Replace Manual Data Entry and Get Sports Data Without Effort

Common mistakes in data entry

Data is crucial for all football applications. However, data entry mistakes can undermine the reliability and usefulness of the complete application and can even make you lose your users/visitors. Here are some common errors in football data entry and how they can be avoided.

Inaccurate Data Input
The most frequent mistake is entering data incorrectly. Even minor errors can significantly impact your fans’ user experience. Misplacing a decimal point could make a massive difference for everyone. What to think of an Expected goal value of 0,3 or 3,0. A bettor using these statistics to place a bet will be completely bamboozled if he finds out the team has had many big chances and would probably have placed his bet differently if he saw the correct values. Who’s to blame? The application that shows the wrong data to him will be the application that gets removed from his/her phone immediately.

Data Overload
While data is valuable, too much data can overwhelm the people entering the data and your user. It is highly important for your user to find the data he needs quickly. If he has to spend too much time finding the specific data he needs, he will go for an application or website that offers an easier way of finding that particular data. Prioritising key metrics and focusing on actionable insights rather than collecting every possible data point can enhance decision-making efficiency.

Inconsistent Data Formatting
Data consistency is key for applications and analysis. Inconsistent data formatting can lead to confusion and errors in data interpretation. For example, showing wrong dates, times, or names due to inconsistent formatting can be a major issue for your fans’ user experience.

Duplicate Entries

Duplicate data entries can skew analysis and lead to incorrect conclusions. This often occurs when multiple people enter data or there is a lack of communication between different data sources. Implementing centralised databases and using software that flags potential duplicates can help eliminate this issue.

Omission of Essential Data
Another common mistake is the omission of essential data. This can happen when data collection lapses or the importance of certain data points is underestimated. For example, failing to record detailed information about player injuries or game conditions can leave gaps in the analysis. Comprehensive data entry checklists and thorough training for data entry personnel can help ensure that no critical information is overlooked.

Updating Frequency and Consistency
In many cases, websites show the wrong standings. This issue is understandable but can do significant damage to your user base. If a match is played, updating the standings can feel like a chore and will be delayed. That is absolutely not done because fans want to see the changes in the standings right after (maybe even during) the match.

Why choose APIs to do it?

The answer is quite simple: overcome the above mistakes. But that is a bit corny and short-sighted. As Smartsheet states, over 40% of the workers they surveyed spend at least a quarter of their workweek on repetitive tasks. Tasks mentioned as being the most occupying are emails, data collection and data entry. Nearly 60% of the workers state they could save at least six hours a week with automated processes, and 55% of all the workers state that data collection is a productivity killer, while you could eliminate human error by automatically collecting data.

Time efficiency
You don’t lose your precious time anymore. You don’t have to check multiple websites or apps to get the correct statistics, scores and standings. These checks are done for you if you start integrating a Football API. Also, the data will be automatically updated on your website/in your application if you finish the integration. So, after the initial integration of the API, you no longer have to spend any time on data entries. So, all data will be entered via the Football API with minimal effort after the integration.

Speed
Data provided by an API should be faster than live television. If you enter the data into your website/application yourself, chances are that you do it based on other data providers or live television. In both cases, that is way slower than integrating an API to make automatic updates at the moment games are actually inplay. You have probably experienced the speed of APIs yourself if you have ever watched a game on television and got a message from a friend or livescore app that a goal has been scored earlier than you saw the goal on television. Could you believe your application being that fast? It can be…

Reducing risk data accuracy
Okay, as mentioned above, using an API can help you overcome the most common (and other) issues when making data entries manually.

Using an API ensures you have high-quality data via a professional data provider. Our data collection process centres around our Scout Application Platform, which employs dedicated scout teams worldwide and esteemed data partners.

Discrepancies can still occasionally arise due to football’s real-time nature, differences in data source methods and standards, quality-control measures during the validation process, and external factors. However, we regularly review our data sources, integration processes, and quality assurance procedures to identify the root cause of such discrepancies.

Our goal is to provide our users with the most comprehensive and reliable football data, and we welcome any feedback that will help us continue to improve our data quality.

Cost-effectiveness on the long-run
Of course, the initial expenses for the integration of the API might be higher. But in the long run, you will save money. Besides the costs of losing users due to lacking data quality, making use of an API will be cost-effective due to the manhours you don’t have to spend on manually maintaining your data.

Coverage
This might not be the first thing to pop into your mind. However, coverage is a very important aspect when choosing an API provider. Not only will you be able to cover multiple leagues with less effort, but you will also be able to keep improving on the sort of data you show as a data provider. You should have many features and should always try to improve and innovate. With ease, you will be able to cover the biggest tournaments in the world (the Champions League, for example), but the less popular leagues can also be covered easily.

In short: Business growth
Dreamfactory states that APIs simplify data collection and management while offering real-time insights and efficient data processing. An API can streamline operations and drive business growth through third-party integrations, expanding offerings and collaborations.

Case studies: Success stories with Sportmonks APIs

Customer story: Scoreplay

The best example on this one is Scoreplay as they had to enter all data manually. Let’s find out what they say:

“Our AI relies on player mugshots (for facial recognition) and names (for jersey recognition) to identify them on pictures, so for every club we work with, we need to enter the player name and profile picture. We used to enter those manually, which was really, time consuming. Now, it’s automated, which makes our lives incredibly easier.

We also use the club schedule API to automatically associate a picture to a game. That is a really helpful feature. Finally, we work with clubs from all over the world, so we needed an API that could respond to this specific need.”

Customer story: Shiftonezero / Dinamo Zagreb

People always think it costs way too much (money and time) to implement an API into their website/application. Let us find out what Shiftonezero thinks about this:

“Getting started was straightforward. The process involves a few steps that are considered industry standard, and then you’re ready to go. Within minutes, you can access the data you need and experiment with parameters for additional information. The learning curve is short. It’s incredibly fast, and you always know what to expect. The API’s uniform and clear responses assure that your data fetching engine will handle everything smoothly”.

You can see that it is really easy to get used to the API and implement it into an application (or website).

Customer story: Footi

If your application or website isn’t faster than live television, you cannot compete in the market that is flooded with sports applications. Being faster than live TV is the market standard. What do the people at Foot/Little Thunder say?

“We researched various options for an API provider. A big draw for us to Sportmonks was the free trial that enabled us to get hands-on with it, and once we plugged it into our serverless framework, we were sold on it. Sportmonks documentation is also excellent.

The data is timely, the live feeds are excellent, everything is up-to-date, and the quantity of statistics on offer is incredible. The ability to use ‘includes’ to enrich requests is also next-level. It allows us to tailor the data we need, reducing server roundtrips and improving our goal of providing a carbon-conscious football website”.

Customer story: Elevenstats

We mentioned coverage as an important part of the world of football data. Let’s find out what Elevenstats thinks of coverage.

“We conducted a thorough search to find the ideal data provider, facing several challenges along the way. These ranged from insufficient coverage and inaccuracies in data to prohibitively high costs. Sportmonks presented an excellent balance of these three factors, which is why it is so beneficial.

We conducted several tests comparing our data, which is to say the data from Sportmonks, with other prominent websites in our field. I’m delighted to report that our data frequently outperformed most other providers in terms of accuracy. On a few occasions, Sportmonks had captured data that wasn’t even recorded on the official Premier League website”.

Customer story: Fotboll

Not only is it important to keep your data up to date, but also the features. Sports data is always evolving. Think about the xG. A few years ago, nobody knew about it, and in the current era, it is one of the hottest statistics in the world. Let’s see what Fotboll has to say about this.

”Using Sportmonks sports API, only our imagination and creativity limit the content and the statistics we can shoot. That’s why we can constantly develop, improve and expand our product. Hence, we have a long list of ideas, tools, features and functionality in the pipeline”.

Customer story: Futebolaovivo

We already mentioned that using an API might be the most cost-effective solution for your website or application. Let’s see what Futebolaovivo has to say about that.

“The main difficulty for us in Brazil is the price of an exemplary data provider. Some companies have standard plans but charge high prices for them.

A data provider could make our work much easier, as creating an application from scratch to provide us with information for the website would be a lot of work. We did a lot of research until we decided on Sportmonks, a data provider that could be cost-effective for us and simultaneously provide data with quality and quantity”.

Understanding the API integration process

So, now you know a lot about why integrating an API and automating data entry could be really helpful. But what is the next step?

To improve security and efficiency, you should develop middleware for your front-end application. This middleware will handle communication with our API, ensuring that your tokens remain protected and will never be exposed. By implementing this approach, you’ll enhance security and reduce the number of API calls required.

For extra help with implementing our API, we have created extensive documentation. A few very important pages are linked below:

1. Best practises
2. Making your first request
3. Authentication
4. Includes
5. Changelog
6. How-to guides

Common concerns

Many want to replace manual data entry and make it an automatic process. Understandably, people are unsure what data provider to choose and sometimes even feel uncomfortable, stressed, or insecure about getting a data provider. It is a big step, from entering all data yourself to giving the responsibility to a data provider and letting it all go automatically. Common concerns are that APIs are complicated, developers are expensive (therefore, transitioning to an API is costly and time-consuming), and manual data entries feel reliable because you can control or do it yourself.

Believe me, we understand these concerns like no one else. We have been where you are now. Our CEO and CTO wanted to create a football application themselves. However, they found low-quality data for a great price or great data for an immense price tag. “No more”. We decided to start collecting the data ourselves. We decided to spread the data before we knew we had created the product we were looking for. We are here to offer everybody a fair shot at great data. We offer quality data for an affordable price as we believe everyone should have access to quality data. We started almost a decade ago, and we have grown since. Sportmonks covers over 2,200 leagues and has over 900 paying customers worldwide. The employees all love football and love to discuss opportunities with customers. Our data partners and data teams make sure the data quality is excellent. Don’t you think it will be a fantastic feeling when your website/application is automatically updated while matches are live?

We know how you feel, and we are here to help. We have built a developer-friendly API so that “it is a party for any developer to work with our API.” Therefore, a developer can do his work quite quickly compared to other APIs or bulks of data. And you never have to enter data into your application manually.

Maximising the benefits of Sportmonks’ APIs

In this blog, we already mentioned a few fantastic benefits of Sportmonks, like having the most developer-friendly API around, continuously adding new features (think about our xG Add-on), covering an immense number of leagues (2,200), and being faster than live television. But there is more.

We offer multiple add-ons besides the regular API features. Think about the xG add-on, News API, Pressure Index, Football Widgets, Premium Odds, and our Prediction API. This makes our API ideal for livescore applications, Sports betting, scouting platforms, fantasy sports gaming, and all other sports applications.

Transform your football data management today

There are many benefits of using Sportmonks’ API. Some were already mentioned, so we will summarise these here and provide further details on some benefits.

• Coverage (2,200 Football leagues, 140+ cricket leagues, and all F1 races)
• Innovation (the newest features always)
• Speed (faster than Live television)
• Developer-friendly API (Focussed on developers)
• Accurate data (multiple scouting teams and data partners)

Customisable data responses

Let’s continue with customisable data responses. As you are the one who knows what you want to show your users, you probably want to decide what you receive from our API, don’t you? We have a few great options to customise the response from our API exactly to your liking.

1. Includes
2. Selecting fields
3. Filtering
4. Selecting and filtering
5. Ordering and sorting

These five options to customise your request have a significant impact on your implementation. They should make implementing and working with our API a breeze.