Note: these Frequently Asked Questions will continue to be updated over time. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us using this form.
You can read about our story and our decision to go direct to consumers (before suspending new subscriptions in lieu of changing to an even better business model) on our "About" page. It's fairly lengthy, so you might want to save it for later, but we wanted to provide full context.
Here’s a sample scouting report using real data, but with the referees’ names anonymized.
We are intrigued with what FiveThirtyEight.com has done in ranking different NBA player attributes through their CARMELO project: here's an example how they graph player attributes (on the left side of each player's page).
There are so many ways our statistics and data can be used that go far beyond what we could recommend. That's the beauty of data and analytics: those who can use the data more effectively in creative ways, and testing their theories and honing them over time, can probably gain an edge.
For example, one theory worth testing is looking for at least two of 3 referees officiating a game who have demonstrated tendencies to call particular violations higher than average. This pattern may tilt the scale for those same violations to be called more in the game you are trying to project what might happen from an officiating perspective.
Another thing to remember is that in the beginning of the season, the averages and percentile rankings for a referee across all categories can change rapidly because of the small number of games that have been officiated. But as more games are officiated, the referees' averages will "regress to the mean." That's why we believe it's important to display the referees' statistics from previous seasons in order to draw more accurate conclusions on each referee's tendencies.
For example, one theory worth testing is looking for at least two of 3 referees officiating a game who have demonstrated tendencies to call particular violations higher than average. This pattern may tilt the scale for those same violations to be called more in the game you are trying to project what might happen from an officiating perspective.
Another thing to remember is that in the beginning of the season, the averages and percentile rankings for a referee across all categories can change rapidly because of the small number of games that have been officiated. But as more games are officiated, the referees' averages will "regress to the mean." That's why we believe it's important to display the referees' statistics from previous seasons in order to draw more accurate conclusions on each referee's tendencies.
We’ve logged every game since the 2011-12 season, so eight seasons (and counting) totaling close to 11,000 games as of December 2019. We haven’t missed one game since the 2011-12 season, and we also have video of every violation called by referees since that season.
Before suspending the sale of new memberships, our VIP Memberships were priced at $59.95 per season, an amount we believe was nominal compared to the amount of money many sports bettors spend on an annual basis. If you aren't a sports bettor, we should also point out the amount of money we've spent over the past 9 years paying our staff to work on collecting this data, along with incurring significant programming and technology costs. All of our work has been self-funded that has easily reached into 7 figures.
The VIP membership lasted for one calendar year. That way if you signed up later in the season, you know you would be getting a full season of games that extended into the following season.
The VIP membership lasted for one calendar year. That way if you signed up later in the season, you know you would be getting a full season of games that extended into the following season.
We visually review every referee call using a team of analysts who are paid to ensure the best quality and reliability. We learned volunteers can't do this kind of work very long for free since it can be very meticulous and time-consuming logging hundreds of games per season.
If we decide to start offering VIP memberships again, our goal is to make the scouting reports available each day between 9-11:30am Eastern, shortly after the NBA releases the names of the referees officiating the games each day at 9am ET.
We thought it would be interesting to group the numbers for certain types of called violations that are very similar in one metric. For example, we have statistics for personal fouls, double personal fouls, and loose ball fouls. Since all of these violations are similar (they don’t involve fouling a player in the act of shooting), we thought it would be helpful to aggregate the numbers for all three violations into one “roll-up” number, and rank each official on this aggregate number.
On occasion the NBA will assign an official to a game that is a new referee that doesn't work as many games as more experienced referees. Consequently, their averages and percentile ranks may not be indicative of their tendencies, and may fluctuate wildly. Therefore, we don't include them in scouting reports, nor their numbers in calculating all of the referees' percentile rankings, until they have officiated a large enough number of games.
This can happen in the early part of the season since not enough games have been officiated by all the referees to see if their numbers will fall in line with previous seasons. But we also know the officials are constantly given internal feedback and may be told they are calling too many (or too few) violations and to make adjustments in how they call their games. Understanding these trends can help subscribers stay on top of which referees are being given internal feedback for calling too many (or too few) violations in the past, while also capitalizing on what each official is doing in the current season.