Sports Reference

Sports Reference
Company type	Private
Industry	sports technology, data, and content
Predecessor	Pro-Football-Reference; Baseball-Reference; Basketball-Reference;
Founded	August 2004; 19 years ago
Founder	Sean Forman
Headquarters	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Products	Baseball Reference; Basketball Reference; Pro Football Reference; Hockey Reference; FBref; SR/College Basketball; SR/College Football; Stathead; Immaculate Grid;
Website	www.sports-reference.com

Sports Reference, LLC is an American company which operates several sports-related websites, including Sports-Reference.com, Baseball-Reference.com for baseball, Basketball-Reference.com for basketball, Hockey-Reference.com for ice hockey, Pro-Football-Reference.com for American football, and FBref.com for association 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 the Olympic Games and its competitors.

Description

The site also includes sections on college football and college basketball, and once included a section on the Olympics.^[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 the National Football League since 1941.^[1] The college basketball section includes data on NCAA Division I men'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 the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, 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 game Immaculate Grid and integrated it with Baseball-Reference.^[7]^[8] Subsequently, the game was expanded to cover Sports Reference's other sites.^[9]

Olympics

Sports Reference Olympics logo

Sports Reference added a site for Olympic Games statistics 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 the 2016 Summer Olympics has been added,^[13] but the site was not updated for the 2018 Winter Olympics.^[14]^[12] Sports Reference closed its Olympic site on May 14, 2020.^[15]

The providers of the Olympic data, known as OlyMADmen, launched a new site called Olympedia in May 2020.^[16]^[17]^[18]^[19] According to Slate, editing of "Olympedia [was] restricted to about two dozen trusted academics and researchers who specialize in Olympic history."^[20] The site is owned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).^[21] On December 29, 2023, OlyMADmen member Bill Mallon announced 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

^ ^a ^b ^c Kramer, Staci D. (February 17, 2009). "Fantasy Sports Ventures Takes Minority Stake In Sports Reference LLC". CBS News. PaidContent.org. Archived from the original on September 9, 2017. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
^ Fisher, Eric (February 16, 2009). "FSV buys stake in reference sites". Sports Business Journal. Archived from the original on February 17, 2009.
^ "Sports Reference Main Page". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on February 1, 2010. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
^ Lynch, Mike (February 15, 2024). "Sports Reference Expands Women's College Basketball Data". Sports Reference Blog. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
^ Wagner, James (February 13, 2019). "From a Church in Philadelphia, Sports Reference Informs the World". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 14, 2019. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
^ "Company Overview of Sports Reference, LLC". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved November 8, 2013.
^ Rosecrans, C. Trent (July 13, 2023). "The nostalgic allure of 'Immaculate Grid' makes obsessives of MLB players, fans alike". The Athletic. Archived from the original on July 13, 2023. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
^ Kepner, Tyler (July 11, 2023). "The Hottest Thing in Baseball Is a Grid of Nine Blank Squares". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 28, 2023. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
^ Winkie, Luke (October 1, 2023). "The Trendy New Trivia Game That's Like Wordle for Straight Men". Slate. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
^ sean (July 9, 2008). "Olympics at Sports Reference Launches". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on July 26, 2008.
^ "About This Site". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on July 29, 2008. Retrieved July 20, 2018.
^ ^a ^b "Site Closing". Sports-Reference.com. December 16, 2016. Archived from the original on December 19, 2016. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
^ "2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games". Sports-Reference. Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 20, 2018.
^ "Winter Games Index". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on July 7, 2008. Retrieved July 20, 2018.
^ "Site is Closed". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on October 3, 2019. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
^ Lohn, John (May 27, 2020). "Comprehensive Olympedia Database Available to Public; Loaded with Information". Swimming World. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021. Retrieved September 24, 2021. OlyMADmen, an international group of Olympics experts and historians, have made their exhaustive Olympics database available
^ Perelman, Rich (May 27, 2020). "LANE ONE: Staggering, brilliant, astonishing portal to Olympic history opens with debut of Olympedia.org". The Sports Examiner. Archived from the original on September 26, 2021. Retrieved September 26, 2021.
^ Mallon, Bill (May 27, 2020). "Olympedia now open to the public". OlympStats.com. Archived from the original on June 6, 2020. Retrieved May 27, 2020. the result many years of work by a group of Olympic historians and statisticians called the OlyMADmen
^ "About". Olympedia. Archived from 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.
^ Harrison, Stephen (July 26, 2021). "How to Use Wikipedia When You're Watching the Olympics". Slate. Archived from the original on July 26, 2021. Retrieved July 29, 2021.
^ Bauernfeind, John (February 27, 2017). "IOC looks to acquisition of Olympedia as step toward modernizing Olympic recordkeeping". Sports Business Journal. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved May 29, 2023.
^ 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). Retrieved April 4, 2024 – via Twitter.
^ 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). Retrieved April 4, 2024 – via Twitter.