Data Feeds: OPTA, Stats Perform, Genius Sports — Why Native Arabic-Aware Feeds Are Now a Procurement Requirement

For decades the global sport-data ecosystem (OPTA, Stats Perform, Genius Sports, Sportradar) shipped English-first feeds and assumed broadcasters would translate downstream. Saudi and GCC procurement has stopped accepting that. As of 2026, native Arabic-aware data feeds are a contract clause, not an option.

What Arabic-aware actually means

• Player names in Arabic script as the primary field, with English as the transliteration. Not the other way around.
• Team names with the official Arabic name field populated and validated against federation registries.
• Venue names in Arabic with proper RTL formatting in the JSON itself (RLM markers).
• Event timestamps with both Gregorian and Hijri date support.
• Statistical categories with Arabic labels in the feed metadata.

Why this matters for federations

The Saudi Pro League, the UAE Pro League, the Qatar Stars League, the Egyptian Premier League — all distribute matches to broadcasters who serve Arabic-first audiences. A feed that comes through in English-first with bolt-on Arabic translation has noticeably worse production quality, and increasingly federations get pushback in commercial negotiations.

What we ship

Skyline's data-feed layer publishes simultaneously to OPTA/Stats Perform/Genius Sports feed specs AND a native-Arabic JSON feed with all the Arabic-aware enrichments above. Both feeds are signed and timestamped from the same scoring event — guaranteed consistency.