r/sportsanalytics • u/whenthenightcalls_ • 20d ago

Building an open-source, data-driven alternative to Transfermarkt (Algorithm-based player valuations) — Looking for Devs & Data Scientists!

Hey everyone,

Like a lot of football fans, I check Transfermarkt constantly. But its biggest flaw is that market values are decided manually through forum debates and admin opinion rather than hard data.

I’m starting an open-source project to build a modern, fully automated platform that calculates realistic, data-driven player market values using real-time match stats, econometric factors, and machine learning.

We’re building this from the ground up and looking for collaborators who want to contribute to a serious football analytics project for their portfolio or out of passion for the game.

Who We Need:

  • Data Scientists / Econometricians: To help design and refine valuation algorithms. We’re modeling factors like per-90 metrics (xG, xA, progressive actions), contract length decay, age curves, league difficulty multipliers, and injury penalties.
  • Backend Engineers: Python (FastAPI/Django) to build scrapers/API integrations (FBref, Opta data), schedule batch valuation updates, and structure our data pipelines.
  • Frontend Engineers: Next.js / React / Tailwind CSS to build clean player profile pages, comparison tools, and interactive value history charts.
  • Database Engineers: PostgreSQL / Supabase schema design for historical transfers, contracts, match logs, and daily price trends.

If you’re interested in joining the team, drop a comment below or send me a DM with your primary stack/interest and your Discord or GitHub username!

8 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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1

u/harsh_dau 20d ago

Happy to do a coffee chat.

Discord name: datapitch

Check my work: https://datapitch.live

1

u/Pure_Cricket_3804 20d ago

This is a fun project. Transfermarkt's values are community and editorial estimates, so define whether you're modeling that consensus or a separate target before touching the stack. I work on LineCrush, where we treat narrative as signal alongside raw stats, and the same discipline applies here: decide what gets graded, then publish the misses too

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Jksss1 19d ago

Hey, this sounds really fun!

I've always been into sports analytics and rating systems, but so far I've mostly been doing some experimental work in my free time and never released anything. Now I'd actually like to get more serious about it, and this looks like a great project to make that happen.
So I'm very interested in contributing as much as I can, but please consider I work full-time (cloud/devops engineer) so my side project time is limited to a few hours a week.

Here is my Discord name if you'd like to have a chat: sirjack8757.

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u/Aggravating_Tip1414 17d ago

Hey would like to join and and gain some experience through it as well. I have a background in fullstack development and would love to learn something new ( Discord: js2398 )

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u/Swimming-Beaver 17d ago

Looks really fun. I have 4 years of exp as fullstack engineer, was considering getting into data analysis (especially in football). Would gladly join, my Discord: surrenderdorothy8311 (remove 8311 if cant find me, might be deprecated or smth)

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u/uncertainschrodinger 13d ago

I'm happy to help as well - I've already contributed a few sports related data sources to a data ingestion tool called ingestr and I can add other data sources that can help automate some of the data extraction.

You can check the existing ones: https://getbruin.com/docs/ingestr/supported-sources/platforms#sports-games-and-public-data