Sports Media Report
Last week UK based Genius Sports raised some U.S. eyebrows when they announced they had secured the first-ever exclusive gambling data deal with NASCAR. Thursday they doubled down across the pond with another massive deal, taking the data rights of Football DataCo, which includes The Premier League, from incumbent Perform Group, a unique double play with a great global upside.
Those rights, one for a newbie in the space on the racing side and the other for the largest and most bet on sports league in the world, are huge steps forward for Genius Sports in the fast growing world of sports gambling data, and as we know, data and content are key for any media business today.
“Being selected by Football DataCo as their exclusive official data partner is transformational for our organization and reinforces our position as the global leader in sports data capture and distribution technology. This partnership upholds our commitment to ensuring sports remain at the heart of a sustainable sports betting ecosystem that is fair and rewarding for all participants,” Mark Locke, Genius Sports Group CEO said in a statement. “The use of secure, UK football league sanctioned data signals the increased maturity of the industry and recognizes the value and protections that this official data feed provides. Football DataCo leads the world through its heavy investment in a product that assures operators can have complete confidence in its data supply to power some of most valuable sports betting content in the world, including all Premier League matches.”
With EPL being one of the most bet on leagues already in the world, the interesting long tail value to this is in emerging markets like the U.S., countries in South America and Asia. As those markets grow, the soccer savvy fan will continue to engage more and more, with the upside being in the multimillions. Conversely with NASCAR, a sport whose fan base domestically will crave the ability for in race better, the market is yet to be formed both in the U.S. AND abroad, where savvy consumers understand gambling already but may not be familiar as much with NASCAR (and F1 does not yet have detailed gambling options). So the combination of an established gambling option, plus one aggressively entering the space, presents a bright picture.
Genius move indeed for one of the biggest players in the world in gambling data.
