The ultimate guide to superior football data:

4 Issues to Overcome + 5 Ways to Stand Out.

Too often, reliability comes at an astronomical cost. At Sportmonks, we believe: You shouldn’t have to choose between trustworthy and affordable.

Our flexible Football API delivers fast, reliable data for popular competitions in 195 countries and serves 20,000+ satisfied users, including high-end media companies and professional football clubs.

As we’ve built, tested, and refined our product over the last decade, we’ve found opportunities to use great data to stand out in the market. Now, we’d like to share some tips to help you overcome data issues in your application.

First, let’s review the four most common issues to overcome related to football data collection.

4 ISSUES TO OVERCOME

#1 - UNRELIABLE DATA

Sports apps rise and fall on reliable numbers, and in a rush to get data in users’ hands, many companies hurry through their verification process. This is counterproductive because a small error in the data means a lot of grief from the customers who use those numbers.

THE SPORTMONKS WAY

We have created a data verification process that uses a network of trustworthy partners—both in-person scouts and high-class data partners—to collect and verify our numbers in real-time. Our accuracy rates are as close to perfect as you can get in the world of data, and that means you can confidently offer your customers a consistently reliable fact-gathering experience.

#2 - UNAFFORDABLE DATA

Too often, reliable data means expensive data.

How much is too much?

Data can make or break your business. When data is consistently incorrect, every dollar you spend on it is too much. On the other hand, amazing data is vital to your business!

Finding the right provider at a great price often comes down to good old-fashioned comparative research.

THE SPORTMONKS WAY

We keep our ultra-reliable data affordable with a streamlined data collection process and by allowing you to pay for just the endpoints you need.

#3 - SLOW DATA

The sheer volume of athletic events happening all over the world at any given time is mind-boggling. It’s easy to see how pertinent numbers might get stuck in the verification process or overlooked altogether. But for your users, slow data is incredibly frustrating! If you can’t deliver quickly, they’ll find what they need somewhere else.

What’s a reasonable amount of time to wait for data? When a goal is scored, it takes 15 seconds before viewers see it on their TV. Beating that delay is the goal… because your

customers expect it! Of course, we can’t stress this enough: It is better to be right than to be fast. It’s tempting to shave valuable seconds off by skimping on the verification process, but this often compromises reliability, and it’s just not worth it. Your customers are counting on you!

#4 - DIFFICULT INTEGRATION

If you’ve already invested time in developing an app, integrating an API may seem like a whole new undertaking (for good reason!). In many cases, data providers are not prepared to help you implement, which can mean integration will be clunky.

THE SPORTMONKS WAY

Here are a few questions to ask before investing in an API (plus our answers for comparison!):

? How does the API work?

We have built a well-structured, flexible, and fast JSON API. Our API makes it easy to customise your JSON responses.

? How do you collect your data?

At Sportmonks, we manage all our data in the Sport- monks Scout Application Platform (SSAP). Our dedicated scout teams from all over the world add, manage, and validate the data collected by this platform. We work together with high-class data partners to ensure our football data is reliable and always up to date.

? How flexible is the API?

Our customers love the flexibility of our API. With “includes,” filters, and selecting & ordering methods, we have multiple options to customise its response.

Let’s explore each:

“Includes” are the cornerstone of our API and allow you to enrich and customise your request with extra contextual data. This flexibility is what distinguishes

Sportmonks from all competitors. Each of our endpoints comes with a list of “Includes.” For example, the “Fixture by ID” endpoint comes with many “includes.” These are just a few of the possibilities: league, lineups, events, comments, trends, statistics, odds, inplayOdds, sidelined, predictions, formations, ballCoordinates, and last but not least, scores.

The second option to customise the APIs’ response is by using filters. You can use the filters to find only the

specific data you want. For example, if you are only interested in specific events like goals scored, you can filter the response from all other events and get information related to goals only. Browse our documentation about filtering for more information.

The third way to customise responses is by selecting specific fields. For example, if we previously filtered the player name belonging to goal events, you may want to display the player’s name and the minute of the goal. In this case, those two fields can be selected and the API won’t show other fields.

Finally, you can order by specific fields to specify if results should be returned in ascending or descending order. Using the ordering parameter allows for more convenient results to be returned. Besides that, it can potentially save you from making API calls, as you don’t have to propagate through redundant results.

? What if I need help?

Sportmonks offers 5-star documentation with tutorials, guides, and best practices. The documentation keeps improving and is always up-to-date. New features will be implemented immediately, and the changelog will be closely monitored.

Besides the documentation, we have customer support available 24/7, 365 days a year. Our team is happy to help you find your way into the API!

5 WAYS TO STAND OUT

#1 - BE ACCURATE. BE AFFORDABLE. BE FAST.

Is there an echo in here? It may sound like we are repeating ourselves, but we’ve built a business on these three priorities, and we simply can’t overstate their importance.

#2 - PROVIDE DATA THAT’S EASY TO UNDERSTAND.

If you partner with us, we have thousands of data points available; you can pick which ones are most important to your customers and deliver them in a way that keeps them from digging and honours their time.

#3 - MAKE IT PRETTY.

There are a lot of sports apps out there, and while we can’t resist a good set of numbers, we also understand the importance of optics and innovation. The time and dollars we save you on data retrieval can multiply themselves over in marketing and development!

#4 - OFFER THE UNEXPECTED.

Everyone is expecting the scores, but get your users engaged by including timely sports news and some hot-take predictions! Nothing lights up the comments like a vote for the underdog.

#5 - BRING FANS TOGETHER.

Before we were Sportmonks, we were sports fans (and still are!), and we’ve always loved the camaraderie found in the online sports world. When you provide a fun place for your customers to connect with like-minded sports fans backed up by accurate and fast data, your app will sell itself!