Visiting Flashscore, provider of sports scores and more

Many sports enthusiasts would like to know as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible the performance of their favorite sport. The Czech Livesport therefore developed the Flashscore network in 2006, at that time only live results and intended for Czech users. Since then many more countries and sports have been added, often under the name Flashscore but sometimes under another name. For example, in Italy it is known as Diretta, in the Czech Republic it is still called live sport, but in new countries it will come under the banner of Flashscore. Flashscore is now active in 47 countries and covers almost 40 sports and more than 6200 competitions. Flashscore is the No. 1 live score network worldwide, according to Flashscore. Since 2009, Flashscore has also been active on the Dutch market. Read a look behind the scenes of Flashscore here.

Flashscore Czech Republic
The results are processed by data managers consisting of dozens (and on weekends hundreds) of people at three locations in the Czech Republic (Prague, Brno and Třebechovice). All told, they handle up to hundreds of matches at a time. This was also apparent during the visit I made to Flashscore’s head office in Prague. Here it was easy to see that the entire process is largely automated. This not only speeds up the process, but also eliminates the possibility of human error. Entering a score (change) or updating a text comment is a matter of seconds and a few mouse clicks in the hands of an experienced data manager, allowing them to handle multiple matches at once. With more than 700 servers with a data stream of 60 Gbit/s, it is no problem to handle more than 2 million requests per second. (article continues below the image)

About 1200 people work for the Livesportgroep, of which about 250 people work in the Aspira head office. There are also about 650 data operators, more than 200 audio commentators and approximately 160 Flashscore news editors worldwide. In the Netherlands and in the Scandinavian countries there is a test case with English spoken commentary. According to Flashscore, audio commentary is an important reason for users to register, according to product manager Martin Vavrečka: users get a better experience thanks to tailor-made content.

Flashscore Netherlands
Flashscore was already active in the Netherlands in 2009, at the time with the website liveuitslagen.nl. However, Flashscore offers more than live results, you also get match details, live commentary, notifications, match reports, previews with standings, also standings for more than 100,000 teams, player profiles and ratings and, for some time now, news.
According to Flashscore, their websites are visited by an average of 1.5 million Dutch people per month and the mobile apps have already been downloaded more than 800,000 times.
The top 3 most popular sports in 2022 were football, darts and tennis, while the three most popular teams last year were Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord. According to Flashscore, about 80% of users worldwide are male. (article continues below the image)

Content is king
As mentioned, there are a lot of people working on distributing the content on the Flashscore website and app. The reporters use fast streams on the many TVs and monitors that are present at their workplaces. In addition, the employees also follow websites and social media. Of course, not only the goals are reported in the match reports, but all relevant information such as assists and yellow cards. The ‘reporter’ uses many thousands of standard sentences, so that he (or she) only has to indicate, for example, who scores the goal, gives the assist, etc.
There are about 80 live commentaries at a football match, which require an average of about 5 mouse clicks per event. During an (important) match, someone else will make a report of the match, partly on the basis of these reports. You can read this very quickly after the match on the website and app.
To make sure sports fans don’t miss a single piece of information, Flashscore launched a brand new Flashscore News section at the end of 2022. It uses original content from the editors of Flashscore News, also based in the Netherlands, and articles from renowned international news agencies. The big advantage of Flashscore news is that it can share news information and interesting sports stories in context with data from 14 different newsrooms with good global reach. This synergy of content sharing between markets with different cultures, languages ​​and customs is made possible by efficient technology support and editorial automation.

Flashscore website and app
When you open the Flashscore website or app, you immediately see the competition overview. If you click further, you will see a lot of information about many sports. You can adjust the display of individual sports and competitions to your preferences. Recently, the user experience has been significantly improved, thanks to a redesign by DesignStudio London, which is behind brands such as the Champions League and Premier League. Flashscore has moved from a white and green color palette to red and (slate) black and now distinguishes sports with distinctive icons instead of colors. These and other changes have made the interface significantly sleeker and more modern.
Flashscore not only brings the most famous leagues, but also goes into depth when it comes to the lower leagues. On Flashscore you will also find results of matches from lower leagues, such as Gemert – HVV Hollandia or Dongen – EVV. Of course, these matches don’t get the same treatment as the Champions League final, but the ability to watch results from this wide range of competitions in one place is quite rare.

New sports, features and news section
CRO engineer (Conversion Rate Optimization) Tomáš Voves explains how interesting new and/or added sports are looked at, and that starts with Scout or scouting. The latest added sport is kabaddi, I had never heard of it but it is popular in India for example.
He also tests new functions and design, in which the input of users is important. That is why many interviews are conducted, also with people with less or poor eyesight: inclusivity is of paramount importance at Flashscore.
The news section has been added as additional value, expected goals, player ratings and other statistics. There has to be some kind of cross-pollination between news and results. Flashscore wants to entice 1/3 of all users who currently use results to also use news.
Incidentally, Flashscore is not just about the results, which they are very good at. Flashscore wants to serve both: one part is a gambler, another part is a sports enthusiast and Flashscore wants to serve both, so they are not going to become a gambling company. The main advertisers (gambling companies) wouldn’t like that either…

Sports and gambling
Football is popular among Flashscore users: this sport is followed by about 70%. In football-crazy Italy that is no less than 85%, Martin Vavrecka told PC-Active who, as Flashscore product manager, is responsible worldwide for Flashscore as a brand.
Not only the popularity of a sport is important to be included in the Flashscore range. Because the use of the website and app is free, people depend on advertising revenue. And that is why you come across a lot of gambling companies as advertisers at Flashscore.
The competitions / sports must therefore also be interesting to be able to bet on them. You won’t find an Olympic sport like archery at Flashscore, but I did see a live coverage of a basketball game in Iceland in Prague….

To land
Speaking of countries: The Netherlands is an important market, but Brazil, Italy and France are the top countries for Flashscore, of course due to the fact that there are many football fans there. But Nigeria is also an important country with more than 200 million inhabitants. Incidentally, the internet connections there are not as good as in the Netherlands, for example. There they mainly use the Flashscore Lite version, which does not cost that much data (MB/s). Flashscore.mobi is the Lite version and this very light version is useful in places where you as a user do not have good reception, for example when you are on the subway.

Finally
The visit gave me a good idea of ​​how Flashscore is able to offer real-time live scores, statistics and other sports updates very quickly. Flashscore is one of the leading sports results services in the world and with good reason. The main advantages are undoubtedly the speed, the extensive database of sports results, rich statistics with supporting information and, last but not least, the growing range of customized content, including previews, match reports and live commentary.