The NCAA has partnered with sports data company Genius Sports as a part of an initiative to transform the digital collection and distribution of intercollegiate sports data that will benefit more than 1,100 member institutions across all three divisions and will be used in select NCAA championships, starting with the men's and women's basketball tournaments in '19. The technology will subsequently be rolled out to schools for other NCAA sports, including volleyball, football, soccer and softball (NCAA). SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL's Eric Fisher notes the 10-year deal marks the NCAA's "first national-level deal in this area." The partnership will "involve the collection of game data" and the "licensing and distribution of that data for various clients including media partners." The Genius Sports data platform "will then be offered to individual member schools at no cost for an introductory period, and remain recommended by the NCAA after that." The Genius Sports deal "arrives after a nearly two-year internal review by the NCAA into its data operations." NCAA statistics had been "handled and sold to third parties such as outside media entities primarily through a disparate series of conference and school-level alignments with various providers, most notably CBS Sports Digital’s StatCrew Software." Some entities "will retain relationships with StatCrew." Financial terms were "not disclosed." But the pact was "described as being centered heavily around revenue sharing between the NCAA and Genius Sports of funds generated through the distribution of the collegiate data" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 5/14 issue).
