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Gracenote, a Tribune Media Co.-owned provider of audio recognition and metadata products, is making a sizable entry into the sports data market with the acquisition of Infostrada Sports, a Dutch provider of sports data, and the Canadian-based SportsDirect Inc. The two companies will create the basis of the newly formed Gracenote Sports and will be folded into Gracenote's existing operations in entertainment and video-based data to create a fuller solution for its portfolio of clients that include Samsung, Apple, Google, DirecTV, and a wide variety of auto manufacturers, among many others. The two purchases were made made for a combined $54M. With the purchase, it is expected that consumers will soon be able to widely get live sports alerts in their cars, and Gracenote execs pegged the company as the only one to offer data services for music, video and sports to MVPDs in a single solution. "Our customers were repeatedly asking us for sports data to round out what we were already offering them," said Gracenote CEO John Batter. "This is a compelling addition to our suite of products, and these two companies allow us to compete at a truly global scale." The deals continue a rapid transformation of the sports data market over the past year, a run that also includes a flurry of acquisitions by Stats LLC under new owner Vista Equity Partners, and the heightened presence of European player Sportradar in the U.S. market with its acquisition of NFL data rights and hiring of industry veteran Stephen Byrd as chief commercial officer. Tribune purchased Gracenote from Sony in December '13, and merged it with its Tribune Media Services. Gracenote will retain the existing staff from SportsDirect and Infostrada, but will ultimately fold those other brand names and unify the combined operations behind the Gracenote brand. Through the deals, Gracenote also now owns SportsDirect subsidiary Covers Media Group, which operates online sports gaming destination Covers.com.
