VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images. Pictured: Sportradar booth at the International Sports convention for Television and New Media (Sportel) trade show.
Swiss Sports gambling data company Sportradar went public on Tuesday morning, opening up at $27 a share, valuing the company at $7.8 billion and raising $670 million.
The move to the NASDAQ under the symbol SRAD comes three months after a $10 billion attempt to take them public through a SPAC fell through.
“We’ve been growing year over year for 20 years and this will definitely allow us to continue to make investments as the sports betting world grows bigger,” Ed Blonk, the chief commercial officer of the company told The Action Network.
When leagues couldn’t get money from sportsbooks through so called integrity fees, their business plan changed by selling first-party data through companies like Sportradar and its competitor Genius. Any sports gambling operation who signed a sponsorship deal or became an authorized gaming partner had to buy official league data.
While the data is the league’s to distribute, Blonk said Sportradar should be seen as a tech company that helps distill the data for roughly 900 sports betting companies and the fan through more than 350 media partners.
“Raw data isn’t enough,” Blonk said. “It’s about the story you tell. There are thousands and thousands of data points during a game. We figure out what to do with it depending on the target groups were are packaging it to.
As sports betting grows, Blonk says that data will only become more important to the fan and he expects screens to get more crowded during games.
Sportradar, which has official deals with the NBA and MLB, also offers an integrity monitoring service to the leagues and the bookmakers, as its software can detect possible abnormalities that could be as a result of fraud.
Early investors in SportRadar including Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Charlotte Hornets owner and NBA great Michael Jordan.
