Seymour Siwoff, owner of the Elias Sports Bureau for seventy years, died today, Friday, at age 99.

Seymour Siwoff, the statistics maven who turned the Elias Sports Bureau into the place to go for exact information on teams and athletes for more than a half-century, died Friday. He was 99.

Siwoff owned Elias for more than 70 years before selling it to his grandson in March 2018. He started as an accountant in 1938 and purchased the company in 1952.

ESPN.com

Siwoff’s reluctance to share data as more people became interested in fantasy games and led to the rise of alternatives, starting with the Bill James Baseball Abstracts, which led to Project Scoresheet, STATS, Inc., and Sports Info Solutions.