On Tuesday, following the release of the first-quarter financial report, Carsten Koerl, CEO of global sports data giant Sportradar, directly addressed the short-selling storm that caused severe fluctuations in the company's stock price over the past week. Two short-selling institutions, Calisto Research and Muddy Waters Research, released reports last week accusing Sportradar of business dealings with numerous unlicensed gambling platforms, citing former employees and current sales staff who claimed that unlicensed operators could account for 30% to 40% of the company's revenue. These allegations led to a 22.6% plunge in Sportradar's stock price on Wednesday. During the earnings call, Koerl characterized these reports as false, misleading, and defamatory, and for the first time provided official quantified data—revenue exposure from unregulated markets is in the low to mid-single digits, and even with AI systems running extreme simulations on public market data, this figure is capped at below 12%. Koerl emphasized that the company does not cooperate with black market operators and has a solid compliance structure for the gray market, working only with licensed operators.
The short-selling trap and KYC firewall at 4000 meetings
In response to Muddy Waters' previous claim that they had contacted Sportradar sales personnel at the Barcelona ICE exhibition and learned that the company serves everyone, Koerl provided a more detailed response during the call. He revealed that Muddy Waters had specifically approached a relatively young junior sales employee at the exhibition, where Sportradar had a very large scale of activities, holding about 4000 meetings. The company later questioned this employee, pointing out that Muddy Waters' report did not reflect all the statements made by the employee during the conversation. Koerl further explained that the initial conversation at the exhibition was just the very first step in the entire sales process. Before signing a contract, an extremely stringent KYC process is initiated, including identity verification, licensing validation, company document verification, anti-money laundering sanctions screening, and multiple rounds of approval by legal advisors.
Koerl also refuted the claim in the Muddy Waters report that sales personnel could help them contact Yabo Group, China's largest illegal gambling operator. Yabo Sports has a large user base in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, and its website has been blacklisted and shut down by the Chinese government for organizing cross-border gambling involving Chinese citizens. Koerl stressed that there is a long distance from someone wanting to do business to the actual signing of a contract, and this incident was a deliberate phishing operation, but it had not reached the stage of signing a contract or inducing anyone to do business in the illegal market.
11% revenue growth under loss and new COO appointment
At the financial data level, Sportradar recorded a net loss of 6 million euros in the first quarter, although revenue increased by 11% year-over-year to 347 million euros, and adjusted EBITDA also grew by 12% year-over-year to 66 million euros, with growth momentum mainly coming from customer expansion in the US, UK, and Asia-Pacific markets. Koerl stated that the fundamentals of the company's business remain strong, and it will continue to drive innovation, maintain the highest levels of integrity and transparency, and create incremental value for customers, partners, and shareholders.
Simultaneously, Sportradar announced the appointment of Samir Deen, former COO and President of Entain Group, as the new Chief Operating Officer, effective from May 18. Koerl expects Deen to play a key role in driving the company's commercial processes and optimizing operations.
PASA official website continues to track compliance dynamics in the global sports data and gambling technology supply chain, noting that this short-selling event is not an isolated incident in the data supplier field, but is an extension of compliance scrutiny from gambling operators themselves to their technology partners and the gray areas between unlicensed markets. The rigor of the KYC process, the vulnerability of junior employees to phishing investigations, and the market's high sensitivity to compliance information have all been highlighted in this storm.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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