The company was founded in Philadelphia by Sean Forman in 2004 and incorporated as Sports Reference LLC in 2007.

[6] Sports Reference purchased the baseball trivia game Immaculate Grid on July 11, 2023, and integrated it with its sites.

The company announced in December 2016 that the Olympics site was to shut down in the near future due to a change in its data licensing agreement.

[15][16][17][18] According to Slate, editing of "Olympedia [was] restricted to about two dozen trusted academics and researchers who specialize in Olympic history.

[20] On December 29, 2023, OlyMADmen member Bill Mallon announced that they would no longer be able to update Olympedia because the IOC declined to renew the contract necessary to permit them to do so.