Sportradar Aims to Power the Next Wave of Prediction Market Data
Sportradar powers the real-time data, odds feeds, and integrity monitoring behind nearly every major sportsbook in America — yet most fans have never heard of it.
Now CEO Carsten Koerl wants to do the same for prediction markets, the fastest-growing form of wagering.
And after a record 2025, he has the balance sheet to make a serious run at it.
Why Prediction Markets Need Sportradar
Prediction market exchanges match bettors against each other through an order book, earning fees on trades rather than taking positions against customers. The market makers providing liquidity on those exchanges need a constant, accurate stream of official sports data to price contracts correctly.
That is exactly what Sportradar sells.
“This is a rapidly developing opportunity in the U.S., and one where we are uniquely positioned to capitalize as the B2B leader in our industry,” Koerl told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call March 3.
“We are sitting on this huge knowledge, we are sitting on the liquidity, and we are sitting on the deep data in real time.”
League Partnerships Are Opening the Door
Three of Sportradar’s league partners — the NHL, MLS, and the UFC — have already established frameworks allowing official data to flow to prediction market exchanges.
The MLS-Polymarket partnership was particularly instructive: leagues aren’t just tolerating prediction markets, they are demanding accountability.
Official data feeds and integrity monitoring are non-negotiable conditions. Sportradar provides both, and has for years.
AI Is The Differentiator
What separates Sportradar from a generic data vendor is what it does with the data.
The company’s generative AI model for basketball, trained on billions of player movement data points from NBA games, reads body positions in real time to predict what’s likely to happen next.
That’s the engine Koerl wants running underneath prediction market pricing.
Soccer is up next, timed to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with tennis to follow after that.
The Reality Check
Koerl isn’t overselling the timeline. He put the 2026 revenue contribution from prediction markets at ‘tens of millions, not hundreds of millions’.
Those figures are excluded almost entirely from the company’s formal guidance of €1.56–1.58 billion in revenue and 23–25% growth. Investors sold off anyway, dropping shares 11%.
The board’s response: expand the share buyback from $300 million to $1 billion.
When management puts that kind of money behind its own stock, the message is clear.
Sportradar’s Competitive Advantage
Last November, Sportradar acquired IMG Arena on extraordinary terms, receiving $103 million from the seller rather than paying for the asset, while adding 70-plus sports rights holders and coverage of more than one million annual events.
That portfolio took two decades to assemble. No exchange, no startup, and no rival data vendor can replicate it quickly.
Sportradar didn’t set out to own prediction markets. It just spent twenty years building the infrastructure that makes them possible.
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