Terms of use

What this is

The GOAT Machine is an entertainment product. It simulates imaginary matchups between athletes and teams from different eras using a deterministic model built from public statistics. The verdicts are the output of that model, not predictions, not betting advice, and not claims about any real person or organisation.

Not affiliated

The GOAT Machine is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the NFL, any boxing or MMA promotion, any team, or any athlete named on the site. Team and athlete names are used to identify the historical records being modelled. The characters are original illustrated goats.

Using the site

You may use the site and share its verdicts, films and share cards for personal, non-commercial purposes with attribution to thegoatmachine.com. Please do not scrape the data files, remove attribution, or present the site's output as anything other than a simulation.

No warranty

The site is provided as is. We make no promises about accuracy, availability or fitness for any purpose, and we are not liable for decisions made on the basis of an imaginary football game.

Open source and data credits

The 3D broadcast is built on three.js (MIT licence). Character motion is retargeted from data obtained from mocap.cs.cmu.edu; the database was created with funding from NSF EIA-0196217. Crowd ambience — in the pre-rendered film, in the live 3D broadcast and in the fight replay — is derived from "Crowd Cheering Sounds" by Gregor Quendel, used under CC BY 4.0; the recordings are trimmed, band-limited, loudness-normalised and downmixed to mono. Impact and footstep sounds are derived from Brian MacIntosh's "thud2" and Delta12 Studio's grass step and pad impact, released under CC0.