Developing a Sports website or app calls for exploring the age-old debates on whether to choose a Sports API to fulfill the real-time data requirements or to choose the traditional way of collecting sports data.

Let’s settle the deal once and for all by agreeing that APIs are futuristic in their approach and soon APIs would form the very backbone of the Sports world or even transcend into different sectors to offer a development over the traditional manner of data collection and dispersion. Don’t worry I would sell you on the idea keep reading ahead.

The only discloser you need before getting on board is that it is a costly affair, but fear not for it would surely pay for itself in the long term. Thus, moving ahead with our argument with why APIs are the real deal get ready to loosen your purse strings a little.

APIs would boost your football business in a positive direction no matter what your starting point looks like currently. The trajectory of growth would increase manifolds when your business is driven with the untapped potential of APIs where the data is provided by the football data providers in a concise format like Live scores, Fixtures, Standings, Odds, Rankings, Player stats, Team Stats.

Any business idea be it a Sports specific Website, or App, Fantasy Football Game, or even a Predictive Betting Website requires a constant data feed in form of live scores or odds. The need is for consistent high-quality Football Data Feeds that would be embedded into your system with hassle-free integration and support system. You don’t need to get your hands dirty in the process with a time-consuming search party and an integration model that would eat up your resources.

Realizing the need to simplify the arduous process the sports data provider market has also developed parallelly thus allowing you to select the ones that suit you best.

Be warned you would have to comb through a lot of options available in the market. Some would be trustworthy and reliable while others would just provide a cheap and unreliable imitation. The decision cannot be taken at the spur of the moment but let’s spend some time to judge them on how effectively and efficiently they fulfill your needs.

Any football stats API needs to deliver on five non-negotiable features to earn a place in your list:

Quality of Data: you cannot compromise on the quality of data that will ultimately be feed into your system. Trust in itself is already friable when we bring the online marketplace in the picture. Once you lose your credibility it can never be regained and thus the emphasis on choosing an accurate, complete, fast, and au fait database. The start itself will help you screen the spurious ones.

Coverage Offered: The degree of coverage also plays a pivotal role in the selection process. Needless to say, select the one which offers the most coverage but takes into account the pricing structure as well as your business offerings, current as well as future requirements. Keep in mind the following in a long-term investment of resources and time you need to seek out the once that will enable the scalability of the venture.

Live scores: Always select the data provider that would offer live services as the patience level of consumers all over the world have dwindled. Their ability to switch to a different platform is high, if the live scores are missing, or if they are incorrect, or are comparatively slow. Put yourself in the consumer's shoes, Suppose the finale of the World Cup is ongoing, the team you were rooting for has tied and at the last minute they score only to find out the result when all the others around you shouted in celebration and your screen was still loading!! The ability to provide immersive and engaging services is boosted by live scores and you cannot afford a lag.

Flexible API: Best football API provider would be the flexible one. APIs are a solution-oriented product and rigidity in the applicability is nothing but a nuisance. Every business idea is different and thus innately the football API setup needs to be customizable down to the very last detail to ensure that applicability and integration are smooth. You would just need to add and remove parameters from your JSON requests and everything else is taken care of by the backend.

Support Services: Without a solid support service to rely on in case you run into an obstacle while implementation or later down the line, the whole idea of API would be moot. You need to consider their promptness on issue handling, and closer to ensure your business runs smoothly without hiccups along the way.

All these features are time tested and have earned a place on the checklist. A shortfall on any one of the criteria would be a costly affair for your venture thus the time taken to select the right data provider for you would save buttloads of money later down the line. Just be wary of the pitfallsas well.

Along with the search, you will come across a free football stats API but tread carefully at this point because a free source is a code for unreliable source and thus the data quality would be hampered and bring into question your business’s credibility in the end. The inaccurate data will cost you customers and the data would not be representable as there might be overlapping and missing data sets.

The idea of any business is locking in any profitable customer for the long term and for that the quality needs to be on point and competitive which free sources would fail to provide.

In an attempt to meet your business needs we throw our hat in the ring as well. Data Sports Group has armed itself with years of experience and can guide startups and even established businesses around the rigmarole. We offer all the essential features and more with our in-depth analysis driven by an experienced team of Data Scientist the data is not only reliable but informative to the end-users.

Comprehensive live coverage of over 35 sports, not just football encompassing detailed states on over 5000+ competition serves as a great platform to tie up with for the long term as the problem of scalability would never be an issue.

We offer real-time data in the form of Goals, cards, fixtures, venues, ball-to-ball detail, team’s historic performance, as well as Player’s every minute information, is captured via API and made available. We offer a customizable palette for you to choose from with curated packs as per popular demand like US pack, Soccer Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, and other such packs to make selection easy.

If you are still worried about getting your money’s worth Data Sports group offers free trial runs for their API services which you could sign up for on their website. We constantly endeavor to bring you the best of the best without burning a hole in your pocket.