Sportradar expands sports data partnership with Polymarket
Sports technology company Sportradar has expanded its partnership with prediction market platform Polymarket to cover over 20 global sports leagues and competitions spanning around 300,000 matches per year.
The expanded agreement will provide Polymarket with Sportradar’s sports data, live streaming, and integrity services across competitions like Germany’s Bundesliga, Euroleague Basketball, the Chinese Basketball Association, Australia’s National Basketball League, tennis Grand Slams and more.
The partnership already covers the MLB, NHL, MLS, UFC and the ATP tour.
Sportradar will also provide live odds, scores, and other data to support prediction markets, as well as streaming rights for selected competitions and services designed to identify suspicious activity.
“We are pleased to deepen our partnership with Polymarket extending our data and solutions across a significantly broader portfolio of sports. Prediction markets represent a compelling adjacent growth opportunity and Sportradar is cementing its role as the foundational infrastructure powering this ecosystem. Accurate real-time data, premium live content and a robust integrity framework are what allow these markets to price efficiently, settle reliably, and retain the confidence of participants,” commented Sportradar’s CEO, Carsten Koerl.
The expanded partnership comes as Sportradar faces separate legal challenges from betting technology provider Altenar, which has accused Sportradar of restricting access to US sports data while developing competing products.
Altenar is challenging Sportradar’s attempt to move the dispute into private arbitration in Switzerland. Sportradar has rejected the allegations and said it is seeking to enforce contractual dispute-resolution provisions.
It also comes amid the broader legal uncertainty over the status of prediction markets in the US, with several states filing lawsuits against operators, claiming that sports-event contracts amount to unlicensed gambling under state law.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman recently sued Polymarket, alongside other prediction market and sweepstakes operators. The lawsuit alleges that Polymarket is operating an illegal sportsbook in the state by offering sports event contracts.
Charlotte Capewell brings her passion for storytelling and expertise in writing, researching, and the gambling industry to every article she writes. Her specialties include the US gambling industry, regulator legislation, igaming, and more.
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The Backstory
From betting data supplier to market infrastructure
Sportradar’s expanded agreement with Polymarket is not an isolated commercial add-on. It is the latest step in a broader attempt to make the company’s data, streaming and integrity tools central to a fast-changing market for sports-linked financial products. The deal extends Sportradar’s coverage for Polymarket to more than 20 leagues and competitions and roughly 300,000 matches a year, moving the relationship beyond marquee U.S. properties into a deeper global sports schedule.
That scale matters because prediction markets depend on the same inputs that transformed online sports betting: fast official data, reliable odds feeds, visual content and systems that can flag manipulation. Sportradar has spent years building that position with sportsbooks. It is now seeking to apply the same infrastructure model to event-contract platforms, even as regulators and state officials question whether sports prediction contracts amount to unlicensed wagering.
The timing also reflects a strategic pivot that company executives have been signaling for months. During a first-quarter call, Chief Executive Carsten Koerl said Sportradar saw prediction markets as a “significant opportunity” and said the company was in talks with multiple event-contract providers. As reported in Sportradar executives’ response to allegations and questions from analysts, management described the category as early but potentially meaningful, with Chief Financial Officer Craig Felenstein pointing to possible revenue in the tens of millions.
Kalshi provided the first major test case
The Polymarket expansion follows Sportradar’s earlier move into the sector through Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market exchange. In June, Sportradar announced a global, multiyear, nonexclusive agreement giving Kalshi access to data streams from Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Analysts viewed the pact as a first concrete sign that Sportradar could monetize event-contract trading in much the same way it serves online betting operators.
That agreement also included a potentially important sublicensing feature, allowing Sportradar to provide data directly to Kalshi clients, including brokers, bookies and market makers. In analyst reaction to the Sportradar-Kalshi agreement, J.P. Morgan’s Samuel Nielsen called the provision a pivotal first step in building agreements across the prediction-market ecosystem. Jefferies analyst David Katz said the market-maker opportunity could become larger than the exchange relationship itself.
The Polymarket agreement broadens that framework. Instead of focusing on a short list of U.S. league feeds, the new arrangement adds European soccer, basketball leagues, tennis Grand Slams and other international competitions. That makes the offering closer to Sportradar’s core business model, where breadth of coverage, live data and automated collection systems create operating leverage. It also raises the stakes for integrity monitoring because more competitions and more matches mean more points at which pricing errors, manipulation or suspicious activity could occur.
Investor narrative built around scale and rights
Sportradar’s push into prediction markets sits within a wider investor pitch built around scale, exclusive or semi-exclusive sports rights and automation. At an April investor day, the company presented itself as a platform that can sell more products to existing customers as their businesses expand, while using artificial intelligence to cut the cost of collecting sports data. Analysts focused less on the celebrity speakers and more on the company’s contention that its rights portfolio and technology can increase pricing power.
In coverage of the company’s April investor day featuring league executives and Wall Street analysts, Jefferies noted that customers buying three Sportradar products generated double the revenue of single-product buyers. J.P. Morgan pointed to live betting as a key growth area and said every percentage-point increase in U.S. proposition betting could translate into millions of euros of additional revenue for Sportradar. Prediction markets represent a related, adjacent channel for those same data products.
The company’s acquisition of IMG Arena is another piece of the same strategy. Sportradar closed the deal in November after earlier describing the asset as a way to broaden its data rights portfolio. The IMG content gives Sportradar additional sports feeds and streaming assets that can be repackaged for betting, media and potentially event-contract customers. Management has repeatedly argued that once rights are acquired, additional distribution to new customer categories can carry attractive margins.
Legal uncertainty shadows the opportunity
The commercial logic is clear, but the legal context is unsettled. Prediction-market operators argue that event contracts fall under federal commodities law rather than state gambling statutes. Several states disagree, especially when contracts are tied to sports outcomes. Kentucky’s lawsuit against Polymarket and other operators underscores that conflict. The state alleges that sports event contracts effectively operate as unlicensed sports betting products.
That regulatory ambiguity is a central risk for Sportradar. The company is not the exchange operator and does not take consumer bets, but its data can make these markets more efficient, more liquid and more similar in function to sportsbooks. Analysts have warned that micro-betting-style products in prediction markets could blur the distinction further. Faster settlement, deeper liquidity and richer data may strengthen the customer proposition, while also giving regulators more reason to scrutinize whether the products are gambling by another name.
Sportradar executives have acknowledged the tension. In earlier earnings commentary, Koerl said the sector needs guardrails, including player protection, anti-money-laundering standards and clarity for leagues and states. In Sportradar’s third-quarter discussion of prediction markets and guidance, he described the category as limited but liquid around major games and special events, while noting that leagues, states and sportsbooks have different interests. Leagues want financial participation and integrity assurances. States want taxation and consumer protections. Sportsbooks want a level playing field.
Integrity services become a selling point and a defense
The Polymarket expansion includes Sportradar’s integrity services, a detail that is commercially and reputationally important. The more prediction markets resemble sports wagering, the more pressure platforms will face to show that they can detect suspicious activity and protect competitions. Sportradar has long sold integrity monitoring to leagues and betting clients. Extending those tools to event-contract platforms helps the company frame itself as a compliance partner rather than merely a data supplier.
That positioning has become more important because Sportradar has faced its own scrutiny. Short-seller allegations earlier this year accused the company of servicing illegal or unlicensed gambling operators, claims Koerl rejected. The company said it uses rigid know-your-customer procedures and supports only licensed businesses. In the same period, Sportradar announced share repurchases and sought to reassure investors that only a small share of revenue was at risk.
The company also faces a separate legal challenge from betting technology provider Altenar, which has accused Sportradar of restricting access to U.S. sports data while developing competing products. Sportradar has denied the claims and is seeking to move the dispute to private arbitration in Switzerland. Together, these matters show why compliance language is central to the Polymarket deal. Data rights are valuable, but in sports betting and prediction markets they can also become litigation and regulatory flashpoints.
A larger bet on the next distribution channel
Sportradar’s current trajectory suggests management sees prediction markets as another distribution channel for assets it already controls: live data, odds, streaming rights, visualization tools, advertising products and integrity systems. In a March earnings call, Koerl said the company’s broader three-year strategy remained on schedule and that prediction markets were a rapidly developing U.S. opportunity. As outlined in Sportradar’s update on its 2027 strategy, management also stressed that most revenue comes from outside the United States, limiting direct dependence on any single regulatory outcome.
Still, the upside is concentrated in precisely the jurisdictions where sports betting remains restricted or politically contested. Prediction markets can reach consumers in states without legal online sports betting and may include younger adult users who are excluded from some sportsbook platforms. That potential explains why data providers, exchanges, leagues and regulators are moving quickly.
For Sportradar, the Polymarket expansion is a calculated attempt to establish itself before the rules are fully settled. If courts and regulators allow sports event contracts to expand, the company could become a core supplier to a new class of sports-trading platforms. If states prevail in treating them as illegal wagering, the opportunity could narrow sharply. Either way, the deal shows Sportradar is betting that the infrastructure layer — data, integrity and content — will remain valuable no matter how the market is ultimately classified.
