StatsBomb Announce Partnership with Borussia Dortmund

Borussia Dortmund have agreed a deal with the football analytics company StatsBomb to become their data provider, joining the growing number of top clubs using data analytics to try and get ahead of the competition on and off the pitch.

BVB will have access to all of StatsBomb’s event data and analytics software, though there’s no mention in the article of Dortmund using StatsBomb 360, so it would seem BVB won’t be using some of the more advanced data that they produce.

Borussia Dortmund’s Head of Sports Technologies, Kai-Norman Schulz, is quoted as saying:

“We have the ambition to implement as good and innovative solutions as possible in our daily work. We are therefore delighted to be working with StatsBomb, a company that is developing a very interesting event data approach and providing it to us in different ways. We look forward to a hopefully successful cooperation.”

I think this is really good news for Borussia Dortmund. The Bundesliga is a little behind the times on the analytics front, compared with some other big leagues, and BVB in particular seem to be lagging behind teams like RB Leipzig. Working with StatsBomb is an opportunity to change that, as they are without question the best data provider in the business, so Borussia Dortmund are teaming up with the right people.

I imagine the next steps will be to recruit more analysts and one or two data scientists, to start building on the data that StatsBomb can provide.