How to Standardize Game Names and Kickoff Times for Sports Analytics

Cheatdeck cleans messy fixture names and timestamps so your analytics stay consistent across seasons.

Sports data falls apart when game names and kickoff times aren’t consistent. Each data source labels fixtures differently and formats dates however they want. That inconsistency makes joining datasets painful.

Cheatdeck standardizes every fixture so downstream analytics actually work.

Why Fixture Data Is so Messy

Team A @ Team B, Team A vs Team B, B v A, etc
Foreign-language naming
Missing or inconsistent time zones
Date formats that switch between sources
Metadata buried inside the name field

You cannot run year-over-year or cross-market analysis without clean identifiers.

How Cheatdeck Standardizes Fixtures Automatically

1. Parse Raw Game Strings

Cheatdeck extracts home team, away team, and relevant metadata using pattern recognition.

2. Output a Canonical Game Name

Use a clean, predictable structure like Home Team vs Away Team.

3. Normalize Kickoff Timestamps

Convert text dates into timestamps
Handle timezone differences
Output consistent datetime fields

4. Leave All Other Metrics Untouched

Only identification fields change – all performance/viewership metrics remain intact.

Why This Matters

Clean fixture identifiers unlock:

Reliable BI dashboards
Consistent cross-season comparisons
Better scheduling analytics
Accurate market-by-market performance analysis

Cheatdeck makes your entire sports analytics pipeline cleaner and more trustworthy.