Getting started
FAnalytics Arena benchmarks football analytics products against ground truth, in public, on a protocol anyone can audit.
What it measures
Capabilities, not companies. A vendor does not get one score; it gets a score per benchmark, and each benchmark asks one question with a checkable answer. A provider strong at projecting transfers and weak at valuing what teams do in a match should read as exactly that, rather than as a single number that hides both.
Three benchmarks are live:
- Transfers — how will a player perform after he moves? A participant predicts, for each transfer, the range of per-match performances he will produce at his new club.
- Game Value, team board — does a model see something in a match that the scoreline does not? A participant values what each team did in each match, and is scored on how well those values order results still to be played.
- Game Value, player board — does a rating see something in a player that his own on-pitch goal difference does not? A participant rates every appearance, and is scored on how well the ratings of the eleven on the pitch order the goals scored while they were on it.
Who it is for
Vendors get an independent measurement they did not mark themselves, and a place to be compared on the same questions as everyone else.
Clubs and analysts get a basis for choosing a supplier that is not a sales deck — including the uncertainty around each number, which is usually where the real answer lives early in a season.
Researchers and journalists get a methodology that can be reproduced or challenged, because every published score names the versions and the formula that produced it.
How participation works
Some things are the same on every benchmark:
- Register once. One identity and one API key for the whole Arena, shown once, from Join the Arena.
- Enter each benchmark you want to be scored on. Registering says who you are; entering says what you are competing in.
- Send your answers to the Arena. Participation is by submission: there is no endpoint to expose and no service to keep running. Every benchmark offers a dry run that puts your submission through every real check and stores nothing.
- Be scored weekly. Scores are appended, never rewritten, so a participant's trajectory across the season stays readable — and a person confirms who you are before your row is published.
What differs is what you answer, and how often:
| Transfers | Game Value — team | Game Value — player | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you answer | A distribution per metric, for each transfer case | One value per team per match, for every fixture in the competitions you enter | One rating per player per appearance — about 1,400 a round |
| How often | Once per case, whenever you are ready. An answer is never revised | After every round, before its deadline. A standing job, all season | The same: after every round, before its deadline |
| Before anything counts | Nothing required; a dry run checks your file | Certification: a dry run of one completed round per competition, which is the moment you are enrolled | The same, and the round must carry every starter. A cameo you decline does not block you |
| When a first score appears | At the next weekly run once a player you predicted has played | Some weeks after certification, once fixtures have enough delivered history behind them | Later than you expect: a rating only counts toward matches kicking off after it was due, so a player needs earlier rated appearances before he can price anything |
| Scoring runs | Tuesday, 06:00 Paris | Saturday, 06:00 Paris | Saturday, 06:30 Paris |
| Start with | Quickstart | Onboarding | Onboarding |
Transfers can be done in an afternoon. Both Game Value boards are integrations you run every week, and the team board's onboarding exists because a correct-looking delivery can still score nothing if one step is missed — the player board's delivery contract covers the same ground for it.
You can join at any point
A benchmark that only accepts entrants in August would be a benchmark almost nobody could enter. Entry is open all season.
A participant that joins late answers from that moment, using everything observable by then, and is scored only on what happens afterwards — never on football it had already watched:
- On Transfers, you are offered the cases still open, and each prediction is scored only on the appearances made after you locked it.
- On Game Value, you are scored from certification, and matches that kicked off before it are refused. The history your first scores need is built from that day, so the sooner you certify, the sooner you are scored.
What arriving late costs is coverage and evidence, not accuracy, and the coverage figure published beside the score says so. Two participants that entered at different points did not answer the same question, and the board is built to show that rather than hide it.
Where to go next
For Transfers, Quickstart takes you from nothing to a submission with curl. The Transfers overview explains what the benchmark asks and why it is shaped the way it is, and the submission contract is the page to live in while implementing.
For Game Value's team board, onboarding is the path from registering to your first score, with a way to tell each step worked. The team board overview explains what is measured, and the delivery contract is the reference behind every call.
For Game Value's player board, onboarding is the same path for ratings: ten steps from registering to a first score, each with a way to tell it worked. The player board overview explains what is measured and what it does not claim, the delivery contract is the reference behind every call, and scoring is how a delivered rating becomes a published number.
For everyone, the evaluation protocol states the rules every benchmark follows, and reading a leaderboard explains what a published board is and is not telling you. The glossary defines the terms every board uses; the role taxonomy and metric vocabulary are the player vocabulary Transfers is written in.