What The Blue Alliance is#
The Blue Alliance (TBA) at thebluealliance.com is the community-run database of nearly everything that happens in FRC: event schedules, match results, team histories, rankings, awards, and computed statistics. It is the single most useful free tool in scouting because it gives you official, accurate data for every match without you having to collect it.
What you can pull from TBA#
- Match schedules for an upcoming event, so you can pre-load your scouting app and plan which matches to watch.
- Live and final results for every match, including the breakdown of how each alliance earned its points and ranking points.
- Qualification rankings and the values used to sort them.
- Event-specific statistics like OPR, DPR, and CCWM (covered in the next lesson).
- Team history: how a team has performed at past events this season and in prior years.
The TBA Read API#
TBA exposes a free Read API (v3) so your own tools can fetch data automatically. You request a free API key (an "auth key") from your TBA account, then call endpoints to get JSON for events, matches, rankings, and stats. Common uses:
- Auto-fill your scouting spreadsheet's match schedule and official scores.
- Cross-check your scouted contributions against official alliance scores (the accuracy check from the previous module).
- Pull OPR/DPR/CCWM into your own analysis alongside your scouting averages.
Even if your team never writes code, the website alone is enough to do serious analysis. Many teams keep a laptop on TBA during an event to watch rankings update and confirm results.
How to use TBA in a scouting workflow#
- Before the event: open your event page, read the team list, and skim each team's recent results to set expectations.
- Before each match: check your opponents' and partners' recent matches and current ranking.
- During the event: watch rankings live to predict who will be alliance captains.
- Before alliance selection: combine TBA stats with your scouting data to finalize your picklist.
TBA vs your own scouting#
TBA gives you official outcomes (scores, rankings) and derived team-strength estimates (OPR and friends). What it cannot give you is the why and the things the scoreboard never records, especially defense, reliability under pressure, and driver skill. TBA tells you a robot's alliances scored a lot; only your scouting tells you that robot personally scored most of it, or that it spent half the match playing great defense. Treat TBA as the authoritative backbone you hang your own observations on, never as a replacement for watching robots.
the part worth keeping
Key takeaways
- The Blue Alliance is the central, official-grade database for FRC schedules, results, rankings, and computed stats.
- Its free Read API (v3) lets your tools auto-fill schedules and scores and cross-check your scouting data.
- Use TBA for outcomes and team-strength estimates, but rely on your own scouting for defense, reliability, and the why.
Scouting & StrategyData Analysis: TBA and Statboticslesson 1 of 4
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where this came from
Sources and corrections
This lesson is AI-assisted: drafted from primary sources, then reviewed and edited by hand. Errors still get through. When one is reported we fix it and write down what changed, in public, in the corrections log.
sources and further reading
- thebluealliance.comThe Blue Alliance
- thebluealliance.comThe Blue Alliance — OPR page and stats
- thebluealliance.comThe Blue Alliance API documentation (v3)
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Articles that go further on this
The lesson gets you through the topic. These go wider on it, and they read in one sitting.
- 18 min readThe Blue Alliance (TBA): How to Use FRC's Match & Team DatabaseThe Blue Alliance (TBA) is FRC's free match and team database. Navigate team, event, and match pages, set up myTBA notifications, and use its read API./blogread it
- 20 min readBuilding an FRC Scouting App: Data Model, TBA/Statbotics APIs, and PicklistsBuild an FRC scouting app: match and pit scouting, a simple data model, pulling schedules and EPA from the TBA and Statbotics APIs, and building a picklist./blogread it
- 18 min readOPR, DPR & CCWM in FRC: What Every Scouting Stat Actually MeansOPR, DPR, and CCWM explained for FRC scouts: how each stat is computed with least squares, what it really measures, where it misleads, and how EPA compares./blogread it
answer sheet
Lesson quiz
All 3 right completes the lesson. Miss one and only that question comes back, anything you already answered correctly stays banked.
0 of 3 answered
01What is The Blue Alliance (TBA) in the FRC ecosystem?
02Which of the following can you typically look up on The Blue Alliance?
03How can a programmer pull FRC data from The Blue Alliance into their own scouting app?
Answer every question to submit.
All 32 lessons in Scouting & Strategyopenclose
01 / prerequisites
02 / scouting-fundamentals
03 / building-a-scouting-system
04 / data-analysis-tba-statbotics
05 / strategy-picklists-and-match-play
06 / worked-examples-and-mini-projects
- Not read yet:Project 1: Configure a QRScout Form for REEFSCAPE
- Not read yet:Project 2: Compute OPR by Hand, Then in a Spreadsheet
- Not read yet:Project 3: Pull Live Data with the TBA and Statbotics APIs
- Not read yet:Project 4: Build an EPA-Component Robot Ranking Sheet
- Not read yet:Project 5: Assemble a One-Page Pre-Match Prep Sheet
07 / common-mistakes-and-troubleshooting
08 / advanced-techniques-and-case-studies