ESPN and Genius Sports expand data partnership

ESPN, the major US sports network, has announced a renewed and expanded long-term partnership with Genius Sports, the sports technology and data company.

Through the new deal, ESPN will expand its college sports coverage with real-time team and player stats from Genius Sports, the exclusive distributor of official NCAA data, with access to data across 65,000 NCAA games a year including basketball, American football, ice hockey, volleyball and soccer.

Additionally, ESPN is extending its deal with Genius Sports around NBA men’s basketball player-tracking data insights while adding the women’s WNBA to its portfolio of sports properties leveraging its data.

With the deal, ESPN now has access to the tech company’s Insight tool used by every NBA and WNBA team. This tool will enable ESPN to “easily research, identify and produce video clips that break down team and player performance across both leagues.”

ESPN and Genius Sports have worked together in a variety of capacities in recent years, which included the first fully branded sports broadcast through Marvel in 2021 and a collaboration on live broadcast augmentations for immersive experiences around the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship.

Jeff Bennett, ESPN vice president of stats and information group, has now said: “Genius Sports is a proven entity in the space that we know very well from our previous work together.

“The new long-term agreement creates a runway for both sides to ideate into the future using augmented reality live execution concepts in ways that unlock the next generation of fan experiences.”

Mark Locke, chief executive of Genius Sports, said: “Following on from our work with ESPN to power the first fully branded sports broadcast with Marvel and immersive March Madness augmented megacasts, we are delighted to strike a major expansion with ESPN.

“As well as powering crucial NBA and WNBA insights, ESPN can utilize Genius Sports technology to power all of its NCAA data needs including next-generation context experiences through our new GeniusIQ technology.”

Genius, in terms of recent activity, recently launched its new AI-powered GeniusIQ platform.

Utilizing both machine learning and generative AI, GeniusIQ will enhance the company’s existing offerings by better facilitating the retrieval and collation of data and the generation of more accurate data insights and predictive analytics.

The launch came soon after the company announced its second quarter (Q2) financial results for the year.

The group generated revenue of $95.4 million for Q2, which exceeded first-quarter guidance of $94 million. The figure was also up 10% year-over-year from $86.8 million in the same period in 2023.

Genius was this week also appointed by English soccer’s Premier League to supply semi-automated offside technology. Sportcal