Genius Sports Named BAL’s Official Real-Time Stats Provider

Leading supplier of sports betting data Genius Sports and the Basketball Africa League (BAL) announced today an agreement to make the tech company the Official Provider of Real-Time Statistics of the league.

FIBA LiveStats Central to the Deal

Much like the other deals Genius Sports signed recently, including the renewal of the long-term data technology agreement with Australia’s Hungry Jack National Basketball League (NBL) in February, and the multi-year partnership deal struck with Japan’s B.LEAGUE to become its Exclusive Streaming and Data Partner for Betting in April, central to the arrangement is data capturing by FIBA LiveStats.

“The BAL will showcase and develop the most exciting basketball talent from across Africa and we’re very proud that our statistics technology will be at the heart of this new competition.”

Mark Locke, CEO, Genius Sports

Genius Sports will deploy its FIBA LiveStats, the FIBA data collection tool utilized across more than 200 member leagues and federations worldwide, to capture play-by-play statistics and boost the live action experience for fans by tracking player and team performances in each match, uncover storylines and highlight top performers.

Besides providing real-time updates for fans to follow the live action from the league, data captured by the long-term data technology partner of FIBA will also power BAL’s website, live broadcasts, media partnerships and in-arena scoreboards.

“For more than 15 years, we have worked closely with FIBA to drive the development of world basketball and we’re thrilled to be working alongside the BAL to extend the sport’s reach and profile.”

Mark Locke, CEO, Genius Sports

Action from the BAL Already Underway

The announcement of the arrangement came just days after the debut for the professional basketball league, May 16, in which the top 12 African teams will compete, much like the action in its founder, the National Basketball League (NBA), divided into two conferences, to determine the top 6 which then will go to single-game elimination rounds to determine the champion.

The BAL, which was created in 2019 when the NBA and the International Basketball Federation (IBF) joined forces, was supposed to debut last year but developments around the global coronavirus outbreak delayed action from the league for a year.

The league’s inaugural season features the champions from the national leagues in Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, as well as six qualifiers representing Algeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique and Rwanda, which earned the right to participate via qualifying tournaments conducted across the continent in 2019.

In another development, Genius Sports completed its $1.5 billion merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) dMY Technology Group II to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).