Stats LLC has acquired U.K.-based athlete-performance and analytics outfit Prozone, marking the company’s fourth acquisition in the last eight months and third since February. Prozone, active in scouting and video tracking in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, will become part of Illinois-based Stats and greatly expand the company’s international reach. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal extends an extensive run of acquisition activity since Stats was purchased by S.F.-based private equity outfit Vista Equity Partners. Since that transaction a year ago, Stats has also purchased Bloomberg Sports, The Sports Network and Automated Insights. “Prozone brings meaningful scale to certain geographies where we weren’t as strong,” said Stats CEO Gary Walrath. “This really adds to our global footprint, which is where this business is really headed. We think this changes the competitive dynamic significantly in our favor.” The Prozone acquisition also marks the first major move for Stats since it lost out to European data outfit Sportradar to be the NFL’s exclusive statistics distributor for the next four years. That deal worth is an estimated $20M in addition to the NFL acquiring a stake in Sportradar. “They’re spending a lot of money renting the NFL’s business,” Walrath said of Sportradar. “It’s not a straight, dollar-for-dollar thing, but with this deal we chose to put our money instead into something substantial that we now own.” Prozone’s athlete analytics database numbers more than 100,000 players, and the company captures data from more than 12,000 sporting events per year, and is particularly active in soccer and rugby.
