Sportico: Sportradar Reportedly in Talks to Go Public

Sportico has reported that Sportradar, the world’s leader in preventing and detecting sports fraud in betting, is in talks to go public, with the company reportedly valued at $10 billion.

Going Public Puts Sportradar’s Value at $10bn

Sportradar may soon be going public, Sportico says in a recent report citing anonymous sources close to the matter. With Sportradar’s valuation grazing past $10 billion now, the data firm is reportedly negotiating with SPACs, looking at anything between $10 billion and $12 billion.

At the same time, Sportradar is also reportedly looking to go the way of a traditional public offering, Sportico sources stated. None of this is surprising given Sportaradar’s stature in sports over the years.

The company has scaled up its product to cover the entire world of sports providing integrity solutions on the go. Recently, Sportradar released a fraud detection tool for free, agreeing to foot the bill so that governing bodies have a powerful automated solution to detect match-fixing.

Sportradar was also in talks to go ahead with a SPAC last year and considered an IPO, but the valuation was low compared to what the company is looking at today. Last year’s reported SPAC was worth $8 billion whereas the initial public offering stood at anything between $6 billion and $8 billion, the media wrote.

Today, Sportradar is in talks to raise $2 billion in cash through a PIPE arrangement, tapping interest from institutional interests, one of the sources cited by Sportico revealed.

Big Data Is Big Money

Once again, seeing the valuation of the SPAC and IPO deals increase should not surprise us. With Sportradar quickly positioning itself as one of the custodians of fairness in sports, the big data the company manages has inherent value to everyone in the world of sports.

Interest in sports betting, in particular, has led to a heightened activity among match-fixing syndicates who are on the prowl and usually target low-income leagues, where members of the staff, coaches, referees, teams and players are usually more vulnerable.

Sportradar’s Value Grows Exponentially

Yet, the cancer of sports betting, as Sportradar’s executives describe it, may be in for a rough patch as Sportradar’s has the financial and technological resource to counterweigh it. To put things in perspective, previously Sportradar was valued at $2.4 billion, around the same time the Canada Pension Investment Board and TCV, a private equity company, bought a minority stake.

The company’s valuation has grown exponentially since then, though, and in the four years since 2018, Sportradar’s valuation has hit new records, considering the latest information published by Sportico. Sportico took some hard data and made deductions about the potential SPAC deal the company is reportedly mulling.

According to Sportico, “Sportradar would probably need a SPAC with at least $750 million in capital from its IPO to be able to craft a deal of that valuation.” The media added that here are only a handful of such SPACs so guessing what may happen next, assuming the negotiations are real, shouldn’t be too difficult.

Sportradar has remained committed to detecting fraud in sports and addressing it swiftly. The company is monitoring 600,000 matches around the world annually, a number that is likely to continue rising.

In 2020, the company reported 160 signals about suspected fraudulent activity. The company released its Universal Fraud Detection System for free so that governing bodies may flag suspicious games and conduct independent study or hire Sportradar’s train analyst desk to carry out an in-depth investigation for them.

Sportradar has cautioned on numerous occasions that fraud in sports is expected to rise. Yet, it’s through the concerted effort of stakeholders everywhere that governing bodies and regulators can eradicate the plague of sports betting.

Going public may lead to an even stronger position for Sportradar in the world of big data and preventing sports fraud, making it harder for criminal organizations to get their way in the end.