EQS-News: The Future Of Sports Betting? Sportradar Technology Fuels Multi-Billion Dollar In-Play Industry

By Anthony Termini

To learn more about how Sportradar is working to revolutionize the sports betting game, click here.

DETROIT, MICHIGAN - March 3, 2025 (NEWMEDIAWIRE) - Imagine that for every stock, bond or commodity you bought, you could only ever trade futures. The only way you could profit from that investment would be to let the contract run to expiration. But you could equally be forced to take a loss, while also missing out on any unrealized profit you might have made along the way. 

Financial markets have evolved instruments that overcome this problem. So, too, have the sports betting markets, with the difference between pre-game (or antepost) betting and in-play (or live) betting. And they needed to – because unlike with a futures contract, for a pre-game-only bet, when the game finishes and you have picked the wrong outcome, your loss is total – always.  

With in-play betting, you can close (or “cash out”) a winning position to take profits before the game is done or as a stop loss for a loser. This explains why in-play betting is so much more popular than pre-game in mature markets.   

JMP Securities analysts Jordan Bender and Eric Ross say only about 30% to 40% of betting turnover in the U.S. is from in-play betting, versus perhaps double that in Europe. They anticipate compound annual growth of 25% for in-play markets this decade as a base case. This suggests that, just as new financial-market innovations have raised trading volumes and market participation, so too could closing the pre-game/in-play gap introduce enormous amounts of liquidity to the U.S. betting market. 

This constitutes a major profit opportunity for U.S.-focused sportsbook operators and the value chain that serves them. And part of the vanguard leading that effort is the global B2B sports technology company Sportradar Group (NASDAQ: SRAD). 

The company reports it has exclusive access to colossal amounts of data from its long-term partnerships with major sports leagues and federations around the world such as the NBA, the WNBA and NBA G League, ATP tennis, the NHL, MLB, NASCAR and the Bundesliga and UEFA. The data, the company says, fuel the technology it has developed that sits behind odds-setting, risk management, marketing and trading services for almost the entire betting industry.   

These services are utilized by its hundreds of betting-operator clients, including online giants DraftKings, Bet365 and Flutter – the parent company of FanDuel. Through Sportradar’s technological innovation, the in-play betting volumes sportsbooks handle are growing.  

Its ATP offering is one example that underscores how this is being achieved. Sportradar delivers 1,500 betting opportunities across every ATP tennis match, creating minute-by-minute markets that are then offered to bettors by operators all over the world.   

This type of in-play betting maximizes the engagement touchpoints fans have available to them while watching events. The real-time betting interactions of in-play micro-markets naturally enhance fans’ engagement with the games they are watching. 

Also launched for the NBA in 2024, Sportradar is this year expanding its micro-market model in the U.S. through soccer, baseball and ice hockey. And adoption of these in-play products is expanded by delivery mechanisms that are again Sportradar innovations. 

Its emBET product integrates betting content and functionality directly into NBA League Pass, the NBA’s OTT service – giving fans in jurisdictions where sports betting is legal the opportunity to bet from directly within the game stream.  

Stephen Shapiro, sports and entertainment management professor at the University of South Carolina, has said: “From a sports business perspective, leagues love [betting]. A sports fan is going to consume more sport if they are gambling. And they are going to care about more teams and players than if they were not.”  

But it is not only the betting operators, the leagues and the federations that profit from a new proliferation of in-play betting activity. All markets require information to be efficient, and the betting markets are no different in that regard. 

Which is why the media also stands to potentially benefit from Sportradar products like Radar360, which powered FOX Sports’ broadcast of Super Bowl LIX. Its integration of real-time data and advanced analytics again delivers insights directly into the broadcast, allowing fans to dispense with their second screen. 

Another product, 4Sight streaming, uses computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyse live video at up to 120 frames per second. The data are then incorporated in real time into dynamic, 3D-animated overlays of visual datapoints to augment the viewing experience and inform betting decisions. It can also help build audiences by pushing automated highlight clips during live matches.  

And just as Sportradar helps make leagues’ platforms and media outlets the conduits to betting markets, it also makes broadcasters of the sportsbook operators. By hosting sports content that might otherwise not have had a TV audience, Sportradar is expanding the reach of those new and niche sports and leagues. 

Sportradar reports its Live Channel Online features are generating over 200 million views per month for its partners from more than 400,000 events it broadcasts live every year in 17 different sports. This combination of attracting new audiences and engaging existing fans more deeply helps ensure their attention is held for extended dwell time, building their brand loyalty with the league. 

This, in turn, raises the revenues of sportsbooks, many of which are powered by Sportradar’s own white-label Managed Trading Services. The company reports that this platform is the engine under the hood for hundreds of bookmakers globally, providing the advanced sportsbook services that keep them going and handling around €35bn in turnover in the twelve months leading up to the end of the third quarter of 2024. So, plainly, what is good for the sports ecosystem is also good for Sportradar’s own revenues.  

According to Cornell University, “gambling markets represent a simplified form of financial markets.” If that is true, then an investment in Sportradar is an opportunity to purchase a stake in a chunk of the trading revenue, the risk management, the broadcasting content, the marketing and the future technological innovation in and around sports’ financial markets.  

All at a time when the company anticipates that liquidity in the system is about to explode. 

Learn more about Sportradar here.

Featured photo by Pexels on Pixabay.

This post contains sponsored content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.

This content was originally published on Benzinga. Read further disclosures here.

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News Source: Benzinga