Genius Sports Ltd. and Sportradar AG, leading providers of sports data and analytics to online sports betting operators, have reached a settlement that ends nearly three years of litigation between the two companies.
The agreement also brings a halt to the proceedings that began last week at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London and will grant Sportradar a license to receive a delayed secondary feed of data from the English Premier League, English Football League (EFL) and Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL).
In return, Sportradar will cease all unauthorized in-stadium data collection activities that saw it place scouts in stands to collect real-time data from football matches in the United Kingdom.
Genius contended that this infringed on its 2019 deal between it and Football DataCo (FDC), granting Genius exclusive access to all data from the three leagues, which prompted Genius to identify and remove Sportradar scouts from stadia.
This led Switzerland-based Sportradar to file suit against Genius in February 2020, in which it challenged the football-data licensing arrangement as being anti-competitive and in violation of existing U.K. and European Union competition law.
The principal aim of its litigation was to allow the sports-data giant to "find a fair solution that enables it to build its own database and to compete effectively in the market." Genius subsequently countersued in 2021, charging that Sportradar's use of "data scouts" constituted a breach of Genius’s exclusivity deal with FDC.
A joint statement by Sportradar and Genius set forth the public provisions of the deal that ends all litigation between the two competitors:
"The litigation has been resolved to the satisfaction of the parties. The resolution enables FDC to maintain the right to continue to license and market FDC data as it determines. Genius Sports, too, shall maintain the right to provide low latency exclusive official FDC betting data rights through 2024. Sportradar, who has agreed to refrain from unofficial in-stadia scouting of Premier League, Football League, and Scottish Professional Football League matches, has purchased a sublicense from Genius Sports that provides rights to a delayed official secondary feed through 2024. The remaining terms of the settlement are confidential."
Sportradar's in-game pricing services could suffer
The settlement would appear to amount to a net win for Genius in that Sportradar will be collecting "low latency data," which amounts to a continuous time lag in real-time data collection.
Industry analysts believe that this effectively places Sportradar at an obvious disadvantage with respect to being fed delayed data by Genius that could impact in-play legal sports betting as a result of inferior in-game pricing.
Following the Genius/FDC pact, Sportradar was obliged to monitor TV and radio broadcasts that ultimately proved slower than Genius' in-stadia data collection. Now, the Swiss concern finds itself again having to accept a secondary feed that allows Genius to maintain its theoretical competitive edge in connection with English and Scottish football wagering.
Genius and Sportradar provide critical data for sportsbooks
Sportsbooks rely on data provided by companies such as Genius and Sportradar in order to feed in-house sports wagering platforms that use complex algorithms to set odds and generate multiple betting concepts.
Access to the latest data is especially important for in-game wagering and even more so for in-play wagering, where customers are asked to place bets on specific plays such as ball vs. strike, hit vs. walk, and run vs. pass. According to its website, Genius "is the official data, technology, and broadcast partner that powers the global ecosystem connecting sports, betting, and media."
It employs state-of-the-art technology to collect, analyze, and distribute data in conjunction with over 400 sports organizations in over 150 countries, including the NFL, EPL, FIBA, NCAA, NASCAR, AFA, PGA, and Liga MX.
Correspondingly, Sportradar crunches and delivers data and analytics on 92 sports across 150 leagues in 120 countries and is an official partner of the NBA, WNBA, MLB, and NHL, as well as Germany’s Bundesliga, FIFA, and UEFA. Sportradar covers over 890,000 events annually.
Pro leagues hold equity stakes in both Genius and Sportradar
The NFL currently received 11.2 million Genius warrants as part of a four-year, $1 billion licensing deal with Genius. The NFL exercised 4.25 million of those warrants in April and now controls 7.7% of Genius, according to Sportico.
Similarly, Sportradar signed a massive eight-year contract with the NBA last November, giving it exclusive rights to the distribution of data and live game video to sportsbooks in the U.S. as well as internationally. The deal takes effect at the start of the 2023/24 season and has been valued at $1 billion.
According to the terms of the arrangement, the NBA acquired a 3% equity stake in Sportradar for the duration of the deal and consisting of Class A ordinary shares on a fully diluted basis.
