Exclusive: Norwich City owners buying analytics firm src ftbl

The Gunners bought Chicago-based StatDNA in December 2012 in a deal that was reported to be worth more than £2m. The acquisition saw Rudd, who had been working for StatDNA, become Vice President of Analytics and Software Development at Arsenal.

US-based src have already been working with Norwich for the last three seasons, following Ben Knapper’s appointment as the club’s Sporting Director in November 2023. 

Knapper knew Rudd, src’s Chief Executive, from their time together at Arsenal, where he was Lead Analyst and then Head of Loans.

American Rudd left Arsenal in 2021 and set up src at the end of 2022, along with her husband Ravi Ramineni, who is now Director of Quantitive Analysis at LA Galaxy, and Cole Grossman, who is still src’s Chief Operating Officer.

Norwich do not foresee that there will be any major changes in the way that they work with src following the acquisition. Although it is now common for football clubs to work with outside analytics companies, it is rare for them to actually buy them.

Rudd, who is a pioneer of the use of analytics in football, was our guest on Episode #54 of the TGG Podcast (which you can listen to below) in August 2023, when she explained the origins and objectives of recently-launched src.

“We are a small football analytics consultancy company,” she said. “We are trying to help out clubs that are in the early stage of their analytics journey and turbo boost what they are doing. 

“Typically clubs that maybe don’t have an analytics department or maybe they’ve hired one data scientist but aren’t really sure how to integrate them into the decision making process. 

“That’s our target audience with this company. We want to help get them started and eventually get them to be self sufficient

“The early stage of analytics was do everything in house and then you develop things in a bubble. Certainly when I was at Arsenal, things were quite secretive, we were working in isolation.

“Now, people are seeing there’s a lot of benefit in understanding what’s a third party opinion on how else to do this, what else is out there. 

“A lot of clubs find themselves behind, so collaborating with a third party is a greta way to catch up, rather than trying to build everything yourself, because its really hard to make up that ground if you’re having to reinvent the wheel from zero.”

Norfolk Holdings, led by Marc Antonassio, is the majority owner of Norwich City. If Norfolk Holdings subsequently acquire any other clubs, then src will also lead their analytics operations.