Sports Data Rights and Official League Partnerships

The history of **Sports Data Rights** represents a transition from treating sports results as public facts to treating them as proprietary intellectual property. Following the 1997 **NBA v. Motorola** ruling, courts established that scores are facts and not copyrightable, allowing an ecosystem of unofficial data scouts to flourish. However, the repeal of **PASPA in 2018** drove leagues to monetize their data through commercial contracts rather than copyright law. By mandating the use of **Official League Data** for in-play betting settlement, leagues created a market for low-latency, granular data that cannot be replicated by TV broadcasts or manual scouts. This led to the rise of a duopoly—**Sportradar** and **Genius Sports**—who pay billions for exclusive rights to distribute this data (e.g., NFL, NBA, EPL) to sportsbooks. The industry is now defined by a tension between **Intellectual Property monopolies** and **Antitrust regulations**, with technology (optical tracking) serving as the ultimate moat against unauthorized data collection.