Wrestlestat now Premium?

[MoveCountermove]

Was just fiddling around and hopped over to Wrestlestat to try to look back at some wrestlers from last year and their records, etc…and everything appears to be paywalled now. $10/month or $40 for the year (I think). I don’t use it enough to warrant any payment, but thought it was interesting to see pop up. Bit of a bummer, but everything costs money nowadays (and increasingly more by the pay period, it seems) and the people running these sites need to make some scratch like anyone else. 

[Idaho]

Realistically this should have happened a long time ago... there is a lot of work that went into building that site and maintaining it. 

[flyingcement]

I have donated the odd 20 dollars here and there, but I can understand that it wouldn't have been enough for what they are providing.  I will probably become a premium member as I think it's one of the best resources we have in college wrestling. +

[Caveira]

2 hours ago, Idaho said:

Realistically this should have happened a long time ago... there is a lot of work that went into building that site and maintaining it. 

Shouldn’t be that hard should it?   Every tier sport has stat / record related sites for all major sports sometimes even down to the high school level 

Although  when your a revenue sport …. $$$ happens I guess 

Edited October 3 by Caveira

[BruceyB]

6 hours ago, Caveira said:

Shouldn’t be that hard should it?   Every tier sport has stat / record related sites for all major sports sometimes even down to the high school level 

Although  when your a revenue sport …. $$$ happens I guess 

I'd be curious to know how the "reference" websites are funded. baseballreference, basketballreference, etc. Regularly in conversations with friends we bring up a question about some athlete from the past and utilize those websites.. for free.

[BruceyB]

9 hours ago, Idaho said:

Realistically this should have happened a long time ago... there is a lot of work that went into building that site and maintaining it. 

That's fine and all but I would think they could generate more revenue through ads and casual traffic than relying on subscribers. I love the resource and use it pretty regularly when putting together posts on here, but I don't see myself ever paying money to look up a wrestler's match history.

I'd just be really curious to know how many people care enough to pay for the information. I already have to pay for ESPN+, Big10+, BTN, and Flo to watch college wrestling.. I'm just not tacking on an extra payment to see past results.

[MoveCountermove]

51 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

That's fine and all but I would think they could generate more revenue through ads and casual traffic than relying on subscribers. I love the resource and use it pretty regularly when putting together posts on here, but I don't see myself ever paying money to look up a wrestler's match history.

I'd just be really curious to know how many people care enough to pay for the information. I already have to pay for ESPN+, Big10+, BTN, and Flo to watch college wrestling.. I'm just not tacking on an extra payment to see past results.

FWIW I’ve heard from blog editor at a site with higher traffic than Wrestlestat that their ad revenue really wasn’t that impressive, despite it being intrusive. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be adequate, just not sure it would amount to a whole heap

[happyvalet]

Matsavant.com has match histories, free without intrusive ads 

[RAFWiki]

3 hours ago, happyvalet said:

Matsavant.com has match histories, free without intrusive ads 

This is great

Is there anything like this for Freestyle?

[Dogbone]

For the amount of work that goes into wrestlestat and the what it provides, head to head comparison, predictions, fantasy games, it only makes sense.  

In this day in age, you can't read an AP article without paying $1.99. 

Rokfin, On3, Flo, Patreon.  Outside of big content providers with major ad deals, almost everyone has their stuff behind a paywall.  

[fishbane]

On 10/3/2026 at 7:41 PM, BruceyB said:

I'd be curious to know how the "reference" websites are funded. baseballreference, basketballreference, etc. Regularly in conversations with friends we bring up a question about some athlete from the past and utilize those websites.. for free.

They have ads and sell a stathead membership for $9/month which removes the ads and gives access to more stats and search/power user tools.

https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/

It's disappointing that wrestlestat doesn't make the match results free.  Charge for advance stats, rankings,  and ad removal.

[Idaho]

18 hours ago, happyvalet said:

Matsavant.com has match histories, free without intrusive ads 

Yes, they have some good stuff. I like the format and they have pictures! They are a little behind on information at times, but still a good source. Interested to find out what Flo does with Trackwrestling profiles. They seem to be split between Track and Flo. I like the old school Track profile look up. 

[maligned]

On 10/3/2026 at 7:41 PM, BruceyB said:

I'd be curious to know how the "reference" websites are funded. baseballreference, basketballreference, etc. Regularly in conversations with friends we bring up a question about some athlete from the past and utilize those websites.. for free.

Components of those sites are free. As fishbone said, they keep a lot of deep-dive data that hobbyist and professional analysts love protected behind a paywall on Stathead. 
 

5 hours ago, fishbane said:

It's disappointing that wrestlestat doesn't make the match results free.  Charge for advance stats, rankings,  and ad removal.

I'm sure it's all down to their analysis of what people are investigating the most compared to how much time those items take to produce.

Eventually, if you want to keep professionalizing, sharpening, and protecting against the scraping of your data; you have to find ways to make a few bucks off of your work even to keep doing it as a hobby or service to the community. 

[Tyler Perry]

I’ve never went to wrestle stat to look at rankings, the website is useless to me now

[fishbane]

On 10/5/2026 at 4:09 PM, maligned said:

Components of those sites are free. As fishbone said, they keep a lot of deep-dive data that hobbyist and professional analysts love protected behind a paywall on Stathead. 

This update doesn't just pay wall the deep dive data.  It pay walls the match results which is nonsense. Its nothing that isn't in a box score.

On 10/5/2026 at 4:09 PM, maligned said:

I'm sure it's all down to their analysis of what people are investigating the most compared to how much time those items take to produce.

Eventually, if you want to keep professionalizing, sharpening, and protecting against the scraping of your data; you have to find ways to make a few bucks off of your work even to keep doing it as a hobby or service to the community. 

It isn't their data that they are pay walling.  It's just the results and they can't protect that.  It's all public data from box scores.  Anyone could copy it and there is nothing they could do about it because they don't own it.  Putting it behind a pay wall doesn't change that. 

Back when ESPN had a paywall for written content the stuff behind it was articles and analysis.  They never paywalled box scores or stats compiled from them.  It is unthinkable to pay for such things in 2026.

[Caveira]

1 hour ago, fishbane said:

This update doesn't just pay wall the deep dive data.  It pay walls the match results which is nonsense. Its nothing that isn't in a box score.

It isn't their data that they are pay walling.  It's just the results and they can't protect that.  It's all public data from box scores.  Anyone could copy it and there is nothing they could do about it because they don't own it.  Putting it behind a pay wall doesn't change that. 

Back when ESPN had a paywall for written content the stuff behind it was articles and analysis.  They never paywalled box scores or stats compiled from them.  It is unthinkable to pay for such things in 2026.

This 100%.   

[maligned]

15 hours ago, fishbane said:

It isn't their data that they are pay walling.  It's just the results and they can't protect that.  It's all public data from box scores. 

That part is true.

15 hours ago, fishbane said:

ESPN never paywalled box scores or stats compiled from them.

That's because those things were listed and compiled in exactly the same way on dozens of sites. 

15 hours ago, fishbane said:

It is unthinkable to pay for such things (match results) in 2026.

But what they compile is unique. All results from all individuals from all teams, easily navigable, with a highly intuitive ranking next to each name and links interconnecting all of them--is light-years beyond what you can sift through on any other wrestling site. It's exactly the reason people care enough to discuss it.

I never pay for print content either; but I've wondered for a couple years why we're not asked a nominal fee, because what they compile is so novel in the wrestling space and referenced by so many.

[Gantry]

39 minutes ago, maligned said:

But what they compile is unique. All results from all individuals from all teams, easily navigable, with a highly intuitive ranking next to each name and links interconnecting all of them--is light-years beyond what you can sift through on any other wrestling site. It's exactly the reason people care enough to discuss it.

A week ago I would have agreed with you, but did you check out the matsavant.com site linked earlier in this thread? If they didn't exist I can see WS making this play now. But that site does a lot of the same things, with a drastically better ui, for free. It may not have everything, but it's "close enough" given the cost of 0 dollars. 

I love WS, have donated to WS and even started threads here reminding people to donate to WS because what they were doing was unsustainable for free. But wrestling fans have proven time and time again that they only pay for video, so I see the bulk of people moving to matsavant as long as they are free. 

[maligned]

1 hour ago, Gantry said:

A week ago I would have agreed with you, but did you check out the matsavant.com site linked earlier in this thread? If they didn't exist I can see WS making this play now. But that site does a lot of the same things, with a drastically better ui, for free. It may not have everything, but it's "close enough" given the cost of 0 dollars. 

I love WS, have donated to WS and even started threads here reminding people to donate to WS because what they were doing was unsustainable for free. But wrestling fans have proven time and time again that they only pay for video, so I see the bulk of people moving to matsavant as long as they are free. 

Makes sense

[BruceyB]

1 hour ago, Gantry said:

A week ago I would have agreed with you, but did you check out the matsavant.com site linked earlier in this thread? If they didn't exist I can see WS making this play now. But that site does a lot of the same things, with a drastically better ui, for free. It may not have everything, but it's "close enough" given the cost of 0 dollars. 

I love WS, have donated to WS and even started threads here reminding people to donate to WS because what they were doing was unsustainable for free. But wrestling fans have proven time and time again that they only pay for video, so I see the bulk of people moving to matsavant as long as they are free. 

I think this whole thing likely hurts WS in the long run. Before, WS was the default place to go for individual match results. Other website didn't have much of an incentive to try to carve into that space because everyone already used WS. Now, WS by putting up their paywall has created a need within the community for a new place to provide the results for free. I didn't even know matsavant had a website until this week. I thought it was just an X/Instagram account. 

WS's UI as you mentioned also looked like it was from 1995. It was simple enough and it worked, but if another website offers essentially the same information with a more modern and friendly UI, wrestlestat has essentially pushed us directly into a competitor's arms. 

FWIW, other than video, what content is truly worth the money for the average fan? I'm not paying money for rankings, recaps, or articles in 2026.

[Gantry]

Yep, I feel like they are giving their userbase over to matsavant, who in turn will likely step up their game given all the recent interest and traffic. The timing just seems odd here given they finally have a "competitor", but likely it wasn't based on that. I'm guessing it was more of a "ok, we can't keep doing this for free anymore" and not some long term financial windfall business plan. At the end of the day they are wrestling junkies with a tech background who made a wonderful thing, I hope they find success. 

34 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

FWIW, other than video, what content is truly worth the money for the average fan? I'm not paying money for rankings, recaps, or articles in 2026.

The market has spoken and it agrees with you 100%, I'll pay for WS if matsavant is lacking, like you I didn't even know about it so I haven't had to the time to suss it out yet. But I know I'm an anomaly and most won't. 

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, maligned said:

That's because those things were listed and compiled in exactly the same way on dozens of sites. 

They are listed on dozens of sites because the organizations that run the league are the ones compiling and disseminating them.  You want season states, box scores, and game logs for an MLB game first and foremost you can find it on mlb.com.  There is no need to involve a third party.

2 hours ago, maligned said:

But what they compile is unique. All results from all individuals from all teams, easily navigable, with a highly intuitive ranking next to each name and links interconnecting all of them--is light-years beyond what you can sift through on any other wrestling site. It's exactly the reason people care enough to discuss it.
 

The historical results and compiling individual match results was the unique part.  Rankings have been done before, even formula based ones.  Fantasy was unique too though I never used that.  The wrestling space isn’t as large or competitive as baseball.  

There is a chance it was unique because they did it so well that no one was inspired to compete.  This change should inspire some and present an opportunity to grab essentially all of their traffic.

On the other hand, if they were the only players for years because the data is hard to come by that’s on the NCAA and needs fixing.  The NCAA compiles and disseminates stats for all kinds of sports even non-revenue sports.  You want to see a game log of a woman’s volleyball player stats from 5 years ago?  That’s available on stats.ncaa.org.  Wrestling results however are not on there.  If the NCAA made the same level of stats available for wrestling on their site that would cover >95% of my Wrestlestat use cases.  In 2026 for a sport to rely on a third party site that charges a troll tax to access basic historic stats is an affront to fans.

[Idaho]

I like looking up past results of individual wrestlers and matches. I like comparisons. I like the portal section. I like digging through all the rankings and analysis. I paid $40 to access it for a year. I am okay with paying for that service. A lot of work went into it and you can have a lot of information at the tip of our fingers whenever you want. The beginnings and promotion of WS started right here on this board. If you don't like it, don't pay for it and use other sites. If you want everyone to have everything free, start our own site, put hours and hours of time and energy and your own expense into it, then give it away for free...

[RAFWiki]

23 minutes ago, Idaho said:

If you want everyone to have everything free, start our own site, put hours and hours of time and energy and your own expense into it, then give it away for free...

I mean, that's what we've been doing with RAF Wiki. But the promotion's so young that it's still manageable. And Fandom has free web hosting, so there's no server costs to worry about.

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, Idaho said:

If you want everyone to have everything free, start our own site, put hours and hours of time and energy and your own expense into it, then give it away for free...

This is a nonsense strawman.  No one has said that nor do they think it.  Not everything gets to be a standalone subscription or an additional line item on a bill.  Providing historical results and player profiles with that info is part of the cost of doing business for a top sports league in 2026 and it's been that way for a while.  Regardless of what Wrestlestat does the NCAA should be providing this for free.  It shouldn't be a viable business strategy to charge a subscription to access it because it should be available on the league site (NCAA) and for that reason almost any site that covers the sport will also have it.  The NCAA already makes these kind of historical stats available on stats.ncaa.org for baseball, basketball, field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis, and volleyball, for all divisions.

I am sure time and effort is required to keep wrestlestat running, but it might not be a viable stand alone business.  Such player profiles should be readily available on any site that covers the sport.  When you go to Intermat rankings the wrestlers names should be links that go to a profile for the player with results.  Same thing on Flo and other wrestling sites.  If the stats become available then they all must provide it because they want to keep users on the site.  How many sites covering MLB lack player profiles with stats?

Imagine if you went to ESPN and after reading a preview article an upcoming NFL game you wonder how many rushing yards the running back had when these two teams played last year?  Then to answer that question your had to leave ESPN's site and pay a $40 subscription.  It's absurd.

2 hours ago, RAFWiki said:

I mean, that's what we've been doing with RAF Wiki. But the promotion's so young that it's still manageable. And Fandom has free web hosting, so there's no server costs to worry about.

This is the way.  Any professionally run sports organization will provide historical results, stats, and player profiles on its website. 

Over ten years ago I played in an adult wiffleball league that had maybe 20 teams with under ~6 players team.  The league had a website with player profiles, box scores, and stats for the entire history of the league. 

3 hours ago, Idaho said:

The beginnings and promotion of WS started right here on this board.

I don't understand the reference.  Wrestlestat predates this board.