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Wyscout Video and Data Sourcing: Setting the Standard

25 Oct, 2024

10 Min Read

At Hudl, our commitment to delivering comprehensive and reliable content to you, our customers, has never been stronger. We’re doubling down on our efforts to ensure that Wyscout - the largest library of global football content - is sourced ethically and reliably so that football professionals can make informed decisions and enhance their scouting and analysis workflows.

Matteo Sobrato, Product Marketing Manager for Global Football and Rugby, sat down with Daniel Horlock, Hudl’s Director of Rights and Partnerships, to discuss the content available on Wyscout, how we go about sourcing that content, and how we ensure its quality and accuracy so that it can be best leveraged by scouts, analysts, and coaches.

Matteo: Wyscout has long been at the forefront of football analysis technology, powered by an extensive library of content. Before we dive into the specifics, can you tell us how Hudl’s vision for Wyscout content has evolved? What’s been driving your commitment to delivering quality content to your users?

Daniel: Our vision at Wyscout has been to support football professionals by offering the most comprehensive, reliable, and accessible data available. Over time, this vision has evolved to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of scouts, analysts, and coaches around the world. Football is a fast-moving industry, and we recognize that timely, accurate data can be the difference between good decisions and great ones!

What has always driven us - and continues to do so - is a commitment to enhancing the user experience. This means we’ve consistently focused on maintaining a global content library that not only provides depth but also ensures consistency and accuracy, so that professionals can make data-driven decisions with confidence.

For example, whether you're scouting for talent in Europe’s top leagues or analyzing performance data from emerging markets, Wyscout’s comprehensive library provides full match footage, tagged events, and detailed player performance data.

This means that our users don’t just receive data—they receive reliable high-quality video and analytics that they can trust, seamlessly integrated into their workflows. This level of detail helps coaches evaluate tactics, scouts identify talent more effectively, and analysts prepare for opposition. Giving football professionals the most complete picture possible to empower their decision-making fuels our commitment to keep delivering the highest quality content for our users.

Our ambition is to be the cornerstone for scouting, recruitment, and analysis across football, globally.

Matteo: Content sourcing is clearly a critical aspect of Wyscout’s offering. When you’re dealing with such a vast and diverse range of leagues, competitions, and clubs around the world, what does it take to build and maintain a content library of this scale? How do rights agreements play into that process, and why are they so foundational to Wyscout’s operations?

Daniel: Building and maintaining a content library of Wyscout’s scale is no small feat. It starts with forging strong relationships with leagues, clubs, and rights-holders across the football ecosystem. These partnerships are absolutely fundamental because they grant us the legal and ethical permissions to access and host video and data. Without these partnerships, we wouldn’t be able to offer the vast library of global football content that we do today.

In addition, we have a dedicated, multi-lingual rights team working globally to acquire new sports content for our subscribers, as well as renewing expiring agreements. This ensures that we are constantly expanding our offerings and maintaining access to crucial content for our users.

Rights agreements define the scope of what we can deliver to our users—whether it’s full match footage, data tagging, or scouting reports—and they ensure that everything is done in compliance with legal standards. We’re providing our users with licensed content, meaning it respects the intellectual property of the respective rights-holders and by signing long-term agreements it allows us to plan ahead, providing a stable and reliable platform for our subscribers.

Matteo: Ethical standards are increasingly important in today’s digital content landscape. How does Wyscout ensure that everything it delivers is done ethically and legally? Can you elaborate on how the permissions work and what rights-holders can request in terms of limitations on content use?

Daniel: Ethics and compliance are core to everything we do at Wyscout. First and foremost, we respect intellectual property rights, ensuring that the content on our platform is sourced with the proper permissions from rights-holders. This includes leagues, clubs, agencies, and governing bodies who own the audiovisual rights to match footage and data.

We are contracting the rights for 'Professional Purposes'. This means the content is used strictly for scouting, performance analysis, coaching, educational, tutorial, or similar activities. It's important to understand that the 'Scouting Rights' we secure are just a small subset of the larger data rights that belong to a rights-holder and in no way infringe upon LIVE broadcast rights. Scouting rights allow Hudl to exploit audiovisual footage of matches on a delayed basis behind a paywall, exclusively for a B2B audience, i.e. sport industry professionals.

By working closely with rights-holders, we can ensure that the content is used ethically and legally, while still providing immense value to our users for player recruitment, opponent scouting, and the creation of educational tools for sports performance. These safeguards help us maintain transparency and prevent unauthorized distribution, ensuring that we protect the rights of all parties involved while delivering high-quality, reliable content to our customers.

Matteo: Partnerships with football leagues and rights-holders are not just about access—they’re also about ensuring content quality. Can you share how these partnerships help Wyscout maintain high standards of video quality and data accuracy? What systems are in place to make sure that every piece of content meets those standards?

Daniel: Quality is a priority for us, and our partnerships with rights-holders are key to ensuring that the content we provide meets the highest standards. For example, we’ve established clear guidelines with our partners to ensure that all footage is delivered at a minimum resolution of 1080p. This ensures our users are working with high-quality video that’s suitable for in-depth analysis.

On top of that, we have stringent internal processes. Our data analysts are trained professionals who understand both the sport and the technical aspects of data tagging: They analyze every match, adding an average of 2,500 data points per game. We check key metadata on all matches, from passes and shots to more nuanced elements, and at least 25% of the matches are reviewed in full to ensure the highest quality. Our systems and workflows are designed to guarantee that the data provided is reliable, actionable, and meets the needs of football professionals. Accuracy is non-negotiable for us because we know our users rely on this data to make critical decisions.

Matteo: Shifting focus back to the end-user experience—how are you making sure that Wyscout’s users, whether they’re scouts, analysts, or coaches, can get the most out of the content available to them and ensuring that users' workflows remain seamless and efficient?

Daniel: Our ambition is to be the cornerstone for scouting, recruitment, and analysis across football, globally. So with that in mind, one of our biggest priorities is making sure that the wealth of data and video we provide is accessible and usable for all of our customers, regardless of their specific needs. We know that time is often a limiting factor for scouts and analysts, so we’ve focused on streamlining workflows to minimize any disruptions.

For example, users can now send Wyscout playlists directly to Hudl and then onto Hudl Sportscode with just a few clicks. This streamlined integration eliminates a lot of the manual work that was previously required, letting analysts spend more time focusing on player evaluation and tactical analysis—rather than operational tasks. In many ways, this is actually an improvement—by automating certain steps, we’re helping users save time and work more efficiently. We’re always looking for ways to make the user experience as seamless as possible, and this integration is a big step in that direction.

Matteo: Can you give us a sense of what customers should expect when it comes to the frequency of changes in content rights? And how does Hudl make sure these changes are communicated effectively to its users?

Daniel: As Hudl continues to secure more centralized agreements with rights-holders, customers should expect to see a smoother process overall, especially with expanded content and clearer communication.

However, the reality of managing a global rights portfolio is that, from time to time, we might face situations where an agreement with a rights-holder is not renewed before it expires. When this happens, content might be temporarily unavailable on the platform. We always strive to avoid these disruptions, but last-minute negotiations can occasionally lead to a short delay between the content being removed and us notifying customers. Our customer service team does its best to communicate these changes as quickly as possible, and we’re continuously working to improve the way we keep our users informed about the content available on the platform.

Matteo: You’ve mentioned partnerships with leagues and clubs around the world. Could you share some insights into deals Wyscout struck with top-tier football rights-holders and how they’ve shaped the platform's development? What lessons did those collaborations teach you about building and maintaining strong industry relationships?

Daniel: Absolutely, and we’re really proud of the relationships we’ve built with leagues and rights-holders across Europe and beyond.

Some of our earliest and most significant partnerships were with major football rights-holders like Football DataCo, Lega Serie A, and Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional. These collaborations were pivotal in shaping Wyscout into the platform it is today. Working with these rights-holders gave us access to top-tier match footage and data, which allowed us to develop the comprehensive scouting and analysis tools that our users rely on.

We’ve continued to build on these partnerships and forge new relationships over the years. Just this past summer, we secured some major renewals that we’re excited about. For example, we renewed the rights to the Swiss Super League and Challenge League for six seasons, from 2024-25 to 2029-30, which is currently the longest rights deal in our portfolio. We also locked in a five-season renewal with Slovakia’s top-tier league, running from 2024-25 to 2028-29, and a three-season deal with the Danish League from 2024-25 to 2026-27, with an automatic extension for another three seasons after that.

One of the key lessons we learned from these partnerships was the importance of trust and transparency. Rights-holders need to know that their content is being handled ethically and that we are fully aligned with their vision. By building that trust and demonstrating our commitment to respecting rights agreements, we were able to form long-lasting relationships that not only benefited Wyscout but also helped our partners’ stakeholders to elevate their own operations.

Additionally, these partnerships taught us the value of flexibility. Every rights-holder has its own specific needs and restrictions, and being able to adapt our platform to meet those unique requirements has been a critical part of our success.

These early experiences laid the foundation for how we approach all of our relationships today, emphasizing collaboration, respect for intellectual property, and the shared goal of enhancing football analysis for professionals worldwide.

Matteo: Looking ahead, how do you see Wyscout continuing to evolve? With football analysis technology constantly advancing, what’s next for Wyscout, and how will you continue to deliver value to the professionals who rely on it every day?

Daniel: Football analysis is an ever-evolving field, and we’re committed to staying at the forefront of it. Moving forward, we’re looking to deepen our integration with the Hudl Pro Suite to offer even more seamless workflows. We’re also focused on expanding our content library further, ensuring that Wyscout remains the go-to platform for football professionals worldwide.

We’re also investing in new technologies, like broadcast tracking data ingestion, to make data analysis faster and more accurate. Our users can expect to see even more sophisticated ways to analyze performance, both in real-time and after the match. Ultimately, our goal is to continue providing the best tools, data, and content to help football professionals make the best decisions possible.

Contact us today to discover how Wyscout is powering modern football scouting processes.