Introducing bandscores.net and the 2023 DCI Score Dashboard
Scores! Numbers! Data! The newest resource for viewing all of the scores and numbers behind the 2023 DCI season
As we complete the first competitive week of the 2023 DCI season, we’re excited to share that our 2023 DCI Score Dashboard is published and ready for use! And even better, it comes with a new website for marching arts enthusiasts!
Bandscores.net is a new website that recently launched last month. This new passion project exists with the vision of being the primary resource for competition scores and data in the marching arts community. While other similar websites and resources exist in the community, many focus on only one activity within the marching arts. The goal of bandscores.net is to collect and make available as much score data as possible (both for current and historical seasons) for all activities. Additionally, through the use of dashboards and web apps, data is made as dynamic as possible by allowing users to easily compare scores across different ensembles, competitions, years, and more.
Bandscores.net is organized into different pages by activity: drum corps, winter guard, indoor percussion & winds, and marching band. The winter guard and indoor percussion pages contain the 2023 score dashboards that were made available earlier this year. The drum corps page contains the 2022 score dashboard from last year, as well as a new historical scores dashboard containing over 10,000 scores dating back to the 2008 season.
And of course, just in time for the start of the season, we’ve published our new 2023 score dashboard! If you used the 2022 dashboard last year, you’ll recognize that a lot of the layout and content is the same, but with a couple key changes and additions.
The dashboard will update in real time as soon as DCI posts new scores! (well, mostly real time - there may be a few minutes of delay)
There’s a new rankings system that ranks corps by their average score from the past seven days, regardless of number of shows performed in that period. Because of how the DCI schedule has evolved in recent seasons with fewer shows and some corps taking extended breaks between performances, this is a more even way of comparing scores, rather than using an average from the last X number of performances.
To clean up navigation, pages are stored under three sections: scores, metrics, and schedule. Click on a section tab in the header to view a drop down menu of pages in that section.
New this year are two schedule pages. The show schedule page shows all events with performance time in chronological order by time zone. This page will be periodically updated throughout the season as performance times are determined for events later in the season. Hopefully this page is useful for tracking all of the corps performing on a given day, especially in cases where there may be multiple FloMarching streams that overlap.
Also new this year is a page for caption rankings. It’s set up very similarly to the rankings page, but instead shows rankings for the caption awards given out at World Championships: General Effect, Visual, Color Guard, Brass, and Percussion.
If you're new to using a bandScores dashboard, make sure you check out the intro & glossary page first to get a handle of how to use the dashboard and all of the content in it. As a general statement, most elements on all pages are clickable and interactable and data is dynamic by using the available drop down filters on each page. Any “view” you create is unique to you, will not be seen by other users, and will not be saved by Looker Studio or bandscores.net. Lastly, it is highly recommended to view it on a desktop browser; the site and dashboard does support mobile browsers, however some functionality may be lost.
Continue to check the dashboard and bandscores.net for updates and new features throughout the season. And if you have feedback or want a new feature to be added, don’t hesitate to let us know! Happy number crunching, score and data nerds!
“bandScores” is a current staff writer and stats guru for General Effect Media. He has been involved in the marching arts activity for nearly two decades. bandScores is his passion project with the mission of being the primary source of statistical information for the marching arts community. You can follow more of his work at @band_scores on Twitter and @bandscores on Instagram.