| You've hit the nail on the head. It's all about vested interests. I was involved for a number of years with a UK based horse racing ratings service (handicapping if in the US). This service used to license their base data from the Press Association[1] and then run algorithms on top to produce the ratings. There's certain things I can't say due to NDAs which are probably still in effect, but the cost of licensing this basic data was in excess of £10k per annum. So, unless you were a serious bettor or were looking to operate a service of some kind, it's beyond the pocket of most individuals. Timeform in the UK also license some of their own proprietory data, via an API[2]. They've published some pricing on their website and you're looking at between £6k - £12k per year. This is just to access data which is available via their website for a subscription fee of £75 per month, but via their API. There's even a specific UK organisation which apparently has the permission from the British Horse Racing Authority to officially licence key racing data. This is who sells the data to bookmakers, form guides, racing newspapers etc. They have a rate card published on their website.[3] Private, pro-punter? £8.5k per year please. It's a bit of a rort really. Most of the data is "freely" available online or in the racing press, but if you want to access it any useable format, either build a scraper (good luck with staying on top of the website changes) or pay a stack to access things programmatically. [1] https://pa.media/racing-betting/horseracing/ [2] https://www.timeform.com/commercial/products/api [3] http://www.racecoursedatacompany.com/ |