Transfermarkt is a phenomenon. Like IMDB in film and Boxrec in boxing, it is a community-sourced facts-and-stats site that has become the authority it is area.

It has 1.5 million football matches and 760,000 player profiles in its database. But the difference is the 80,000 coaches, 41,000 referees, 75,000 clubs and 12,000 agents. 

Its valuations of players dominate the industry. Just visit LinkedIN and you’ll find representatives pitching their players based on their “TM price”.

In this podcast, managing director Thomas Lintz reveals the origin story of Transfermarkt. How it went from a passion project for self-confessed data nerds, through community growth and mainstream investment to become the data geek’s football site.

Podcast Partner: Pro Academy Players

TOPICS

What is Transfermarkt?

The importance of crowdsourced data

Why did Transfermarkt prosper when similar sites did not

Connecting the data geeks via community

The business v community service

The business model

How Transfermarkt recruit their researchers

How Transfermarkt calculate their player values

The importance of adding marketing value for major players

Obtaining the concrete information

How agents use Transfermarkt

The importance of SEO

The internationalisation of Transfermarkt

How Transfermarkt decide which markets to enter

How Transfermarkt are staffed

The transfer and rumours section  

Has anyone gamed the system?

The technical infrastructure required

Did the deal with Axel Springer want to change anything

What Transfermarkt can tell us about attention spans and the obsession with data

LINKS

Thomas Lintz LinkedIN

Transfermarkt Website | Instagram | Become a data scout