STATS 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. In 1996 STATS and Motorola won on appeal a court case brought by the NBA. The case was barring STATS from distributing in-game information via a special wireless device created by Motorola. The victory in this case has played a large part in other cases where professional sports leagues have tried to suppress live in-game information being distributed by other outlets. In the 1990s, STATS expanded to the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the Women's National Basketball Association, in addition to other sports.
Acquisitions
STATS operated as a private company from 1981 to 2000. STATS was purchased by Fox Sports in 2000 and became a joint venture between News Corporation and the Associated Press in 2005. In 2009, the company acquired the PA SportsTicker wire service from Press Association, a UK news and information company. SportsTicker had previously been owned by ESPN. In June 2014, Fox Sports and the AP sold STATS to Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm. During 2014, the platform created over a billion articles and reports for customers such as The Associated Press, Yahoo!, and Comcast. In September 2014, STATS acquired Bloomberg Sports. In early 2015, STATS acquired the wire service The Sports Network and Prozone. Vista Equity Partners also acquired Automated Insights, a company involved in using natural-language generation based on big data. 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 serviceDAZN. It was stated that DAZN Group would retain a "significant minority stake" in the surviving entity, which was to focus strongly on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. On July 15, 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 " the power of immense amounts of sports data with unparalleled AI technology".
Products
STATS provides several products to leagues, teams, and the media. The X-Info system provides NFL, college football and MLB teams with detailed statistics and information to help them interpret the various metrics. Their SportVU system uses an array of cameras and image processing software to provide real-time player tracking and ball positioning data, as well as statistical analysis of that data. SportVU is used by FIFA, UEFA and a host of flagship European soccer teams. Nearly every franchise in three of North America's four major professional sports leagues uses products from STATS. With the acquisition of The Sports Network, STATS took over publication of that company's NCAA Division I FCS football poll.
