The International Basketball Federation and Genius Sports have signed a new deal that will see their partnership extended until 2019.
The new deal will see sports data and technology company Genius sports increase its coverage of basketball events. The company expects to collect and distribute live data to the betting and media markets from more than 2,000 high-profile games at FIBA events until 2017, FIBA said in a statement.
Among the events included are the 2016 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments and 2017 Continental Cups.
FIBA and Genius Sports partnership started in 2005, when the basketball association tapped the company via its subsidiary SportingPulse to co-develop and distribute a basketball statistics tool called LiveStats, which enables courtside capturing of live game statistics, live webcast publishing and reporting to coaches and media.
This year, the live statistics tool will help statisticians collect data from more than 35,000 games in over 120 countries, according to FIBA.
“This new partnership goes beyond a pure technology partnership,” FIBA honorary President Yvan Mainini said in a statement. “It will help tremendously with the development of basketball on a global level, especially in countries with limited human and financial resources.”
The data will also help sports betting regulators in their battle against match fixing.
Genius Sports CEO Mark Locke recently told SBC News that statistical data not only drives an increased interest in a sport, but it can also be used to counter negatives such as match fixing.
“We see an intelligent model wherein all officially sanctioned data and wagers placed with licensed operators passes through a centralized technology hub,” the Genius Sports executive said. “This would allow all wagers to be time-stamped and validated, and wagering activity would be monitored on a second-by-second basis, with any anomalies identified in real-time monitoring of wagering patterns.”
Aside from FIBA, Genius Sports has also partnered with the Premier League, Major League Baseball, and the French Basketball Federation and Argentina’s Association of Basketball Clubs.
