Stats Perform, a global firm that sells sports data to media companies and betting operators, is experiencing a service disruption that’s led to confusion across the daily fantasy industry, and in at least one case, refunds being issued.
The data provider, which is owned by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, has experienced data outages dating back to Saturday’s college football games, according to multiple people familiar with the problem. They continued through Sunday’s NFL games—typically the most important day of the week for both gambling and daily fantasy—and at least two cases still have not been resolved, the people said.
The disruption meant users saw no live stats on many platforms this weekend—an omission that can affect decisions about one’s bankroll—plus delays in contests being settled and paid out. It’s unclear what led to the problem or how many of the company’s dozens of clients were affected. Stats Perform didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
DraftKings, which is one of Stats Perform’s partners, experienced the outage with its college football fantasy games and was able to switch to a back-up provider, Sportradar, for its Sunday NFL contests.
“DraftKings has made investments in redundancies for a wide variety of processes, including live statistics and scoring, to ensure minimal interruption for customers when this sort of situation arises,” the company said in a statement. “Our Customer Experience team is active 24/7 and responded quickly to address this issue with impacted players.”
Others may have been more affected. FanDuel’s customer support department has tweeted more than 10 times since Saturday about a stats provider that was experiencing a major service disruption. The account said the outage hit college football, NASCAR, NFL and MLB contests, and that FanDuel would be issuing partial refunds to users who were impacted. A representative for the company didn’t immediately respond to questions about how much was refunded.
All impacted CFB, MLB, and NASCAR slates have now been finalized & paid out. Our team is crediting accounts with the 50% net lossback credit across impacted slates (min $5 credit, max $100).
— FD Customer Support (@FanDuel_Support) October 14, 2020
Sports data is a multi-billion-dollar industry that’s seen increased interest (and importance) as daily fantasy and sports betting grows in popularity. The growth has created a highly competitive marketplace, where firms like Stats Perform, Sportradar and Genius Sports compete for relationships with leagues, teams, media companies and operators.
Live stats are just one of the services that is outsourced for many sports betting (and daily fantasy) providers in the U.S. While that structure may be cheaper, or easier, for some, it leaves the operator open to criticism should something happen with the provider. Twitter was rife with complaints from players over the weekend about the outage.
Previously owned by Fox Sports and the Associated Press, Stats was purchased by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners in 2014. Last year, Vista bought Perform from DAZN and merged the two into Stats Perform. The move combined STATS’s U.S. presence and Perform’s overseas relationships into a single global sports data company.