I thought that at first. But then I remember backed to the 90s when I was a teen and got my first ever playstation. I had the F1 game and it had all the drivers on there apart from Michael Schumacher. He was referred to as Driver 1 or something like that. I can only assume that he refused to have his name/details associated with the game. Not sure why unless he was wanting to release his own game etc and having his name in the official F1 game would have been a conflict of interest.
I guess players could refuse to have their data on things like Fifa or Champ Manager (or whatever it's called) which I know a number of lower league scouts get their data from.
It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. I agree with you and Nick though. Anyone can watch a game and make notes/stats on any players performances.
Going back a very long time, I've had my personal data published on a well known management game.
To get that, I'm pretty sure that SI (game publisher) must have had an agreement with the FA - where contracts with this info on were registered.
This included my date of birth!!!
Playing stats, as someone has already said, we're at that stage sourced to local volunteers.
Nobody ever asked my permission to publish the above mentioned information.
However, these days, with GDPR protocols and many players having image rights and contractual restrictions related to things like apparel contracts, I can imagine this is a minefield!
At the time of slade, I'm guessing there wasn't much of the above so I doubt he'll get much of of this!!