2021

StatsBomb enter a new market by partnering with UDN Sports of Japan

By admin | May 24, 2021
2021

StatsBomb enter a new market by partnering with UDN Sports of Japan

One of Japan’s most prestigious player agencies, UDN Sports, has signed a partnership with StatsBomb to access insights from StatsBomb’s industry leading football data set. This is the first entry into the Japanese market for StatsBomb, one of the fastest growing sports data companies in the world. UDN Sports, based in Tokyo, represents more than 100 professional players in Europe and Japan, including current Japanese internationals Shinji Kagawa, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Yui Hasegawa. The partnership will see UDN Sports benefit from StatsBomb’s cutting edge data covering over 3,400 events per match across more than 80 competitions around the globe. The agency will also gain access to StatsBomb IQ, the most advanced and customisable football analytics platform available. UDN Sports joins over 100 professional clubs, federations, agencies and media outlets around the world in choosing StatsBomb data to enhance their ability to make well-informed decisions. UDN Sports Agent, Kunihiro Fujita, said: “We are grateful for the opportunity to enter into a partnership with StatsBomb, one of the world's leading data collection and analysis companies when it comes to thinking about improving the performance of Japanese players. In recent years, we have seen a rapid increase in adopting data as a tool in sport, and we expect that the data collection and analysis not only on a team basis but also on an individual player's basis, will become an even more important factor. We believe that utilizing StatsBomb data will help to improve the performance of individual players and contribute to the development of the Japanese football.” StatsBomb’s Business Development Lead, Ismail Tari, said: “It is great to be working with Japan’s most renowned sports agency UDN Sports. Throughout our conversations, the UDN team has shown fantastic ambition and understanding of the role our data and IQ platform will play in the future development of Japanese football and its media. We’re delighted to be expanding into Japan and are looking forward to many great projects together.” Ted Knutson, StatsBomb Co-Founder and CEO added: "It's great for StatsBomb to be working with UDN Sports and for our industry-leading data to have an influence in Japan and beyond. This is another good example of how StatsBomb can work with player agencies as well as clubs and federations across the world. Our recent expansions into Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have been really exciting and we are looking forward to seeing more growth in Japan and Asia now too." About StatsBomb StatsBomb is the world’s fastest growing football data company. Founded by former analyst Ted Knutson, StatsBomb was formed to empower data analysis teams by ensuring they have access to the best football data set ever created. Having started as an analytics blog, StatsBomb initially progressed to consulting on data-driven recruitment and performance analysis for professional teams. In 2018, having become frustrated with limitations of the data available at the time, StatsBomb acquired ArqamFC, a data collection company based in Cairo, Egypt, and started to collect and supply its own data. The introduction of StatsBomb data was a turning point for the analysis of football as it introduced previously unavailable metrics such as pressures, the height of the ball at the point of shot impact, goalkeeper positioning, freeze frames for shots and the foot with which each pass is played. In 2021, StatsBomb improved this data even further with the launch of StatsBomb 360, adding a snapshot of all visible player locations to more than 3,400 on-the-ball events that are collected per match. Having gained rapid traction since its inception, StatsBomb is now servicing customers across the professional game, as well as betting and gaming operators, and is active in over 20 countries.