Sports Reference pulls advanced soccer data after agreement violation dispute

Over the years, Sports Reference’s FBref website has become an invaluable resource for soccer fans to examine stats.

Those fans, however, will no longer be able to access the website’s advanced data, as it has been pulled following a claim of an alleged agreement violation.

In a post on its website on Tuesday, Sports Reference revealed that the provider of its advanced soccer stats had sent it a letter terminating access to its data feeds and requiring the immediate deletion of its data from the site. The letter claimed that Sports Reference’s use of the data had violated their agreement, which the website denies.

Nevertheless, Sports Reference complied, noting that “any effort to retain access to this advanced data would have been costly and uncertain.” Sports Reference said that it will now take time to assess its options while maintaining a commitment to continuing to provide basic soccer, non-advanced, soccer stats.

“We are heartbroken both for our users who have come to rely upon this product and for our team that has spent thousands of hours bringing these stats to life and supporting our users,” the post reads. “We are especially upset by the massive step back this creates in access for women’s advanced soccer data. Data Democratization is a core Sports Reference value and the removal of this data is a sad day for all of us.”

So what happened here? The timing doesn’t seem coincidental.

As others have noted on social media, it was earlier this month that the parent company of FBref’s advanced data provider, Opta Sports, announced an agreement to become FIFA’s first official worldwide betting data and betting streaming rights distributor, including exclusive rights to the World Cup 2026. As a part of the agreement, Opta will “exclusively provide official player statistics, insights, live scores and match trackers to sportsbooks” — some of the same data it was previously providing to Sports Reference.

Considering the exclusive nature of the deal, it appears that Sports Reference now finds itself as the odd man out. As for the alleged agreement violation, The Pitchside Pub speculated that Opta may have pointed to AI websites and chatbots scraping FBref’s easily accessible data as justification for its claim.

Regardless of Opta’s reasoning, it’s understandable that Sports Reference wouldn’t want to go through a costly battle it may not ultimately win. And unfortunately, it’s not just the website, but its devoted user base that now finds itself at a loss.