Editor’s note: Augusto Marietti is the CEO of Mashape.
There’s a 21st century arms race happening across
industries as organizations of all stripes look to unlock the true
potential of their digital assets through APIs. For that data to
generate value, it must first find new audiences. And to reach those new
consumers and markets, you must first reach developers. While it can
feel like a leap of faith, giving developers access to rich
organizational data is necessary for innovation and a vital step to
establishing a healthy long-term data strategy.
So imagine my surprise when I realized that the NCAA does
not have a public-facing API available for March Madness. Not an open
API, not a closed API. Nothing. They may as well hang a “Developers Not
Welcome” sign.
The NCAA seems uninterested in building a developer
community and appears to not have any developer relations program to
speak of. The same applies to all of the major U.S. sports leagues — the
NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL and MLS.
Notoriously stodgy industries like manufacturing,
transportation and government actually boast a far more progressive data
strategy than massive sports leagues with legions of fans around the
world. Why? It starts with the idea that some data is more valuable than
others.
The NCAA seems uninterested in building a developer community and appears to not have any developer relations program to speak of.
Shedding the cloak of “proprietary” that veils
organizational data can feel like losing a shield, but it isn’t.
Organizations that feel competitors nipping at their heels are more
hungry for innovation and more likely to shake the stubborn and false
idea that granting access to your data hurts your ability to profit from
it.
This myth is slowly suffocating under a growing mountain of
evidence that shows open APIs are good for business, and organizations
that are paying attention are seeing results. Just ask the airline and
hotel industries, for whom sites like Kayak and Hotels.com represent
huge revenue streams. APIs have become a core business driver for any
organization able to see the forest for the trees.
Right now, if a developer wants to pull data from the NCAA
tournament into a web or mobile app they’ve built, the only way to do it
is by either illegally scraping the data from a third-party site like
ESPN or for the API provider to manually enter data after each game is
completed. This is crazy. ESPN and other huge sports media organizations
have APIs, but they’re private. There is no public API access, so it’s
only available for internal use or “strategic partners,” a label that
comes with a hefty price tag.
In case you were wondering why so many of your sports apps
are one-dimensional and often unreliable, here’s how the system
currently works: Leagues keep data under lock and key, selling exclusive
rights to giant monopolistic data providers, who in turn sell it per
subscription to companies or individuals that can pay the hefty prices
to build sports integration into their apps.
These data providers make so much money pushing XML files
over FTP that they don’t even have a REST API. This data dump method is
extremely old-fashioned, and when mistakes happen (and they happen a
lot), there is no recovery. They simply send patch data files and expect
the implementer to post-process them.
An engineer I know worked with the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) a few years ago — they awarded license deals to
broadcasters with “conditions” to use “preferred vendors” to serve up
content and build implementation. Despite having a full tech team with a
full tech stack ready to go, the IOC enforced a license contract to use
a vendor in Europe, which ended up costing the organization he was
working with millions of dollars. To top it off, they still didn’t use
APIs, opting to leverage 15-year-old technology instead.
A growing number of sports data upstarts are entering the
market and disrupting the sector by introducing flexible data APIs and
reasonable pricing, but they are being pushed away from major sports.
Favored contracts and preferred vendors are quite literally relegating
newcomers to the minor leagues and smaller niche sports.
The NCAA, the IOC and the major sports leagues lack vision.
APIs would create new revenue streams, driving unexpected insights and
added dimensions to a league or team’s data, enabling these
organizations to reach and interact with new fans around the country and
the world.
Imagine a bracket-predicting engine, or real-time
matchup-based analytics incorporating head-to-heads at key positions
while considering all the nagging injuries and minutes played the
previous night by each of the players on the court. There are countless
cool and obscure statistics one could come up with if developers were
granted access to the data.
APIs would create new revenue streams, driving unexpected insights and added dimensions to a league or team’s data.
The jocks have learned a lot from the nerds. Moneyball-type
analytics are now widely used across organizations to inform in-game
decisions and long-term recruiting strategies. But it’s only a matter of
time before sensors are implanted in game balls and uniforms, and these
thousands of new data streams from wearable technologies will have a
big impact on the sports world.
Every league and every team needs a professional-grade API,
and they must move quickly. Attracting developers shouldn’t be a
problem, and opening up their APIs — even to a controlled group of
developers — could yield fast, surprising and impactful results. But the
leagues must first show they’re interested.