How we measure sports data coverage

Definitions used on this page

• Covered is a competition where our current data sources deliver the squad before kick-off and at least one basic live data point (line-ups or match events such as goals, cards and substitutions) in a recently played match.
• Not yet is a competition where no source we use delivers the squad. Your preparation would be empty, so we say so before you sign up.
• Not measured is a competition we could not judge: the season has not started, no matches have been played recently, a source did not answer, or the last measurement is too old to trust.
• Squad is the list of players registered for a team. It is not the starting line-up. The squad usually exists days before a match; the line-up typically arrives about an hour before kick-off.
• Field is the golf (or individual sport) equivalent of a squad: the players entered in the event.

Why define "covered" at all?

Every sports data product says it "covers" a league. The word usually means that the league appears in a menu. That is not what a commentator needs to know. The question that decides whether a tool is useful on Saturday is narrower: will I have the names, numbers and positions while I prepare, and will I see what happens while I am on air?

A written list cannot answer that for long. A hand-written claim stands still while seasons start and end and data contracts change, so sooner or later it says something that is no longer true. That is why our coverage is measured by software, stored with a date, and never edited by hand.

What exactly do we check?

The bar has two parts, and both must be met.

1. The squad before the match. For football we ask the same chain of sources that the preparation screen uses for the squad. If none of them returns players for the competition, the answer is "not yet", whatever else the source offers.

2. Basic live data during the match. We take the two most recently played matches in the competition (looking back up to four months) and check whether line-ups or match events came through. If at least one of them did, the competition passes this part. If only some sampled matches had data, the measurement keeps a note such as "line-ups or match events in 1 of 2 sampled matches".

For golf, the field is the squad. We take the two most recently completed tournaments on each tour and check that the leaderboard returns players. Whether those players also have round-by-round scores is recorded as a note, not a verdict: the preparation still works without them, but it is thinner.

Rich statistics are not part of the bar. Expected goals, pass maps and similar depth are useful, but their absence does not stop you preparing or commentating. We record them as notes, and organisations with their own data agreement can connect it.

How often, and how fresh?

• The measurement runs every week (Monday, 04:00 UTC), and can be run on demand when something changes.
• It is a sample, not a full count: two matches or tournaments per competition. That keeps the cost of measuring low and the answer honest about what it saw.
• A result expires after 14 days. One failed weekly run is tolerated; two in a row means something is wrong, and an old "yes" is less honest than "not measured".
• Every result must name the source it was measured against. If we no longer use that source, or the result has no source at all, it is shown as "not measured". We introduced this rule after finding old "yes" answers that had been measured against a source we no longer use.

Where to see the current results

The per-sport pages show the live tables: football, golf and handball. Each table lists every competition with its status and the date it was measured, and the coverage overview brings the sports together. We do not repeat the counts here, because they change every week and a number on a guide page would go stale.

Some answers are worth reading closely. A competition can be "not yet" even though a squad source exists, because that source is switched off for the series until the data provider clears it. That is a contract question, not a data gap, and the note on the competition says exactly that.

Handball competitions are on the list, but they are not yet part of the automated weekly run. They therefore carry no measurement date, and the handball page says so rather than showing a date we do not have.

Why "not measured" is not "no"

Before September 2026, competitions we had not yet checked were displayed in red, as if we did not cover them. Among them were some of the best-covered leagues in the product. A red cell told a commentator "don't choose this for your league" when the truth was "we haven't looked".

Since then, "not measured" is its own state, shown in grey. It appears when:

1. the season has not started, so there is nothing to measure on;
2. a source did not answer during the run ("we could not ask" is different from "the answer is no");
3. the result is older than 14 days, or was measured against a source we no longer use.

In the measurement of 2 October 2026, for example, cross-country skiing and biathlon were shown as not measured because the World Cup season had not started.

What this page does not claim

• Coverage is not accuracy. Covered means the data arrives. Checking that a fact is right before you say it is a separate step, and every talking point in LiveCast carries a source label for that reason.
• Coverage can differ per organisation. An organisation that connects its own data agreement is measured with its own key. The public tables show the platform's own results.
• A sample can miss things. Two matches tell you whether data exists, not whether every match in a season will have it.

How LiveCast does it

Before you sign up, you can look up the league you will commentate. The answer is one of the three states above, with the date it was measured. Inside the product, the same measurement decides which competitions are offered when you create a new broadcast, so you are not offered a league where your player list would be empty.

FAQ