PHOENIX – Arrive at the field several hours before the game, submit starting lineups, prepare the press box, serve as the official scorer, coordinate postgame media availability, post statistics and, after a long day at the office, return home just to receive a message that the box score is incorrect or out of order.
This is the life of many baseball and softball sports information directors across the country.
The absence of a standard statistics software is resulting in botched box scores, and the NCAA finds itself under scrutiny.
SIDs are the hub of all information for a team. They record and upload all stats and scores, tasks that have become much more difficult this season. The NCAA’s partnership with Genius Sports in 2018 meant the end of CBS StatCrew, the industry standard stat software for NCAA baseball, was looming. StatCrew outlined that it would lose live stat functionality after July 2025.
However, delays from the COVID-19 pandemic and a potential dispute over selling betting data to sportsbooks meant a solution did not come by July 2025. The process remains broken.
These issues became obvious to not only SIDs but also fans and reporters. Joe Healy, a writer for D1Baseball, expressed concern about pitchers listed out of order in box scores just three days into the season, on Feb. 15.
These types of issues are due to incompatibilities between the live stat programs that have taken the place of StatCrew. Three options are commonly used this season: PrestoStats, StatInput by StatBroadcast and backdated StatCrew.
How did this happen? Two big reasons: StatCrew stopped renewing its XML license (XML is Extensible Markup Language, which stores data as text), and StatCrew is generally regarded as outdated and clunky software.
“At the places I’ve worked, you launch a virtual machine on your computer that basically is opening a separate computer to run that old-school software,” said Kyler Ludlow, assistant director of athletics communication at the University of Dayton.
StatCrew requires a 32-bit operating system, which means it is not compatible with the 64-bit operating systems that are the standard now. Windows 11, the most modern Windows OS, is 64-bit exclusively, so operating StatCrew requires either an out-of-date OS or a virtual machine running the compatible OS.
XML is the NCAA standard file type for single-game stat files. Without an XML license, StatCrew cannot create these files.
StatCrew uses PAK files, a file format that bundles files together, similar to a ZIP file. These PAK files cannot simply be unraveled, as a software is necessary to unwrap the encrypted contents. This software is the now dormant XML license. Thus, without XML functionality, SIDs are forced to choose from imperfect alternatives.
PrestoStats, StatBroadcast and backdated StatCrew are imperfect alternatives because they do not communicate with each other. This would not be a problem if there was a standardized solution, but this does not exist.
This miscommunication stems from the disparity between XML and PAK files.
“TAS (StatCrew) uses PAK files,” said long-time NCAA scorer @ScoringChanges on X/Twitter. “Presto discontinued PAK files, but can now convert their own XMLs to PAKs. StatInput is XML only.”
This does not make any one solution stand out, leading to wide variation across schools. A survey conducted by Cronkite News among 13 schools across 11 conferences revealed that 53.8% of schools are using PrestoStats, while StatBroadcast and backdated StatCrew are each used by 23.1% of schools.
This variance led to a multitude of problems at the beginning of the season.
“Preseason, we noticed that the stats system improperly calculated ERAs, although it’s now been fixed,” said Eric Schoellner, a graduate assistant for communications at Gonzaga University, referring to StatBroadcast.
Madyson Schliep, sports information director for Adams State University, said, “Presto does not let you step back effectively and cause lots of problems if you don’t know the exact code for the play happening.”
StatCrew wasn’t the problem, said Harrison LaLone, the assistant director for athletic communications at Central Michigan University. “(The) Issue is the lack (of) compatibility forcing those using StatCrew to re-enter games played after the fact, dramatically increasing time spent preparing for the next game.”
Every option has its drawbacks, and schools were stuck choosing the least imperfect solution. In some cases, certain software, like backdated StatCrew, was not even an option.
Backdated StatCrew is a workaround that some schools use to revert StatCrew’s XML functionality by setting back the date and time on their computer and/or virtual machine to a date before the expiration of the XML license.
“We had kind of talked about it a little bit, but it wasn’t a true option for us,” Ludlow said.
Depending on a school’s IT department and the technology available, turning back the date and time is not always an option.
How did it get to this point?
“The deadline was on the horizon from the outset of Genius becoming the primary stat service for the NCAA,” Ludlow said. “So even if it wasn’t officially told to us, one way or another, that this is when that is going to happen, it has been a problem on the horizon from the beginning, which would be like 2018, 2019 range.”
The NCAA partnered with Genius Sports in May 2018 to develop stat and scoring software under the name NCAA Live Stats. This partnership includes promises to develop software for basketball, volleyball, soccer, ice hockey, football, beach volleyball, baseball/softball and lacrosse.
In August 2022, StatCrew announced that the XML activation would expire after July 2025, giving Genius Sports a soft deadline to release NCAA Live Stats for baseball. However, this deadline came and went and Genius Sports did not deliver.
The NCAA and Genius Sports provided schools with several deadlines for the release of NCAA Live Stats for baseball, starting in 2021, with some suggesting a final promise was made to have the software ready before the 2026 NCAA baseball season.
The NCAA denies it made such promises.
In a statement to Cronkite News, the NCAA said, “The NCAA has never committed to specific delivery timelines for every sport.”
Some schools have access to NCAA Live Stats for baseball for testing purposes, with a planned release for the 2027 season, the NCAA said.
Despite a clearer timeline, concern persists about why development has taken eight years. Genius Sports may have delayed development of NCAA Live Stats for baseball until it received permission from the NCAA to sell data from NCAA Live Stats for men’s and women’s championships to sportsbooks.
“The NCAA worked with multiple vendors to explore the development of live statistics software and ultimately partnered with Genius Sports, which had existing experience building similar products across multiple sports globally,” the NCAA said in a statement. “The NCAA’s objective was to provide member schools with a high-quality, low- or no-cost option, and the NCAA national office absorbs the cost of the LiveStats platform.”
The NCAA denies the role of selling data to sportsbooks in the development timeline.
“Any potential use of NCAA data by sportsbooks would be subject to strict terms and conditions, including prohibitions on certain bet types (such as prop bets),” the NCAA said in a statement. “To date, no sportsbook operator has agreed to those terms.”
Instead, the NCAA attributes delays in development to COVID-19 and other issues.
“Development timelines for NCAA LiveStats were impacted by a range of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected operations across the broader sports and technology landscape,” the NCAA said. “These delays were unrelated to any discussions involving sportsbooks or data use, and LiveStats development has never been tied to the sale of NCAA data to sportsbooks.”
These statements paint a different picture than previous reporting on this subject. SportsPro reported last April that the NCAA would begin selling data to sportsbooks.
“Since 2018, Genius Sports’ technology has transformed the college sports data ecosystem,” said Mark Locke, Genius Sports chief executive. “This extension is a powerful endorsement of our vision, delivering cutting-edge data solutions to support NCAA schools while connecting our sportsbook partners with the highest quality NCAA official content, alongside our exclusive NFL and Premier League rights.
So what does this mean about the role of betting data and the development of NCAA Live Stats for baseball?
The NCAA and Genius Sports partnered in May 2018, and by March 2019 NCAA Live Stats for basketball was released for use in the men’s and women’s tournaments. This is a 10-month turnaround compared to the eight years of development for baseball.
Piecing together this dilemma is complicated. Baseball could simply be a more difficult sport to implement. Genius Sports could have already had a basketball software under development or any other combination of factors. Or, this disparity can be explained by a dispute over the rights to sell betting data to sportsbooks that did not end until 2025.
Regardless of the reason for the delays, schools and SIDs are stuck in a transitory state while they wait for a software solution that will allow all schools to report and share stats.
“Yeah, I don’t think that it’s necessarily like a lack of effort for trying to do something, by any means,” Ludlow said. “But I don’t know what the holdup is or what has been the reason that we’re still where we are.”
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