> 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".