StatMuse

StatMuse
StatMuse logo
Type of site
Sports statistics
Available inEnglish
Founded2014; 10 years ago (2014)
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, United States
URLstatmuse.com

StatMuse Inc. is an American artificial intelligence company founded in 2014. The company maintains its own eponymous website where it hosts a database of sports statistics.

History

[edit]

Friends Adam Elmore and Eli Dawson founded the company in 2014.[1][2] In email correspondence to the Springfield News-Leader, Elmore detailed that he and Dawson, fans of the National Basketball Association (NBA), were compelled to create StatMuse after they realized there was not a place online they could search "lebron james most points" [sic] and quickly get a result "showing his highest scoring games."[3] As a startup, the company's goal was to utilize a type of artificial intelligence called natural language processing (NLP) for sports.[1]

In 2015, the company was part of the second group of startups accepted into the Disney Accelerator program.[4] The company ultimately received the backing of The Walt Disney Company, Techstars, Allen & Company, the NFL Players Association, Greycroft and NBA Commissioner David Stern.[5] As part of their partnership with Disney, StatMuse signed a content deal with ESPN (owned by Disney) to provide stats content on social media and television during the 2015–16 NBA season.[6]

Initially, the company only had stats available for the NBA, but eventually expanded to provide stats for the other major North American sports leagues.[1] The company's initial demographic was players of fantasy sports, but eventually expanded to target general sports fans as well.[1] StatMuse offers responses to user queries in the voices of sports-related public figures.[2] Dawson shared with VentureBeat that StatMuse brings people in and record them saying different words and phrases.[2] These celebrity voices were made accessible through Google's Google Assistant service, Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant, and Amazon's Echo devices.[7]

The company launched its phone app in September 2017.[5] Through the app, users can query StatMuse's sports statistics database using their own natural language.[8] Upon the launch of the phone app, Fitz Tepper of TechCrunch wrote that: "The technology isn't perfect – some of the pauses between words are a bit awkward – making it clear that some phrases is being stitched together on the fly. But this is the exception, and on the whole most responses sound pretty good."[8] StatMuse plug-ins for Slack and Facebook Messenger were also made, providing text-based sports stats.[7] In 2019, StatMuse received investment from the Google Assistant Investment program.[7]

The service launched a premium option dubbed StatMuse+ in May 2023, offering options that had previously been included for free, such as unlimited searches and full results in data tables.[citation needed] The premium version also included early access to new features and a personalized searched history, as well as not having ads.[9] It was met with mixed feedback.[citation needed]

In January 2024, the service launched a Premier League version of the website dubbed StatMuse FC.[10] It is planned to introduce more leagues in the website.[11]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Green, Will (June 15, 2016). "Meet the Startup That Wants You to See Sports Stats in a Whole New Way". Fortune. Archived from the original on August 29, 2023. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c Colaner, Seth (November 14, 2019). "StatMuse combined its NLP stack with Matthew Berry's fantasy football predictions". VentureBeat. Retrieved August 29, 2023.
  3. ^ Gounley, Thomas (July 10, 2015). "Sports stats startup with local ties selected for Disney accelerator". Springfield News-Leader. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
  4. ^ Tepper, Fitz (July 9, 2015). "Disney's Startup Accelerator Enters Its Sophomore Year With A New Batch Of Companies". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Fitzpatrick, John (September 7, 2017). "NFLPA Announces Strategic Investment and Partnership with StatMuse". NFLPA. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
  6. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (January 27, 2016). "StatMuse Picks Up $10M For Its AI-Based, Graphic Search Engine For Sports Statistics". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 29, 2023.
  7. ^ a b c Bastone, Nick (February 14, 2019). "Google invested in a startup with tech that uses the voices of NFL players to answer questions on Google Home devices". Business Insider. Insider Inc. Archived from the original on August 30, 2023. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
  8. ^ a b Tepper, Fitz (September 7, 2017). "StatMuse lets you ask a sports question and hear a response from an NFL star". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
  9. ^ "Sign Up For StatMuse+". StatMuse. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
  10. ^ https://twitter.com/statmusefc/status/1750519573898776576
  11. ^ https://twitter.com/statmusefc/status/1750519576725733624
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