We're pleased to announce that we'll be releasing the entire 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament on our free data today - the first time we've ever released event data from the tournament to the public.
The dataset contains the same industry-leading event data used by our customers, at around 3,400 events per game covering all 52 matches in the tournament. As such, there's plenty of opportunities for analysis, whether it be Côte d'Ivoire's run to victory, Simon Adingra's performances to win the Best Young Player award, Namibia's first ever win at the AFCON finals, or Victor Osimhen's finishing woes.
We're keen to support the global game and we're aware that many aspiring analysts from the football analytics community hail from Africa. This is our way of saying thanks for your contributions and energy over the years, and, by putting industry-leading event data in your hands, will hopefully provide an opportunity to shine a light on and accelerate the analysis performed on African teams.
Accessing the data
There are a few things you’ll need to know to access and work with the data.
Installing the StatsBombR or StatsBombPy packages will make working with the data much easier. There's also our introductory guide to Working With StatsBomb Data In R, which we strongly advise you work through if you’re new to StatsBomb data or starting out on your coding journey. It'll also be useful to keep the StatsBomb data specification handy.
And then, of course, you'll need the competition id (1267) and season id (107) to pull the data.
Lastly, it’s important to note that if you intend to publish your work on social media – which we greatly encourage you to do if you want your skills to be noticed by professionals – then please do remember to abide by our user agreement and credit StatsBomb as your data source when doing so.
Our User Guide and Logos can be found in our media pack.
Access the data through our Github
Access the R Guide 2.0
As always, we hope you enjoy working with the data.
Best of luck,
The StatsBomb Team
