Data representation

Socceraction uses a tabular action-oriented data format, as opposed to the formats by commercial vendors that describe events. The distinction is that actions are a subset of events that require a player to perform the action. For example, a passing event is an action, whereas an event signifying the end of the game is not an action. Unlike all other event stream formats, we always store the same attributes for each action. Excluding optional information snippets enables us to store the data in a table and more easily apply automatic analysis tools.

Socceraction implements two versions of this action-oriented data format: SPADL and Atomic-SPADL.