At Sportmonks, we love to tell about our customers. We want to discover our customers’ ideas and dreams and see how they manage to make them a reality. This way, we know what you need from us and how we can best help you!
Go to FootiSportmonks has over 20,000 registered users. Because we have a lot of different customers, we are interested to see how they use our Football API. We like to speak to our customers to see what they are currently working on.
This case study is written about Footi. We spoke to Tim, The director of Little Thunder and Footi. The latter is a football website that covers the Premier League, Champions League, and more.
Footi wanted to help us create this case study to give you an impression of how our customers feel about our partnership, their process in finding the right data provider, the quality of our data, and more.
Let’s go!
“Hey, I’m Tim, Director of Little Thunder, a Digital Design Studio based in Northern Ireland. We create digital products and solutions for SMEs, and Footi is one of our internal projects. Footi was born out of a side project of mine during the 1st lockdown in 2020. I’m a big football fan and lifelong Manchester United supporter, so I worked up a quick website that housed the fixtures, results and news for United fans called ‘Daily Reds’, using free APIs, which eventually gave me the idea for Footi.”
“A lot of other API providers make assumptions that you’re an experienced developer and their documentation includes less examples and is written at a higher level. Sportmonks, make no assumptions and provide plenty of examples to help you use the API. They’ve set a gold standard for this as far as we’re concerned!”
“Even though our company operates in the digital space, our work can still have an environmental impact by consuming electricity and generating carbon emissions. With Footi, we explored how we can create a complex and dynamic, environmentally conscious and sustainable website.
On the face of it, Footi looks like another football website but underneath is where it is uniquely different. It’s built using serverless technologies, meaning it’s faster, more accessible and has a much lower carbon footprint than other football websites. In fact, it produces 8 – 10 times less CO2 than the official Premier League website.”
“The first issue we encountered was the quality and timeliness of data. For Daily Reds, I used a number of free APIs and the old saying “You get what you pay for” rang true. The feeds were limited, the quality of the data was poor (fixtures outdated as an example), and it could sometimes take a day or more before fixtures, results, tables etc., were updated. When Footi eventually moved from a side project for one football team into a fully-fledged Premier League website covering 20 teams, it was clear we needed to up our game regarding data quality, which led us to Sportmonks.”
“We researched various options for an API provider. A big draw for us to Sportmonks was the free trial that enabled us to get hands-on with it, and once we plugged it into our serverless framework, we were sold on it. Sportmonks documentation is also excellent.
The data is timely, the live feeds are excellent, everything is kept up-to-date, and the quantity of statistics on offer is incredible. The ability to use ‘includes’ to enrich requests is also next level. It allows us to tailor the data we need, reducing server roundtrips and improving our goal of providing a carbon-conscious football website.
Many other API providers assume you’re an experienced developer, and their documentation includes fewer examples and is written at a higher level. Sportmonks, make no assumptions and provide plenty of examples to help you use the API. They’ve set a gold standard for this as far as we’re concerned!”
“The support team is really responsive and has helped us with any questions or issues we’ve had. It’s great to see the new data and features that have been added to the API over the past few years, and we look forward to upgrading Footi to the new Sportmonks V3 API over the summer.”
“Yes! What started as a hobby side project has evolved into a fully-fledged football site that we take a lot of pride in. As a digital design studio, Footi has been a great showcase for us to promote our team skills and commitment to the environment.”
“Absolutely! The data on offer is fantastic, and the support is top-class. The documentation makes no assumptions about your experience, and there is a free trial to test drive it, so all in all, I would say, what are you waiting for?”
Sportmonks is a data provider that works with clients to provide the data they need. The clients are media agencies, game developers, live score apps, betting tip agencies, professional football clubs, sports fanatics, hobbyists, and many others. Our customers are joining the Sportmonks community and will receive the Football data they need to create their application.
In Footi’s case, they needed to tailor the data to reduce server roundtrips. The Sportmonks ”includes” and “filter” features helped Footi to make it possible.
“Once we plugged the API into our serverless framework, we were sold on it. Besides the amazing API, the Sportmonks documentation is excellent.”
With Sportmonks, there are a lot of different statistics you can use. If we take a look at Footi, they have made it possible to show the teams, the standings, the schedule and the head-to-head statistics. Footi also showcases in-depth statistics for every match. It will show a lot of different statistics, for example, passes made by a team, shots on target per team, complete match squads and lineups or how many shots were taken from outside the box.
“We wanted to offer a rich, in-depth view of games via our match reports and match previews, and Sportmonks have helped us achieve this.”
You can find more information about Sportmonks by getting in contact with our support team. In the meantime, you can investigate our API for free by registering to My.Sportmonks and try the Scottish Premiership and the Danish Superliga data with our free plan. Our free plan is free and accessible forever! It is also possible to test one of our default or custom plans with our 14-day free trial.