12 September, 2024 | Sports Betting Focus H2 2024

Company profile: Sportradar

Brian Josephs, VP Account Management, North America, walks us through Sportradar’s Managed Trading Services for the US marketplace

As sports betting continues to reach new heights in the US, with expanding regulation and legalisation, the marketplace becomes increasingly competitive. More than six years after the United States Supreme Court overturned PASPA, 12 states, including the major markets of California and Texas, are yet to legalise and regulate sports betting, leaving great opportunities for new players to enter the game and claim a significant share of the market. 

For Sportradar and the larger betting industry, the US continues to be a priority. Online sports betting revenue was predicted to reach $14.3bn in 2024, with an annual growth rate of 10.7%, resulting in a projected market volume of $23.8bn by 2029, which would represent approximately 37% of the global sports betting market.  

In other hyper-competitive, high-growth markets such as Europe, LATAM and Africa, we have seen new operators struggle to establish a foothold and obtain significant market share, while simultaneously developing the necessary proprietary backend technology to compete. 

What we’ve seen recently, as operators navigate these challenges, is a significant uptake of our MTS solution with 44 operators signing on for the solution in the first half of 2024. In its simplest form, MTS is a bet validation tool whereby our team of traders review an operator’s betting tickets to assess the risk associated with each bet and determine which ones should be accepted or rejected. In a marketplace that requires a rapid go-to-market strategy, MTS allows operators who lack the proper infrastructure to almost instantaneously utilise Sportradar’s team of experts and stack of leading sports betting technology to begin accepting bets. 

Furthermore, our MTS is completely customisable, allowing operators to choose which services they want from us based on the needs of the business. For example, if an operator already trades NBA and NHL matches in-house but wants to quickly add MLB to their offering for the upcoming MLB postseason, they can utilise MTS to do so in-line with their existing trading strategy. 

The US is a uniquely challenging market for operators. Along with the additional intricacies that come along with state-by-state regulation, bettor behaviour in the US differs from those around the globe. Due to the country’s history in fantasy sports, US sports fans tend to focus on individual player performances rather than team outcomes. ‘Prop bets’ and ‘parlays’, a bet where the bettor ties multiple bet types together to combine odds, have become especially popular. MTS performed exceptionally well throughout the 2023-24 NBA and NHL seasons, providing clients with margins of 10.3% and 11.5% respectively. 

For operators looking to further enhance their risk management strategy, the MTS integration provide operators with access to Alpha Odds, Sportradar’s AI-driven personalised odds technology, which recalculates a sportsbook operator’s financial exposure after each bet is placed using advanced AI models, allowing operators to manage their liability in real time to reduce the associated risk. Alpha Odds is proving to be a game changer for our clients. Over the course of UEFA European Championship qualifying matches, client with Alpha Odds increased their profit margins by 15%, helping those operators boost their trading performance. As we approach key moments in tennis, soccer and basketball, operators in the US can win with MTS and Alpha Odds, increasing profitability and minimising risk. 

The US sports betting industry is remarkably competitive and new market entrants need a partner they can rely on to hit the ground running. Sportradar and our Managed Trading Services provide the unique ability to take on the US market with confidence and efficiency