Sportradar is looking to expand on its traditional business lines as it scales up in the Ontario sports betting market.
Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl said Wednesday during his company’s earnings call that he was “pretty bullish” about the ON sports betting market.
But while Sportradar is best-known as a data provider, Koerl said the company hoped to play a broader role in Canada.
Platform for success
Sportradar acquired Optima as its betting platform back in 2019. However it has made relatively little headway as a full platform provider since then.
“I can’t talk too much about details, but we see platform opportunities here,” Koerl said.
“Meaning, we can provide our full sports betting platform, powered our data with our managed trading tools. So we see significant opportunities here, and we’re very excited about this.”
Potential delays for Ontario sports betting partners?
Koerl said Sportradar received its Ontario license last week. However, he suggested Sportradar’s Canada-facing operator partners had not gone through that process yet.
Koerl hinted that Ontario regulators were struggling to get everyone live for launch day on April 4.
“I’m telling you a secret now. The [regulator] who approved me last week is a former police officer, and he is learning how to do the job. That’s a normal problem in the beginning of the market. That’s a growth problem.
“And they [Ontario] need to build up that capacity so they really can do their diligence. But it takes a little bit of time to ramp up on the scale of what we see in the US. I think that’s the biggest issue at the moment.”
Sportradar did not specify which operators it might provide platform technology to in the regulated Ontario sports betting space.
The Nasdaq-listed firm will have platform competition however, with Kambi also holding a supplier license.
Strong Q4 for Sportradar
Elsewhere, the company enjoyed a 17% jump in share price following the Q4 results on Wednesday.
Q4 revenue was $172 million, up 41% year-on-year and beating consensus estimates by $11 million.
Adjusted EBTIDA for the quarter was $21 million, up 14%.
Sportradar said US revenue grew 92% year-on-year with the growth so quick it was “not comparable to any market in Europe.”
