Thanks for the in-depth response Ray.
I wouldn't be against paying for the sports scores, but since it is NCAA I really thought there would be a free stream out there for the scores.
And as for the lines, I would also have thought that the books would have no problem with people promoting their lines as it is almost advertising for them.
I hadn't thought about the need to update the lines often though. What would be another way to acquire this information other than an rss feed? Are their other similar dissemination methods out there for this type of thing?
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by: Ray_PaseurPosted on 2009-10-05 at 04:56:41ID: 25494329
This sounds mostly like a broad set of application design issues. Some things to consider...
What is the point spread and when? The point spread changes in real time as the betting occurs. So an RSS feed, which typically changes much less frequently than "real time" will have potential risks built into the design. A large bet could change the spread and those who relied on RSS would not have the information in time to consider it.
What are you willing to pay for access to the scores? Most games and "accounts of the game" (you've probably heard that phrase on television or radio) are the property of the broadcasters and news media who have been licensed (who paid a fee) to cover the game. So if you take their data, you either have to have a license to do that or you risk getting sued for infringement. Once the games are over and the news media broadcast final scores, you may have less risk, but finding a data source that pays to get data and then gives it away to the public for free may be difficult. Google seems particularly adept at this sort of thing, and so I would contact them about re-purposing their information.
Implementing the data in RSS or other formats is the easy part. RSS is simply a specialized subset of XML. You can get details on RSS here: http://cyber.law.harvard.e
You probably want to have an historical log of teams, scores and results against the spread. For that you are going to want a data base. MySQL is a popular data base, and PHP is a popular language for programming web sites.
My guess is that ESPN already has this available, in addition to the ones you mentioned above. Best of luck with your project, ~Ray