From SportsPro: How Opta became the foundation of football’s AI future
~ 1 min read
The 2026-27 European domestic football season coincides with the 30th anniversary of Opta capturing detailed, consistent and accurate performance data - data which continues to redefine the sport’s global coverage across broadcast, digital and official rightsholder channels.
To mark this significant milestone, SportsPro’s Steve McCaskill has taken a retrospective look into the early years of Opta and its ongoing evolution, as well as speaking to Stats Perform’s Chief Scientist, Patrick Lucey, about how agentic AI is going to fundamentally change the way fans interact with sports data as Opta enters its fourth decade.
