Two of the largest sports data companies worldwide are beginning to battle it out on the patent field. The two companies, Genius Sports and Stats Perform, have been rivals since their founding, but recently competition between their patents has begun to heat up. While both companies seemed to have fairly low amounts of patent activity in 2018, the two have since used their own strategies to amass portfolios to prepare them for the likely cutthroat market developing around them, including each other.

Stats Perform has gained its IP through more traditional routes, implementing both a build and buy strategy to secure patents within the sector. On the other hand, Genius Sports has appeared to implement a specialized acquisition strategy to keep its hold on the competition, acquiring Second Spectrum in June 2021 to attain a portfolio that almost directly matches Stats Perform in both size and dispersion. Genius Sports is still behind Stats Perform and appears to be lacking in a specific subcategory of the Patent Forecast®.  Following its acquisition of Thuuz Sports, Stat Perform has become the leading assignee in Predictive Analytics. Genius Sports, on the other hand, is assigned no patents or published applications in the subcategory. 

There is plenty of room in the category to start a portfolio, so Genius Sports might want to consider leveraging some of its AI expertise gained from its acquisition of Second Spectrum to start patenting in the space or find another area that Stats Perform does not have a strong hold like Telemetry Analytics or Synchronization. It already appears the company might be interested in Telemetry Analytics with an application publishing in 2021. 

Follow the Sports Analytics Patent Forecast® to keep up with the competition!