Ever heard of a company that offers a Stats Feed?

[kinar]

Not sure if this is really the place for this topic but it seemed as approprite as the "Leftovers" since other Comish's would probably be the most knowledgable about different sites and what they offer...

I'm wanting to put up my own website for my fantasy leagues that I run every year so I don't have to deal with TSN or Yahoo changing rules from year to year (although Yahoo has been pretty good about it)...

The main problem I have is that I have nowhere to actually get the stats from other than setting up some apps to rake the data off the various sports websites like yahoosports and espn. I don't really want to do this because I want to have to deal with them changing thier site and screwing up my automated process...not to mention any sort of legal issues that might arise from it.

So I guess my question is this....where do the big sites get thier stats? and is there anyone that offers realtime (or once per day) stat updates at a reasonable cost?

any suggestions as to where to look for this information?

[Russell James]

I was looking into this a couple months ago as well, but I haven't had the time to pursue it.

I thought that Rotowire had a stat feed that you could buy, but I am not too sure on that.

[Matthias]

These guys are the guys you're looking for. They have different packages; not sure on how much it all costs.

[kinar]

Thanks a ton, exactly what I'm looking for.

I emailed them for more information, but I have a feeling that they are gonna be outta the price range I would be interested in paying for a small-time site. Most of the time in these situations the addage "If you have to ask, its too much" is correct.

[lsommerer]

Here's another service that offers baseball data feeds, but it looks like they are geared toward larger interests: http://baseballinfosolutions.com/

On the other hand, I saw their add in a Fantasy Baseball magazine, so who knows.

[kinar]

emailed them as well and never got a response...

finally got a price quote from stats.com and it seems they don't have anything for a "small time production"....they are WAY outta the price range I was looking at...

[AllDay28]

STATS basically has a monopoly over stat feeds. I used to work for a company that tried to break into the business and failed miserably. I don't know of any small-time companies that do anything like this.

As long as you are just creating a website just for your personal fantasy league, I don't think there would be any legal implications of grabbing stats from Yahoo or wherever. The recent lawsuit settled between MLB and CDM Sports (now being appealed in the Supreme Court) basically said stats and player names are public domain, so I'm not sure how anyone would even be able to go after you, let alone prove that you got your numbers from a specific website.

"Setting up some apps to rake the data" off of various sites sounds damn cool... what are you, some kind of scientist?