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Sports Reference

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Sports Reference
Company typePrivate
Industrysports technology, data, and content
Predecessor
FoundedAugust 2004;19 years ago(2004-08)
FounderSean Forman
Headquarters,
US
Products
  • Baseball Reference
  • Basketball Reference
  • Pro Football Reference
  • Hockey Reference
  • FBref
  • SR/College Basketball
  • SR/College Football
  • Stathead
  • Immaculate Grid
Websitewww.sports-reference.comEdit this at Wikidata

Sports Reference, LLCis an American company which operates several sports-relatedwebsites,including Sports-Reference.com,Baseball-Reference.comforbaseball,Basketball-Reference.com forbasketball,Hockey-Reference.com forice hockey,Pro-Football-Reference.comforAmerican football,and FBref.com forassociation football(soccer).[1][2]They also operate a subscription based service for statistics, called Stathead. Between 2008 and 2020, Sports Reference also provided pages for theOlympic Gamesand its competitors.

Description[edit]

The site also includes sections oncollege footballandcollege basketball,and once included a section on theOlympics.[3]The sites attempt a comprehensive approach to sports data. For example, Baseball-Reference contains more than 100,000 box scores and Pro-Football-Reference contains data on every scoring play in theNational Football Leaguesince1941.[1]The college basketball section includes data onNCAA Division Imen's basketball, with incomplete data going back as far as 1892—predating the first NCAA divisional split (1956) and the NCAA itself (1906), and only a year after the sport was invented. Division I women's basketball data was added in 2023, initially with full data dating back to the 2009–10 season. On February 15, 2024, Sports Reference announced that it had expanded its Division I women's basketball data set to include player and team statistics dating back to the 1987–88 season.[4]

The company, which is based in theMount Airyneighborhood ofPhiladelphia,was founded as Sports Reference in 2004 and was incorporated as Sports Reference LLC in 2007.[5][1][6]

On July 11, 2023, the company purchased the baseball trivia gameImmaculate Gridand integrated it with Baseball-Reference.[7][8]Subsequently, the game was expanded to cover Sports Reference's other sites.[9]

Olympics[edit]

Sports Reference Olympics logo

Sports Reference added a site forOlympic Gamesstatistics and history in July 2008.[10][11]

The company announced in December 2016 that the Olympics site was to be shut down in the near future due to a change in its data licensing agreement.[12]Since that time, data for the2016 Summer Olympicshas been added,[13]but the site was not updated for the2018 Winter Olympics.[14][12]Sports Reference closed its Olympic site on May 14, 2020.[15]

The providers of the Olympic data, known asOlyMADmen,launched a new site calledOlympediain May 2020.[16][17][18][19]According toSlate,editing of "Olympedia [was] restricted to about two dozen trusted academics and researchers who specialize in Olympic history."[20]The site is owned by theInternational Olympic Committee(IOC).[21]On December 29, 2023, OlyMADmen memberBill Mallonannounced that they would no longer be able to update Olympedia because the IOC declined to renew the contract necessary to permit them to do so.[22][23]

References[edit]

  1. ^abcKramer, Staci D. (February 17, 2009)."Fantasy Sports Ventures Takes Minority Stake In Sports Reference LLC".CBS News.PaidContent.org.Archivedfrom the original on September 9, 2017.RetrievedSeptember 24,2021.
  2. ^Fisher, Eric (February 16, 2009)."FSV buys stake in reference sites".Sports Business Journal.Archived fromthe originalon February 17, 2009.
  3. ^"Sports Reference Main Page".Sports-Reference.com.Archivedfrom the original on February 1, 2010.RetrievedApril 2,2014.
  4. ^Lynch, Mike (February 15, 2024)."Sports Reference Expands Women's College Basketball Data".Sports Reference Blog.Sports Reference LLC.RetrievedFebruary 18,2024.
  5. ^Wagner, James (February 13, 2019)."From a Church in Philadelphia, Sports Reference Informs the World".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on February 14, 2019.RetrievedFebruary 14,2019.
  6. ^"Company Overview of Sports Reference, LLC".Bloomberg Businessweek.Archived fromthe originalon October 6, 2015.RetrievedNovember 8,2013.
  7. ^Rosecrans, C. Trent (July 13, 2023)."The nostalgic allure of 'Immaculate Grid' makes obsessives of MLB players, fans alike".The Athletic.Archivedfrom the original on July 13, 2023.RetrievedAugust 30,2023.
  8. ^Kepner, Tyler(July 11, 2023)."The Hottest Thing in Baseball Is a Grid of Nine Blank Squares".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on August 28, 2023.RetrievedAugust 30,2023.
  9. ^Winkie, Luke (October 1, 2023)."The Trendy New Trivia Game That's Like Wordle for Straight Men".Slate.Archivedfrom the original on November 11, 2023.RetrievedNovember 11,2023.
  10. ^sean (July 9, 2008)."Olympics at Sports Reference Launches".Sports-Reference.com.Archived fromthe originalon July 26, 2008.
  11. ^"About This Site".Sports-Reference.com.Archived fromthe originalon July 29, 2008.RetrievedJuly 20,2018.
  12. ^ab"Site Closing".Sports-Reference.com.December 16, 2016. Archived fromthe originalon December 19, 2016.RetrievedNovember 13,2017.
  13. ^"2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games".Sports-Reference.Archived fromthe originalon July 20, 2018.RetrievedJuly 20,2018.
  14. ^"Winter Games Index".Sports-Reference.com.Archived fromthe originalon July 7, 2008.RetrievedJuly 20,2018.
  15. ^"Site is Closed".Sports-Reference.com.Archivedfrom the original on October 3, 2019.RetrievedMay 15,2020.
  16. ^Lohn, John (May 27, 2020)."Comprehensive Olympedia Database Available to Public; Loaded with Information".Swimming World.Archivedfrom the original on September 24, 2021.RetrievedSeptember 24,2021.OlyMADmen, an international group of Olympics experts and historians, have made their exhaustive Olympics database available
  17. ^Perelman, Rich (May 27, 2020)."LANE ONE: Staggering, brilliant, astonishing portal to Olympic history opens with debut of Olympedia.org".The Sports Examiner.Archivedfrom the original on September 26, 2021.RetrievedSeptember 26,2021.
  18. ^Mallon, Bill (May 27, 2020)."Olympedia now open to the public".OlympStats.com.Archivedfrom the original on June 6, 2020.RetrievedMay 27,2020.the result many years of work by a group of Olympic historians and statisticians called the OlyMADmen
  19. ^"About".Olympedia.Archivedfrom the original on June 14, 2020.The group that has compiled the database refers to itself as MADmen — MAD being an acronym for several of the early members of the group, but also signifies their commitment to the project in another sense.
  20. ^Harrison, Stephen (July 26, 2021)."How to Use Wikipedia When You're Watching the Olympics".Slate.Archivedfrom the original on July 26, 2021.RetrievedJuly 29,2021.
  21. ^Bauernfeind, John (February 27, 2017)."IOC looks to acquisition of Olympedia as step toward modernizing Olympic recordkeeping".Sports Business Journal.Archivedfrom the original on May 29, 2023.RetrievedMay 29,2023.
  22. ^Mallon, Bill [@bambam1729](December 29, 2023)."In 2016 Olympedia was purchased by the IOC but we have had a contract with them to update it since that time"(Tweet).RetrievedApril 4,2024– viaTwitter.
  23. ^Mallon, Bill [@bambam1729](December 29, 2023)."As of 1 Jan 2024 our contract with the IOC is not being renewed. The OlyMADMen will no longer update Olympedia after today, 29 Dec"(Tweet).RetrievedApril 4,2024– viaTwitter.

External links[edit]