Anyone not plugged into football’s online discourse may have missed it, but the analytics community was rocked by a seismic event last week.
FBref.com, once the great Alexandrian library of free football data, has been stripped of its advanced metrics after announcing on January 20 that Stats Perform, the company behind Opta, had informed them it was terminating their data agreement.
Why did this happen? What does it mean for the availability of advanced football data, or for informed, independent football analysis? And can we enjoy expected goals anywhere else online?
Here is an attempt to explain…
What is FBref?
Since its launch in June 2018, FBref has established itself as by some distance the most comprehensive and popular public football database on the world wide web, offering a huge array of basic and advanced data on men’s and women’s players, clubs, leagues and cup competitions from all over the world.
This resource presented metrics including expected goals, expected assists and advanced goalkeeper performance data in sortable tables to view or download.
Whether you were a fan simply attempting to settle a debate with friends, a Fantasy Premier League manager trying to decide on your weekly transfers, a journalist (like this one) looking to inform an article you were working on, or a football analytics enthusiast producing your own independent content, FBref was generally the first port of call.
That reputation was founded on the staggering breadth and impressive quality of the data that FBref offered. Earlier in the site’s history, this data came from StatsBomb, but for the past three years, it has been provided by Opta, part of Stats Perform.
Advanced football data is still available in several places online (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
What has the reaction been? Why has it been so vociferous?
Stats Perform’s sudden divorce from FBref was met with shock by many in the football analytics community, followed by an outpouring of anger from some. These emotions were fanned by the tone of the statement on FBref’s website announcing the news.
The statement, attributed to Sean Forman, president of FBref’s parent company, Sports Reference, said the significant gap in FBref’s stats created by Stats Perform’s decision had left Sports Reference “heartbroken” for their users and their staff.
“Data democratization is a core Sports Reference value and the removal of this data is a sad day for all of us,” Forman added.
Forman’s words resonated with regular users of FBref. “Awful, this,” football content creator Adam Clery posted on X. “Not an exaggeration to say that the entire independent football analysis scene is built on the back of @fbref giving *everyone* access to useful and interesting data. Killing it as a resource is such a sad indictment of where football’s heading.”
Many independent football analysts had come to depend on FBref, and some had even used the site’s data to build their own graphics and analytical models. It had been credited with helping to make advanced data accessible to a broader audience and thereby create smarter, more informed fans. In some cases, it has even helped to launch careers.
That process may continue, but FBref’s prominent role in it appears to be over.
Why has the data been removed?
In a statement issued to The Athletic, Stats Perform said: “Stats Perform values its commercial relationships and takes its contractual obligations seriously. We also expect our customers to take their obligations seriously by using the data we provide according to the terms of the agreement.
“Sports Reference and its websites did not use the data received from Stats Perform according to the terms of the agreement, and after investigation, it became clear Stats Perform needed to terminate the agreement and remove Sports Reference’s access to our data.
“While it is regrettable that we ended up having to do this, Stats Perform did not simply terminate a customer agreement without a valid basis to do so, and any information saying otherwise is incorrect.”
Neither of the principal parties is prepared to publicly detail the nature of the alleged infringement. In a statement issued to The Athletic, Forman said: “Stats Perform’s demand that we remove the statistics came unexpectedly, despite our long-standing, good-faith operation of FBref and Stathead.
“We have operated our sites in a consistent manner since FBref launched, and we have always welcomed open and frank discussions with our partners about how our sites operate.
“We’re disappointed for our users to lose access to this data, particularly in areas like women’s soccer, where high-quality public data remains limited.”
Data-led storylines are a familiar part of modern football (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Does it have anything to do with gambling companies? How about FIFA?
More conspiratorially minded observers quickly pointed out that FBref’s statement announcing the loss of their advanced data came just eight days after FIFA publicised that they had chosen Stats Perform as their first official betting data and betting streaming rights distributor, granting the company “exclusive rights to distribute official betting data and live streams for selected FIFA properties”, including every match at this summer’s World Cup.
The central claim of the conspiracy theory, pushed by some social media users and online content creators, was that FIFA pushed Stats Perform to end free public access to its advanced data via FBref as a condition of the deal. There is no evidence that this is the case.
FIFA declined to comment when contacted by The Athletic, though one official, speaking anonymously, dismissed the notion of any link between the two decisions. Stats Perform said: “The termination of the agreement with Sports Reference has nothing to do with our recently announced FIFA rights agreement. The FIFA partnership is for official betting rights, whereas Sports Reference was a media/editorial customer. The two are not related.
“Stats Perform has many ongoing, valuable deals in the media, tech, and fan engagement sectors. This industry sector remains an important part of our strategy, and is one we continue to invest in. We are committed to offering the highest level of service and highest quality products to all clients.”
What will FBref do going forward?
In his statement announcing the termination of the Stats Perform agreement, Forman said: “We will take time to assess possible paths forward. FBref will continue to present the deep historic basic data we have for over 100 competitions, but if we present advanced data in the future, it will certainly have a dramatically smaller scale.”
There is the possibility that Sports Reference could partner with another football data provider, but finding one that operates on the scale of Opta is highly unlikely.
For now, FBref persists as a large repository of basic rather than advanced football data, its utility not entirely destroyed but greatly diminished.
Another thorny issue for Sports Reference to address is the future of Stathead. Launched in 2023, it is a subscription research tool which enabled users to search the FBref database for statistics related to individual players, teams, seasons and matches.
In the wake of Stats Perform’s decision to terminate the data agreement, FBref confirmed it would contact Stathead subscribers to offer refund options.
Do any other websites show the same information?
There may not be one single public football database as comprehensive as FBref was, but there are plenty of other places to find advanced data that are free to use.
The first, and perhaps the best, is Opta’s own public data hub, The Analyst, which features an impressive array of player and team metrics for English and European competitions, as well as Opta’s league prediction model. Then there is WhoScored, which is also supplied by Opta and has advanced player and team data for a wide range of club and international competitions, as do the likes of Sofascore and Fotmob.
Other well-regarded independent football data websites include Transfermarkt and Understat, plus, of course, The Athletic’s own data journalism.
All is not lost, expected goal junkies.