Two groundbreaking Dutch football data startups have scored some fresh funding. In a new investment round,SciSports has raised another million-euro (€1.8M) from existing and new investors. The round, on top of the €1.35M round last year, will be used to roll-out the SciSkill Index worldwide and implement the BallJames data machine in various stadiums in countries such as England and Germany. Remiqz, a close competitor to SciSports, raised €0.5M, and closed a deal with a football data behemoth.
SciSkill Index
In the last few years, SciSports has worked on building the SciSkill Index, a fully automated solution that calculates the quality, talent, and value of every professional football player in the world. With the in-house developed capturing reality technology called BallJames, which generates a match’ 3D data in real-time, the Enschede-based startup built a refined solution that converts events during a match into useful information and knowledge.
Compare quality
The SciSkill Index claims to be the ‘only objective worldwide player index’ that makes it possible to compare the quality of football players around the world. Every week, over 2000 matches in 210 leagues are analyzed by the SciSkill algorithm, through which the SciSkill Index automatically adjusts the quality of 350.000 football players in an index.
Real-time tracking
BallJames is a real-time tracking technology developed by SciSports that automatically generates 3D data from video images of football matches. In the stadium, fourteen cameras are installed, which record all the movements on the field. BallJames then generates its own data such as the precision, direction and speed of the passing, sprinting strength, jumping strength, player movements and how close the ball stays to the foot after a first touch. Heracles Almelo’s Polman Stadium of  is the first stadium in the world equipped with BallJames.
Tech-meets-track
There seems to be an abundance of sports and more predominantly football related startups these days. With SportXperience, we even have a local accelerator to boost this tech-meets-tracks kind of companies. Amsterdam-based Metrica Sports, with Villarreal as launching customer.
Remiqz
Remiqz is another known competitor and announced a half million euro round yesterday. Its big data algorithms determine player values, make use of proprietary data combined with validated football statistics, “powered by the immense computing power of the SAP Hana Cloud Platform. The is an initiative of sports data agency Hypercube and The Next View, supported by SAP Sports Technology.
Partnership
The Amsterdam-based startup furthermore closed a partnership with football data behemoth Gracenote Sports (formerly Infostrada), Emerce reports. Among its user board, Remiqz hosts a few (powerhouse) names: Manchester City (Sebastian Arnesen), Heracles Almelo (Nico-Jan Hoogma), Ajax (Roy Wesseling), VVV Venlo (Stan Valckx), SC Telstar (Pieter de Waard), F.C. Volendam (Misha Salden).
