I agree I also hope they lose

Actually this sort of case could have quite far reaching implications. What other data would fall under similar protection? I can think of quite innocent use cases, like IMDB or other databases of who worked on artistic product like a book or game. If your name is in one, should you be paid? Where would this end?

Sure and when you drive your car in public, it's trivial for me to place cameras around the city and track your plate for movement data. You think I should be able to sell that?

Personal data doesn't just stop being personal data because it's someone else's.

IANAL, but I recall the phrase “reasonable expectation of privacy” coming up in these kinds of situations. I’m really not sure how performing public entertainment exhibitions overlaps with that, whereas driving to work and such is an activity that merely takes place in public but is not performed for the public.

> the statistics are trivial I imagine, like how many passes they make

If it's Opta, they record a whole bunch of stats for every player in every game in the top 4 (I think) leagues - distance run, passes attempted, passes completed, whether shots were on target, etc.

Even providing "how good was the shot?" metrics - https://www.optasports.com/services/analytics/advanced-metri...

Huge investment in tech and people. Definitely not "trivial".

The articles don't make it very clear what sort of statistics are involved. Are they talking about simple things anyone could scribble down while watching TV, like it's 1980? I thought that, for many sports, they now collected much more. Like where every player's feet were, to the cm, in every frame, that sort of level. Would this change any arguments?

If it is statistics to a degree that can be used for hiring decisions or sold to competitors (or: for other people to make hundreds of millions from your work), is it trivial?

Like in moneyball. It could have a bearing on players wages, sponsorship etc. I hope too hope they loose though.

If they win, instead the firms could simply give them the rights to remove their data, which honestly none of them would exercise. Not being in the professional sports statistics databases is worse, even for poorly performing players, as it implies that aren't famous or noteworthy enough to be included. Under GDPR a person doesn't get to cherry pick which data to delete right? Either you request all your data to be deleted by a firm or you don't, right?

GDPR clearly needs an exemption for anything that is already publicly available data.