EQT Sells Minority Stake in Sports Data Company Sportradar

(Bloomberg) -- Private equity firm EQT Partners sold its minority stake in Sportradar, a Swiss sports data provider that counts global bookmakers among its top customers. The deal values the company, which is partly owned by the National Football League, at $2.4 billion.

EQT said it plans to reinvest an undisclosed portion of the proceeds derived from the sale to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and private equity firm TCV. Undisclosed minority stakeholders also sold their shares, Sportradar said in a statement Monday. EQT had a 35 percent stake in the company, according to its website.

The sale represents a return of more than four-times EQT’s initial investment, a person familiar with the matter said.

Sportradar founder and Chief Executive Officer Carsten Koerl retains his majority stake in the business, whose investors include a trio of U.S. sports team owners: billionaire Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, Michael Jordan of the Charlotte Hornets and Ted Leonsis of the Washington Wizards and Capitals.

The sale comes about two months after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed for the state-by-state legalization of sports betting. Betting parlors are already open in Delaware and New Jersey. Legalized betting has resulted in mushrooming importance for official data. Betting houses rely on the fastest, most accurate data to fuel what’s called in-game, or live betting, which drives much of the wagering.

NFL, NBA Partnerships

Founded in 2003, Sportradar built its European foundation in the betting and gaming industries, where it also provides fraud detection for betting houses and leagues. In the U.S., prior to legalized sports betting, the company focused its business on media and technology companies, including Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.

Sportradar has exclusive partnerships to distribute the data of the NFL, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and Nascar. Track an NFL game down on your iPad, for example, and you’re probably looking at a Sportradar data feed; look up a player’s stats online, and that’s likely to be Sportradar data, too. The company also has partnerships with FIFA and UEFA.

EQT has backed the company since 2012, when one of its funds invested 44 million euros ($52 million) for a minority stake. Sportradar had sales of 286 million euros last year, up from 91 million euros in 2014, EQT said on its website. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization were 124 million euros in 2017, up from 28 million three years previously.

Stockholm-based EQT, backed by the wealthy Wallenberg family, is the largest buyout firm in the Nordic region, having raised 50 billion euros across 27 funds, according to its website.

To contact the reporters on this story: Scott Soshnick in New York at ssoshnick@bloomberg.net;Sarah Syed in London at ssyed35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net, Kevin Miller, Amy Thomson

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