Sportradar and the National Hockey League finished the details of a new 10-year deal. The Swiss company will have rights to supply league data to sportsbooks and media in the U.S. and beyond.
Sportradar will distribute live streams to gambling operators and help the NHL with international betting sponsorships, like a recent deal with OlyBet in the Baltics and Tipsport in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“The NHL is a huge opportunity for us in a lot of markets where we have big betting operator clients, in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere,” said Steve Byrd, Sportradar’s U.S. head of sports content and partnerships.
The partnership fully unfolds in the 2021-22 season. Both sides declined to comment on the final terms or say whether the NHL received equity as part of the deal, according to Sportico.
Unlike the NFL and the NBA, the NHL accounts for a small percentage of bets, but numbers are on the rise especially outside of the U.S.
With the growing importance of official data feeds Sportradar and the NHL could make money from sportsbooks and media companies willing to pay for such feeds. Starting this season, the NHL put sensors in its pucks and on every player’s jersey, making it easier to track games in real time, including player skating speed, shot velocity and distance travelled.
“We’re admittedly just at the starting point of this journey on tracking and using the data to tell stories,” said Stephen McArdle, the NHL’s senior executive vice president for digital media and strategic planning. “Having another partner who is fully invested in learning along with us the right ways to share that data, to present that data, and in the sports betting context the right ways to use that data, that’s very important to us.”
