessed analytics in their rise to the Premier League (Chloe Knott – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Arsenal remain one of the only clubs to have made this step when they bought and absorbed analytics company StatDNA into their decision-making process in 2012.
(Header photo: StatsBomb)
