ShotTracker and Impact said they will be working together to create content using ShotTracker’s detailed, real-time sports analytics for media companies and broadcasters.

The demand for sports data--and an appealing way to present them--is expected to increase as sports betting becomes legal in more of the country and a bigger part of game telecasts and sportscasts.

Impact, owned by Betagy, is an automated content creation system that uses machine learning to turn complex sports data into engaging graphics, widgets, banners, texts and animations. Betagy has worked with ESPN, Yahoo Sports and other media outlets.

ShotTracker’s technology captures athlete performance data via sensors and create statistics and analytics on a sub-second basis. Its data is being used by 63 college basketball programs and has been on display during a number of NCAA men’s and women’s basketball broadcasts.

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During the 2021 NCAA Mountain West Tournament in Las Vegas, ShotTracker data and Impact Advanced Team Zone and Shot Maps visuals were shown on the Mountain West Conference Network via Stadium.

“ShotTracker and Impact provide an ideal combination," said Impact CEO Alex Kornilov. ”Our partnership, which has grown thanks to our successful and well-received Mountain West collaboration, opens new pathways for more immersive sports content on any platform. By matching real time sub-second data from ShotTracker and our visualization engine, we entertain fans with advanced contextual stats, bringing them even more deeply into the experience.”

“ShotTracker’s open APIs allow our partners to take our data and deliver engaging content to a growing audience of consumers and media customers,” said ShotTracker co-founder and president Davyeon Ross. “This partnership with Impact will help us expand access to our data to even more media platforms not just in the U.S. but around the world. This is a great way for us to grow our reach at a time when engagement in data content is at a premium for consumers, media companies and broadcasters.”

Complementing its global base of video and music data, Gracenote is expanding into the wide, wide world of sports stats and information through the acquisitions of Infostrada Statistics B.V. and SportsDirect Inc. for a combined $54 million.

The transaction also includes Covers Media Group, which runs Covers.com, a North America-focused provider of sports scores, odds and matchups data, and analysis and news.

In concert, Gracenote, a unit of Tribune Media Company that counts Rovi among its competitors, said it has launched a new unit called “Gracenote Sports.”

The deals will provide Gracenote and its partners, which include several MVPDs, stats and other data from sporting events around the world that can be applied to advanced user interfaces running on set-top boxes and tablets and other connected devices.

Infostrada Sports, based in the Netherlands, focuses on data tied to the Olympics and European football, spanning 250 sports in 17 languages. SportsDirect of Halifax, Nova Scotia, cultivates sports data from more than 50 leagues and 2,000 teams across the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, National Hockey League, NCAA, soccer, golf, auto racing and tennis. Its clients include Thomson Reuters and USA Today, as well as fantasy sites, sports books and ad networks, Gracenote said.

Gracenote made the acquisitions as its partners, which include consumer electronics companies, MVPDs and music services, expressed interest in the sports vertical. MVPDs, in particular, were interested in sports data they could integrate into their new UIs and drive tune-in capabilities, John Batter, Gracenote’s CEO, said.

That trend is already well underway, with examples that include Comcast and its Sports App for the X1 platform, and Dish Network, which has integrated an app from Thuuz Sports on its Hopper platform that tells viewers when sporting events are trending based on excitement level ratings. Amplifying this trend is OneTwoSee, a Philadelphia-based startup that specializes in interactive apps that sync up contextual data with live sports broadcasts; its partners include Fox Sports, LG Electronics, NBC Sports, YES Network, and Comcast, which uses OneTwoSee’s platform to power its Sports Extras app, also delivered on the IP-capable X1 platform.

Gracenote will look to differentiate in this area with a sports data service that spans the globe.

“To be in the sports business we needed a global data footprint for our customers,” Batter said, adding that Gracenote viewed its acquisitions of Infostrada Statistics and SportsDirect as “strategically connected.”

In addition to providing real-time scores in an MVPD’s UI, Batter said its access to global sports data will also enable its MVPD partners to drive tune-ins based on the excitement level of a sporting event, an approach that is seemingly competitive with the focus of Thuuz Sports’s Ultimate Sports Guide.

“The guide really becomes your interface to everything that is connected to what the fan is interested in,” Batter said.

Gracenote said its new bevy of sports data will also enable it to deliver statistical overlays on mobile devices and connected cars.

Batter said both Infostrada Statistics B.V. and SportsDirect are profitable and that about 350 full-time and part-time employees will be joining Gracenote through the deal, expanding Gracenote’s workforce to about 1,500.