Sportradar Takes Legal Action Against Premier League Data Company In UK

Sports betting services company Sportradar has served legal proceedings against its rival Genius Sports and Football DataCo (FDC), the data rights-holder for the English Premier League, English Football League, and Scottish Football League, claiming their official data supply partnership is anti-competitive.

Genius Sports agreed a five-year deal in May last year to become FDC’s official supplier of live data to the betting sector from 2019-20 to 2023-24. The deal gave the company’s sports betting division, BetGenius, the right to capture live game data at over 4,000 UK football fixtures and distribute it to bookmakers globally.

The deal placed the authority to sublicense the data rights to other data suppliers in BetGenius’ hands and requires all bookmaker clients in the downstream market have an “over-license” to use the official Genius data, curtailing their ability to access data from other sources.

The two parties have subsequently taken a zero-tolerance approach to “unofficial” data scouts, evicting any other supplier suspected of gathering data at games.

Full Content: Financial Times

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