Bayes Esports continues its drive for integrity in esports data as well as in the unification of the data ecosystem. After countless initiatives to safeguard the integrity of match data for the benefit of the IP rights holders, like ESL FACEIT Group and our clients, Bayes Esports is making a bold move to now offer publicly available match data.
As announced in April 2024, Bayes Esports under the leadership of CEOs and Managing Directors Amir Mirzaee and Martin Dachselt introduced a system for protecting its content partners’ match data from scraping by working with their clients to move it behind safeguards. By removing their data from a public scoreboard to behind a login, it enacted technical and legal measures to limit the unlicensed use of data in the digital esports industry.
This initiative followed three legal cases for Bayes Esports where the company tackled unlawful marketing practices of competitors in terms of advertising and selling such scraped match data. On June 9, 2023, Bayes Esports won a court ruling, with the court confirming that scraped match data should not be considered or advertised as ‘live’, ‘real-time’, and other notions indicating equivalence with official data offerings. Based on this ruling, Bayes Esports has recently filed a new lawsuit against this service provider for misleading advertising of odds products. In November 2024, Bayes Esports is going to meet another service provider in court for a similar case.
Bayes Esports Will Start Commercializing Public Match Data
Continuing its drive for integrity in the space, Bayes Esports announces that it will start commercializing public match data.
As CEO Amir Mirzaee states, “While we are very satisfied with the response from the market following our public scoreboard initiative, leaving content rights holders’ match data unprotected in the online space is still all too common. We want to raise awareness that this malpractice is at the cost of both our paying clients as well as the content rights holders, and ultimately the esports fan community. The fix is simple, but security practices need to be upheld consistently and in collaboration with all market participants to guarantee a level playing field.”
Since many market participants do not prioritize data integrity and choose to leave their data unprotected, Bayes Esports has made the bold decision to commercialize public match data. This move is intended to reflect the importance of safeguarding measures while closing the gap of Bayes Esports’ match data offering.
Mirzaee further states it will clearly mark and advertise its publicly sourced match data to its clients, including highlighting the risks of using it. The company will also strictly adhere to legal, white market practices for data collection.
As Mirzaee says, even in today’s times of soaring data, some game publishers even leave data APIs open for public use. While this data is originally intended for non-commercial use cases and is intended to be used by the fan community, the reality is very different.
Filling the Data Gap in a Fragmented Supply Market
While Bayes Esports’ ultimate goal is for the market to close the gap in terms of enabling safeguard measures, until that happens the company will fill a gap in its data offering for certain use cases. Mirzaee says that publicly sourced data is clearly not recommended for sensitive, live use cases, but may be helpful to complete match coverage in other ways, e. g. in the fragmented media data, fantasy data, or scoreboard data spaces.
Bayes Esports has already taken this step with certain esports events, allowing the company to provide a complete data offering for a key media use case. With just one integration, their client could power their scoreboards with match data for a significant portion of tournaments for Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and other game titles.
Bayes Esports isn’t stopping there. The company is also looking to expand its coverage in the Counter-Strike and Dota 2 space, adding to its leading official data portfolio they have already acquired. Examples of additional events that may be included in the publicly available match data are PGL and The International, two of the most popular esports tournaments.
Upholding the Standards of Transparency and Integrity
Until we get to a place where more game publishers and clients value the safeguarding of their data, Bayes Esports will commercialize the data that is publicly available. Hopefully this raises awareness of the importance of data integrity and transparency, encouraging more market participants to join the conversation. Once the playing field is leveled there will be more opportunities for growth and success in the esports industry.
Mirzaee continues, “We take our role as integrity trail blazers in the industry very seriously and will continue down this path. As in the past, we will uphold our standards in terms of integrity, and will continue to set an example in terms of transparency in communicating with the market, meaning our partners and clients”.
Amir Mirzaee, MD/CEO
Amir has been active in the tech business for over 18 years as a founder, consultant, business developer (BD), and as the head of a family office. Most recently, he spent 6 years as the BD Lead at Google and Waze, both in Germany as well as in the Silicon Valley.
