Boxing is one of the only major sports with zero public data APIs.
While every other sport has evolved, boxing data remains locked behind a few major website's that have no intention of sharing access to the data, and even implement aggressive anti-sharing type measures such as:
- Aggressive Cloudflare protections
- Data pollution
- Different data for logged in/out users
- Zero API access
- Monthly fees charged to fighters and gyms just to update their OWN records
- A business model built on hoarding what should be public information
It's time that boxing data was opened to everybody for the benefit of the sport and the fighters and the fans.
I have a very solid foundation of data models and data collection already started and am looking for help from enthusiastic data professionals who are connoisseurs of the sport (or just opening data access in general) to help me build this into a robust, enterprise-grade schema/database/etc. -- The first of it's kind in Boxing.
This isn't about needing help - it's about building something together for the sport we love.
Every other major sport has open data:
- Baseball: Multiple free APIs, Statcast data, retrosheet.org
- Basketball: NBA API, Basketball Reference
- Football: NFL data, countless APIs
- Soccer: Hundreds of data providers
Boxing? One company. Zero APIs. Total lockdown.
Imagine:
- APIs boxing app developers
- Available datasets for journalists and analysts
- Transparent scoring data to analyze judging
- Historical records accessible to everyone
- No more monthly fees for fighters to update their own records
This is what every other sport already has. Boxing deserves the same.
Here's a simplified version:
We're looking for experienced data engineers who know how to take a working prototype and turn it into something that can reliably handle millions of records.
If you've built data pipelines before, you know what needs to happen next - and that's exactly the expertise we need.
Someone who can help ensure this momentum continues (or accelerates) without falling apart (which it would if left to my expertise)
- Developers - Help improve scrapers, build APIs, create tools
- Boxing Data Nerds - Validate data, document edge cases, cross-reference sources
- Community Builders - Spread the word, connect us with gyms and media
Boxing Undefeated and SERP AI are committed to this for the long haul.
We're self-funded (by me @devinschumacher for all infrastructure costs - proxies, servers, storage - that's not the issue. We don't need funding or someone to take over - just passionate people who believe boxing deserves open data and know how to build systems that last.
The scrapers work. The data is flowing. The bills are paid. Now let's build something unstoppable.
- The schema would be open source
- The data would be open source
- The data collection would be open source
.. and I really don't even know the official way is to save this but my intention is to just open everything up so we can all make apps do things, explore data analytics and just help push this sport a little bit further away from gatekeeper corruption which is in every corner of it currently.
Because i just love boxing.
We're scraping publicly accessible information. We're not hacking and we're not stealing credentials. We're are simply collecting and aggregating what's already visible on the web.
