[mschuster91]

> Player stats have never been licensed to my knowledge.

Of course they are, that's the entire business model of data analytics companies - the customers are:

- clubs and national teams themselves (e.g. German national team coaches Klinsmann and Löw were famous for early adopting data-driven training)

- sports betting services, casinos and similar enterprises

- TV and radio stations so that the commenters can (at an instant) pull facts like "player xyz has a 80% successful pass rate over the last 30 games"

This stuff is called "soccer analytics", the (German) Wikipedia has a decent article: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_Analytics

[HelloMcFly]

In those instances, nobody is licensing the statistics themselves, they are licensing access to the statistics databases that those organizations have compile and maintain. At least that's my understanding.