Sportradar Group AG (SRAD) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to Sportradar's third-quarter 2021 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). Please note this conference is being recorded. At this time I will now turn the conference over to Sandra Lee. Sandra, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Sportradar's financial results conference call for the third quarter ending September 30, 2021. On the call today we have Sportradar's CEO, Carsten Koerl, and CFO, Alex Gersh.

This call, including the QA portion, may include forward-looking statements related to the expected future results for our Company. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are described in our earnings release and other SEC filings.

Today's remarks will also include references to certain financial measures not reported in accordance with IFRS. Additional information, including reconciliation of these non-IFRS financial measures, is provided in our earnings release. This conference call will be available for replay via webcast on Sportradar's Investor Relations website at investors.sportradar.com.

Carsten will begin with an overview of Sportradar, followed by our most recent highlights. Alex will then take you through a review of the financials before we proceed to QA. With that I will now turn the call over to Carsten.

Thank you, Sandra. Good morning to everyone and thank you for joining our first earnings call as a public company. As some of you may be new to our story, I would like to take you through a brief overview about who we are, what we do and the massive growth opportunities we see in front of us.

Please note that this brief overview will make today's call a little bit longer than what we typically go for. And I'll provide you and overview of our recent progress, the performance, and finally I will return the call to our CFO, Alex, for the financial review of the quarter and expectations for the remainder of 2021.

Sportradar is a leading technology platform enabling next generation engagement in sports and the number one provider for B2B solutions to the global sports betting industry based and measured by revenue. We provide mission-critical software, data and content via subscription and revenue share arrangements for [sports data], betting operators and media companies.

We have been at the forefront of innovation in the sports betting industry and we continue to be a global leader in understanding, leveraging and monetizing the power of sports data. Our mission is to enhance sports fans and engage them globally to our fully integrated technology and service platform.

Sportradar offers one of the most robust and fully integrated sports data and technology platforms. We serve as critical data infrastructure and content layer to the sports betting and media industry. On top of that infrastructure layer we have built one of the most advanced and comprehensive software offerings. Our products simplify our customers' operations, drive efficiency, protect integrity and enrich (technical difficulty) experience.

We have the largest volume of sport data in the world. But what's so much more important is that we are continually innovating to use the data to provide valuable insights and develop products that move us higher up the value chain for our customers. Our [implant] offering, integrated technology and global footprint make us an important partner for our customers and deeply embedded across the sports ecosystem.

For our over 900 sports betting operator customers we cover more than 750,000 events annually across 83 sports, including live data coverage of 600,000 events across 37 sports. The breadth of our data offering and sports coverage is an important differentiator for Sportradar.

We are the number one provider of data to bookmakers. We supply sports data to over 85% of all bookmakers in the United States. Our offerings include pre-match data and ops, (inaudible) data and ops, trading services which we call NPS, as well as our AV content product. Our full suite of software solutions includes managed platform services, betting entertainment tools, virtual games and programmatic advertising solutions. We are the only one stop shop provider across the value chain in this B2B business.

For our over 150 sport league partners, we provide across 900 betting operators and 350 media companies to distribute the data and the content globally for [them]. We give them greater reach to serve as an intermediate to the highly regulated betting industry. Importantly, we provide integrity services to more than [100] (corrected by the company after the call) leagues, federations and law enforcement agencies. These services help to ensure a fair playing field for all.

What is also critical is that our integrity services give us deep relationships with sports leagues who know that they can count on us. For over 350 media customers, including both traditional and digital leaders, we provide product and services to help reach and engage sports fans across all distribution channels.

Finally, our newly formed sports solution vertical completes our circle of offerings to meet all of our customer and sport technology needs and demands. This vertical leverages the power of [optimization] through cutting each use of computer vision to help sport organizations to better perform, the teams to better perform on the field and increase profitability on the off-field actions.

We are very excited about the recent acquisition of Synergy Sports and InteractSport. So, with Synergy we have a strong presence in the world of coaching and analytics, dominating both the professional and college basketball and baseball. Through InteractSport we have gained an immediate presence in the sport of cricket.

We couldn't be more excited about the sports solutions vertical and we are focused to aggressively build our team and the computer vision experts to the best-in-class automated media production and data management solutions.

Now some words to our growth strategy. Turning to the growth strategy, we are in an exciting transformative time. Advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision are changing this industry and many other industries. I started Sportradar more than 20 years ago, but I've been in the business for far longer and never experienced a time as exciting as this one now right now.

In addition to the digital transformation, the sport and media and betting industry are converting, bringing together massive TAMS. Please see our public filings and slides and the presentation we have published for further statistics how we fuel the TAMs.

Finally, the US is driving the pace of change with a market that is rapidly adopting legalization in sports betting. To capture all this [versatility] we're continually broadening our product portfolio to better serve customers and increase our touch points with the end-users across the sports betting value chain. The more knowledge of the end user that we are able to collect the more valuable our insights and platform services become (inaudible) sports betting companies and of course also to media companies.

These network effects also enable us to enhance our product portfolio, serving as a key element of our growth strategy. Other elements of the growth strategy are the following. First, we capture growth in global markets. We intend to capture significant growth for new and existing markets around the world.

We have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of the expected growth in various markets, especially the US, where the market was approximately $1 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to approximately $23 billion at maturity in the next 10 years.

Second, expanding the offers in the B2B product and services. We will continue to increase adoption of new and existing product to further grow our share of the wallet with the customers. We believe our MTS and [ETS] solutions provide customers with significant value and these products are currently underpenetrated in our existing customer base. We expect update of these innovative solutions to be higher. Betting companies in the US market will be primarily focused on gaining market share and acquiring new customers.

Third, we cover the entire end-user journey to better serve our customers. We see considerable value in combining our deep knowledge of sport data with the increasing amount of user data which we collect across all of our products such as MTS, ETS, AV and OTT, which allows us to better understand the entire end-user journey.

These insights will enable us to cross reference and users from betting to entertainment and vice versa, improved user experience on behalf of our customers and consequently build better product. We also believe that this knowledge, together with our technical platform and capabilities, will help leagues to get direct customer and sports access in the future.

Fourth, we invest in alternative content, capabilities and services. We continue to expand our content offerings beyond live sports betting into esports, virtual sports and gaming. We believe that our betting operators and consumers are looking for a way to provide their customers with more variety and flexibility in their content offering. Alternative content is not dependent on life-support, it is becoming increasingly important and COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of new categories of real and mature sports.

And fifth, growth of funnel capabilities and offerings. We believe that there is significant opportunities to provide advanced capabilities in the programmatic advertising market for betting operators. Bookmakers are expected to inject vast amounts of capital in this underpenetrated customer acquisition channel as they seek more efficient methods to acquire new customers.

We believe that of the global universe of sport [events], approximately 20% are sports bettors. We plan to increase engagement for all sport events and better serve them by leveraging data and insights we have to the end user behavior and preferences, making [ETS] one of the sophisticated forms of digital marketing for sports.

We are incredibly excited about this forward-looking roadmap and that serves our growth strategy, delivering value to our customers and partners and enables us to extend our leadership in the market we are serving.

Now I'd like to discuss some recent highlights that show you how we are executing on each of the growth pillars and taking advantage of the strong demand environment. Today the team in Europe worked hard till 3 o'clock in the morning on a milestone deal for Sportradar which we just announced. And I'd like to say on this (inaudible) thank you to the team for this extra mile and effort.

We recently announced an expansive eight-year official deal with the NBA. As their exclusive partner, the league will use our wide-ranging technology capabilities to help the league further grow their market share in the US and abroad. Together with the two years run rate of the existing deal, that gives us a solid deal of 10 years to develop future solutions in all the three business verticals: teams, betting, sport entertainment.

Basketball is the largest US sport in the world with a popularity of around about 2 billion sports fans worldwide. The opportunities with this partnership with the NBA are really endless and we are very excited.

To further showcase the momentum of our business, we also won a landmark agreement with UEFA. After a competitive process UEFA selected Sportradar as their exclusive collector and distributor for data and betting purposes. This is incredibly exciting given it's the first data deal ever for UEFA in betting. Soccer is the most bet on sport in the world with a handle of EUR850 billion each year, far exceeding the handle of American sports such as the NFL, which is you are 41.87 billion annually.

For those who might not be familiar with the terminology handle, it's defined as the amount of money in wagers acceptance. Once again EUR850 billion is the handle in soccer, 41.87 billion in NFL on an annual basis. That shows how important this sport is.

We also announced a multiyear extension with the ITF to serve as its official data partner. Second only to soccer, tennis is the second most bet on sport in the world with a handle of EUR140 billion. We are proud that we are continuing our 10 years plus partnership with the ITF.

Finally, we secured important deals with the International Cricket Council and the LMB, France's top basketball league. These are just a few samples of how we are disrupting the market and apply our data-driven approach to the sport universe. We make continual investments to ensure that the data we are collecting is robust, reliable and delivered with high-speed and low latency.

Computer vision is one area that is extremely exciting to me, given the potential to capture so much data and to go into (inaudible) to capture quickly with precision. In the third quarter we implemented the computer vision for Wimbledon and the US Open matches. I couldn't be more excited about the potential for this technology.

I conclude my discussion around the data rights deal by addressing our position on exclusive data. We seek exclusive data deals only when the economics make sense, but we also have access to an enormous amount of data that we are able to monetize even if we don't have exclusive rights. I'm pleased to say that we have not lost a single betting client due to not having exclusive rights to NFL data.

We have kept our position as the preferred supplier for every US betting operator and did not lose any existing contracts. We were also able to expand long-term partnerships with the likes of FanDuel. Lastly, we achieved 99% of our planned NFL revenues budget for our US media and the betting business. I mentioned earlier our ability to understand the end-user journey as an exciting area of growth.

We intend to approach this opportunity through our [apps] business which identifies the profile of sport fans, gives us rich insights for our customers who want to target them. This business really illustrates that the more data we have the better we can do our job in delivering meaningful information to our customers. We are seeing good momentum achieving EUR7.6 million for our apps business globally in the third quarter, of which are US revenue totally is approximately 1.8 million in the same quarter.

We launched apps globally in 2019 and only recently began to focus on the US. This is just the beginning of betting companies look to aggressively acquire new customers and more advertising comes online in other channels.

This quarter we (inaudible) in important strategic partnership with Adomni, the leading programmatic digital out-of-home advertising, planning and buying platform, integrating Sportradar's sport data suite offering into their demand side platform. This allows brands, marketers and agencies to do out-of-home campaigns that include content such as live betting, odds and other sport data.

Another very exciting area that demonstrates the value and expertise we provide to our clients is Managed Trading Services, or in short form MTS. Since 2022, MTS has played an integral -- a main part in the US wagering landscape. Our MTS offering is a sophisticated turnkey trading risk (inaudible) and liability management solution that helps betting operators boosting margins and profits while increasing efficiency and managing risk.

Overall we grew our MTS customers from 158 globally in the third quarter of 2020 to 192 globally this quarter. We've been gaining strong attention this year in the US. In the third quarter we signed a strategic MTS agreement with Fans Unite. That will allow the company to provide optimal real-time odds providing more value to their customers. Like the other regions of the world that MTS operates in, the US as a bespoke revenue share [via price confirmation].

Turning to AV services, this is an area where we have market leadership and expertise that will be difficult for others to replicate. Our value added expertise helps sport leagues to do a digital transformation, create engaging content and have additional revenue streams. Our AV revenue increased by 13% year-over-year to $29 million in the third quarter driven by volume growth as we were able to sell more matches and deliver new content.

Notably, our adjusted EBITDA in this segment increased by 220% to EUR9.6 million and the segment adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 12% to 33% year-over-year driven by lower costs of some of the content.

And finally I touched on how important global markets are to Sportradar's growth, particularly in the US. We made significant investments here to capture the enormous opportunity and they are paying off. For example, we announced a partnership extension with US market leader FanDuel through 2028, which makes Sportradar the true innovator and out supplier for US ports.

Sportradar provides FanDuel with access to the most comprehensive suite of betting product in the marketplace which will play a critical role in [aiming] FanDuel's growth with the US sports betting landscape to expand significantly over the next several years.

We also entered into a five-year deal with US betting operator Bally's Interactive. Sportradar provides Bally's with access to its complete pre-match betting service, live betting services and content solution portfolio. Bally's incorporates the data profile as part of its ambitious expansion plan to become a leader in the North American sports betting market.

In summary, I believe we are exceptionally well positioned to capture the significant growth opportunities ahead and expanding revenues from our existing customers, acquiring new customers, leveraging the power of data to drive insights and innovation and broadening and deepening our partner ecosystem.

Also we are very proud of all that we have achieved. We acknowledge that this is just a step forward in serving our customers, colleagues and shareholders. These are exciting transformational times. Operating a global business as the market leader combined with the ability to make strategic investments as a result of our public listing will unlock dynamic growth opportunities.

So, I am ending my section here and handing over to our CFO, Alex, who will discuss our financial results for the quarter and guidance for the year. Alex, I hand over to you.

Thank you, Carsten, and good morning, everyone. As Carsten already mentioned, we had a very strong third quarter of 2021 and an excellent nine months for the year. Let me take you through our quarterly results in detail and then I will provide the full year guidance for 2021.

So, third-quarter Group revenue grew [30]% to reach EUR136.8 million. Now looking at the segmental revenue detail, our rest of the world betting revenue grew 24% in the quarter to EUR78.6 million. This growth was primarily driven by an uptick in our higher value add offerings including Managed Betting Services and Live Odds Services, which increased 63% and 20% respectively. As a result of -- and the increase was as a result of increased turnover [and volume] as well as new customer wins.

The [second] segment is of course rest of the world AE revenue and Carsten had mentioned it as part of his presentation, but just to reiterate. It grew 13% to EUR29 million. This growth was impacted by COVID-related schedule changes that occurred in fiscal 2020. Adjusting for that revenue growth (technical difficulty). This growth was driven by volume growth as we were able to sell more matches, primarily soccer and baseball, as well as growth from additional new content being sold to existing and new customers.

Turning to the United States, we grew 119% in the quarter to EUR19.6 million. This was driven by growth in our betting service as an underlying market and turnover group. We also experienced strong adoption of our [apps] products, as Carsten mentioned, growth in US media and positive impact from the acquisition of Synergy Sports.

Turning to one of our favorite metrics, which is the Group dollar-based net retention rate, this was standing at 128% at the quarter end compared to 114% at the Q3 -- at the quarter end of 2020, Q3 of 2020 -- demonstrating continued execution of our upsell and cross sell strategy and underscoring the quality of the products and services we provide to our customers.

Now a couple of words on the major cost items on our financials. So, personnel costs for the quarter were EUR51.3 million, an increase of EU20 million over prior year's quarter. That result happened because we have about 600 more FTEs at the end of Q3 of 2021 versus Q3 of 2020 as we continue to invest in technology and product. We also introduced new stock-based compensation and that is reflected in that number, as well as the reversal of temporary COVID cost savings in third quarter of 2021 versus third quarter of 2020.

Other operating expenses were EUR25.2 million, an increase of EUR15.7 million over prior year. The increase was primarily driven by incurred costs for the IPO, compliance costs relating to operating as a publicly listed business in the US and some M&A costs. Total sports rights costs decreased by EUR9 million to EUR28.7 million in the third quarter of 2021, resulting from fewer major sporting events in the third quarter of 2021 versus third quarter of 2020. That again relates to COVID changes that occurred in 2020 to many schedules -- many league schedules.

Adjusted EBITDA was EUR20.9 million, as Carsten mentioned. That's an increase of 21% versus Q3 of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 15% in the current quarter, a slight decrease compared to Q3 of 2020. However, reflecting additional IPO costs of approximately EUR5.7 million incurred in the third quarter of 2021. Eliminating the impact of those IPO costs would result in adjusted EBITDA margin of 19%, reflecting our continuous ability to achieve operating leverage.

A few words on the adjusted EBITDA by segment. Rest of the world betting adjusted EBITDA was EUR44.7 million, up 36%. Rest of the world betting segment adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 57% versus 52% in the prior year, driven by growth in higher-margin services which we've already spoken about. Rest of the world AV adjusted EBITDA was EUR9.6 million, as Carsten said, up 220%. Rest of the world AV segment adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 33% versus 12% in the prior year driven by lower cost of certain content.

The United States adjusted EBITDA improved by 24% to negative EUR6.6 Million. The United States segment adjusted EBITDA margin improved from negative 60% in the third quarter of 2020 to negative 34% in the third quarter of 2021, reflecting the scalability of our business and clear path to profitability while we continue to invest in the US market.

A few words about our returning to liquidity and cash flow. We ended third quarter with EUR768.4 million in cash, total liquidity available for us, including undrawn credit facility, was EUR878.4 million. As of the end of the third quarter, total debt stood at EUR436.7 million, which resulted in a net cash position of EUR331.7 million. During the third quarter of 2021 adjusted free cash flow increased by 144% to EUR32.9 million, which led to an adjusted free cash flow conversion rate of 158%.

Now just a few words on the outlook for the rest of 2021. For the full year of 2021 we currently expect revenue in the range of EUR553 million to EUR558 million, reflecting annual growth of between 36.6% and 37.1%. For adjusted EBITDA we're expecting the range to be EUR99.5 million to EUR101.5 million, representing a year-on-year increase of between 29.4% and 32%. With that we are now happy to open the call for questions. Operator, will you please open up the line for Q&A?

(Operator Instructions). David Karnovsky, JPMorgan.

Thank you so much. With the NBA I was hoping you could provide some additional background on the deal, why do this agreement now when it still had a few years to go (technical difficulty) you had your initiative with the NBA? And then can you just expand on some of the additional distribution rights you've acquired and do those start immediately or in 2023? Thanks.

Yes, good question, David. So, this deal was a long effort and we discussed it since quite a while with our partner and we're super happy that we could announce it today. The US is undoubtedly the biggest growth opportunity which we see in front of us. And we want to focus on creating value, so investments in the United States are our top priority.

The NBA is the top betting sport in the United States by pre-match but more important by live. Live is something where we see the main trend in the United States and we see a lot of opportunities to monetize here with our Live Odds and with our Managed Trading Services products. This was a main motivation.

Looking now into the scope, we widened the scope enormously, so that includes tracking data, it includes a tracking system. We can work now with our sport solution vertical on new ways how we capture data, how we give that to teams and how we create value with the sport fans with new data which we have and the insights.

The exciting thing with the NBA is it's a real strong technology partner. The NBA tries to think years ahead and the deal is constructed by the strong technology partnership with a focus on US betting, of course, but also internationally. And I mentioned the 2 billion sport fans following the NBA globally. That simply fits perfectly to our profile. So, that's the range; it is an extended deal, but the scope and the focus is, of course, on the United states with the betting opportunity.

Okay and then maybe as a follow on, Alex, any additional detail you can provide on the equity position for the NBA? And is that going to (inaudible) now or in two years?

The deal as we, I think, announced starts in 2023. So, that's when things start, but obviously we have an agreement and they will become an equity shareholder in Sportradar, which is really exciting for us. These are the kind of shareholders we absolutely want. So that's really no other detail other than what we already discussed in the press release.

Thomas Allen, Morgan Stanley.

Thanks. Just one other clarification on the NBA deal. In the old deal you were the exclusive global provider, but you had a co-exclusive in the US and I think China wasn't exclusive either. Does I continue or you are exclusive for everything by yourself?

The headline of the press announcement says exclusive global data provider, and I hope that gives you enough clarification. There is an opportunity that the two partners, the NBA and Sportradar, are looking for market innovation, and there are companies which need data to create innovative product. That is something which is always in the interest of Sportradar and, of course, of the NBA. So, that is the difference to the existing team. I hope that clarifies the situation.

Okay, thanks. And then just as my follow-up, a lot of the operators talked about a hold impact in the third quarter into the fourth, respecting that most of your contracts are not tied to revenues. But did you have a negative impact from events going against operators?

Alex, do you want to take this question or should I?

Go ahead, Carsten.

Then I quickly take it. No, the opposite is the case. We had a very, very strong MTS growth and MTS is our product where we are closest on the profit of the bookmakers, and we enjoyed a 71% I think year-on-year growth in that segment. There are always some ups and downs, but what has happened in the US with the [hold] and profitability was not the trend worldwide. So, worldwide overall in this MTS product that has leveled out very well for us and showed a strong growth and strong profitability.

Jason Bazinet, Citi.

I just had a simple question. Can you just remind us how many of the leagues have equity participation via warrants and radar today? And how should we think about growth in fully diluted shares outstanding over the long-term? What's a reasonable growth rate based on the agreements that you do have in place?

As a very general statement, I think you will not see too many equity deals from Sportradar like we did it now with the NBA. The NBA is our most important partner, and was our most important partner from a scope and from a size and also looking to the extensive partnerships. So, that was a very clear step for us to do this to group with our partner where we enjoyed the last seven years a sensational corporation, and it's in the sweet spot of our growth of the US market.

We have an equity participation with the National Hockey League on a much smaller range than the NBA. And you might see some smaller equity deals in the future here, not to the extent and scope like we see it now (technical difficulty) with the NBA. We are super happy with this, but we do not intend to really widen this too much in the outlook for shareholders there. We see here a value creation for the NBA and for Sportradar, that's the reason why we did this.

Perfect. And if I can ask just one follow-up. Maybe I missed it in the release, but do you have the number of fully diluted shares outstanding as of the quarter?

Well, Alex gave you already the answer. We have to (inaudible), the release is fresh out of the press and I think it is in the release.

If you mean in terms of -- you mean the number of shares for Sportradar? You don't mean the -- or are you talking about the NBA?

No, no, for Sportradar.

Yes, so for Sportradar I can tell you that we have a total of 205,454,977 A shares. And then we've got a total of 903,670,977 participation certificates which convert into 10 times less shares at some -- ultimately at some point.

Robin Farley, UBS.

Great, thanks. Two things. One is I just need to clarify your answer on the NBA data. Is it exclusive in the US for NBA data but not starting until 2023? In other words it's still shared (inaudible) from others before 2023? Just wanted to clarify that.

And then also just wanted to ask if you could give us a sense of either number of customers or percent of customers still using Sportradar for NFL data just so we can think about that opportunity -- what opportunity there is outside of the exclusivity there?

Hi, Robin. So, to the first part, the old deal remains in place for the next two seasons and there is no change. So, there will be -- there are several providers for the US live data piece. In two years the new deal kicks in and the new deal is different to the old one.

So, with the new deal the NFL, the NBA and Sportradar can decide if it makes sense for one of the other providers to get access to the data with the supply sensing. And I think that's very good for being in a (inaudible) and developing the market. And we will take that decision together with our partner NBA, but the mechanics have fundamentally changed with the new deal. So, that's the first part of the question.

And the second one with the NFL, we told already that we lost not one client in the betting market and we lost -- we recouped 99% of the revenues which we predicted in media and betting together, which shows that we have been able to compensate the loss of the exclusive data rights with the NFL by capturing data in an alternative way.

From a client perspective, it's just exactly as we said during the roadshow and this was expected. That the big operators, the Tier 1 operators, they took their exclusive data from the NFL, also widened some of the partnerships there. The smaller ones haven't done this, so the smaller ones are staying with Sportradar. I think we are speaking about a little bit more than 10 operators here. Does that answer your question?

Yes, yes. And just if I could clarify, when you mention that there's a decision in two years where you -- it sounds like you have the option to have the NBA data exclusively. Is that -- I assume there would be an additional fee or something if Sportradar chose that option. Is that fair to assume?

No, no, no, that's not an option. Then you misunderstood me. There was a clear regulation between the partners, NBA and Sportradar, that we want to be able to give the data to some innovative companies. We keep that open and there was a partnership agreement on this and there's a clear regulation in between which I can't go now too much into detail.

But it means that Sportradar will be the very preferred supplier of NBA data to the US marketplace in the next eight years, from the season 2023 onwards. So, that was the reason of the deal. This is not an option where we have to pay more money. That deal is closed now for clear financial terms and there is nothing on top of this.

Shaun Kelley, Bank of America.

Hi, thank you, everyone. I just wanted to maybe dig in on some of the changes in economics you guys saw as a result of some of the deals we saw announced with the NFL back in September. Has any of those relationships that were announced with other operators impacted, let's call it, the pricing dynamic or the take rate on any other products or deals with leagues? So, have you seen any pricing pressure on things that were sort of not NFL but might've been tied to or impacted by the NFL agreement that your competitor has out there in the market?

Of course the market reacts on these things and the market was asked to pay a significant premium compared to what they paid in the season before. And that has an impact on the market, so there is a sensitivity on the bookmaker market on this, same as the bookmakers' alternative on tax rates.

In a very general way we see a really strong, strong growing market in the United States at the moment. This is more driven by capturing market shares. And there is a cost sensitivity, but the cost sensitivity is probably not the main priority for the operators. That is what we see in general.

Going now into the granular, as you know that the NBA and the Major League Baseball, they have a different distribution model. So they have a fee upfront which is paid to baseball and basketball to get them access to official seat, which is a different, to the NFL, distribution model and to the NHL distribution model.

For the NHL we are the exclusive rights holders also for the next decade, for 10 years, the same like we have it now with the NBA. And we see that as a thing which we constantly have to refuel. We constantly have to see changes in this landscape.

It's a very dynamic market, but, for us from our perspective, it was very important that we secure long-term stability. That's what we did now with the NBA for 10 years and with the NHL for 10 years. And we are very proud that also for a long time we are associated with the Major League Baseball.

Great, thanks. And maybe just a quick follow-up -- a lot of the sports betting operators in the US are moving to or focused on full tech stack ownership. Just wondering -- I think you mentioned that you're seeing actually quite good traction with some of your MTS and MPS products. Could you just give us a little color on where that traction is, especially in the United States, with clients or customers? And how does the full stack ownership have an impact with some of the relationships with some of the bigger operators?

Yes, super happy. But we have to dive to get really deep into the details and I hope you will allow me a minute to explain the environment. So, if we speak about some services which the bookmakers take in house, you might mean platforms. There are very strong platform providers in this group. We have a platform, there are many others which are claiming to have a very good platform. And our platform is doing the full service. That is the pay in/pay out user acquisition back end/front end, etc. [You see] including risk management modules.

Our MTS service is continuing to grow and grow. From a liquidity perspective we are now on a year-by-year handle of round about run rate $15 billion as the tickets what we aggregate in the background. The more tickets and liquidity you aggregate the better you are in a position to use AI to compile what we call a fair price. And that gives you over the long term, if you have more liquidity and diversity, pricing power for this.

I think that's not disputed from one of the players in the market. It's only the question how quickly can you reach a position if your pricing power is big enough to generate alpha with the prices. And we are working very hard on this, like I alluded in my speech, and that's a very exciting territory for us. I think whenever we can provide superior service to our clients, the bookmakers, they will not hesitate to take it.

And there are some bookmakers which simply might see that there is an edge if they have their own platform. I think in a very general way the platform is a software business and sports betting operators -- the sports betting operations which have to do the branding, the marketing, the licensing, a lot of daily operations, I think there are very qualified companies doing software development and managing the modules like I just said it to you.

That's our opinion about the debate of insourcing and outsourcing. I think it's simply weighted by who can provide the more efficient and better service that our clients can have a better offer and be more profitable. And this is the decision point and I hope I gave you an understanding about what is driving this. This is at the end really liquidity.

If I can just answer -- just add a little bit, we have currently seven MTS customers in the US. So, yes, they are very small and, yes, you would expect us to start with the small bookmakers. But the fact that there are seven of them that already see the value in the product is very encouraging.

David Katz, Jefferies.

I wanted to just talk about a more long-term vision here, and I think that's largely what a lot of discussions with clients are about Sportradar. If we look at the deals that have occurred, yours with the NBA, others (inaudible), there's a stake involved and a cost involved. How do you think this evolves the next 5, 10 years? And is there a point at which the cost of these exclusive rights either stabilizes or becomes uneconomic? And help us in some qualitative way paint a long-term vision for this.

Very top level I would be more concerned of a 51% tax rate comparing it to what are the costs of official data. And the market can decide on this really. The US market has decided to value official data and I think that's a great decision. So, there are lots of pros in this. I don't think that internationally every market will follow now the sample of the United States. But undoubtedly there is an acceptance of official data and there is a participation of sport in this which I think is totally okay.

I told you already before that we have not the intention to widening the scope here. And the NBA was a very, very special deal for us because it is absolutely at the core of where we want to go and our visions are totally overlapping. And our vision is far beyond the data distribution.

Our vision is the digital fan journey, the direct-to-consumer product to help to get into this channel with all the things, customized OTT AV services which are in their user profiling, hooking them up with merchandising, connecting them with sponsorships, selling the right message on the right channels, lots of opportunities around RSMs, etc., PP. So, that's a far wider vision why we did this deal.

For the NBA, I think you can't simply replicate it and only focus it on the data. If we are looking into the future, I think the market will find the right balance here. Official data is something which the market has accepted in the United States. Sportradar is executing the vision and mission here very consequently.

But I think from the scope of Sportradar you will see not many of those deals following now the scope of the NBA. For the NBA it made a lot of sense for us to align our equity with them and have them contributing on our growth.

Understood. And if I can just follow up -- and apologies if I missed it. But the NBA stake that they are receiving, have you told us how large that is or how to calculate -- how we might go about estimating that?

It's 3% in total and it's lasting over 10 years' time at the interim in different tranches.

Michael Graham, Canaccord Genuity.

Thank you. I wanted to just ask a high-level question about your AV business. We hear all the time on the betting data side of your business that you are in a unique position and clearly you have a complex product that is very difficult to replicate and that creates a lot of competitive modes for you. And I just wonder if you could comment on your AV business and the extent to which you're able to build competitive moats around your AV business that would make it difficult for others to replicate.

Well, I reported the growth numbers and Alex reported the growth numbers in AV. I think if you look for this, this is really super, super strong. And from a profitability perspective, we see that we get scale in the product. It's all about building a portfolio which is interesting for specific client growth and regions.

There are not many real global betting operators, a few of them. They need a different product than operators which are focusing, for example, on the US as a region. So, we need to look that we get the critical amounts of rights for the regions and fitting that into the profile of our operator target. That's a challenge and we are on this journey since now many years. We reached now a point that we obviously gain scalability here and this is reflected in the numbers.

The future of this service and what is really diversifying us is we are using now the technology that we gain from the profiling of users and putting that into the audiovisual service that we understand this is a customer who might be interested in baseball, he might be interested in the Lakers and we might be interested in Lebron.

If we have that information we can push him whatever video highlights or we can enrich during the video the offering and show him a specialized offering or the specific offering for his favorite sport or his favorite team out of the bookmaker offering where we provide the service.

So, that intelligence to detect the user and to have the bookmakers to connect him with what he wants to do, he wants to simulate, he wants to do a retention and acquisition is the future development of this service. We started with this a couple of years ago. We are well on our journey and that's very good reflected in the numbers I think.

Bernie McTernan, Needham.

I was just wondering if you could detail just how much of the US or global GGR the NBA accounts for. Because in your prepared remarks I thought you said that the NBA was actually bigger than the NFL. And if that's the case is there any reason to think that the price you paid for the NBA would be lower than the rumored price that Genius paid for the NFL?

Look, I don't want to compare prices what we are paying and others are paying. We have a strong reason why we do this and this is always commercially driven. We are looking to generate profit for our shareholders and that's the reason why we are doing such deal, and the NBA is following this general idea.

Looking now to the league split, what I can give you is the breakdown for this year from the leagues and the split on the NGR in the United States. So, what I get here for pre-matches that the NBA is almost 21%; the NFL is [almost] 19% and the MLB is almost 17%; the NHL is almost 4%; then the NCAA, the colleges and the others. What I get from a league split in play, that's the in play revenues, the NBA is almost 25% and the NFL is almost 14%, seems like the MLB is almost 15% here.

So, what I read from those numbers is the NBA is clearly a betting sport for in play. We believe that in play gets more and more market shares. We believe that this is a trend which follows very strongly what we saw in the international, especially the European market, for the last 10 years. And as you might know, in the European markets in play is more than 70% of the revenues.

At the moment it's more upside down in the United States, but we think there is a strong acceleration here into live and the NBA is undoubtedly a better live betting sport than the NFL is. This was one of the decision drivers here because we believe of this market development and I think the numbers are speaking here for a more fast-moving sport. The NFL has different characteristics in this way.

And globally I referred on soccer as an EUR850 billion handle, so that's the complete turnover which is wagered on soccer comparing it to EUr41.8 billion for the NFL with unofficial numbers from the last year. So, that's the comparison here which shows the NFL as a sport, American football comparing it to soccer globally is around about 5% of the handle volume. Of course UEFA is only a part of soccer. There are many other leagues included in here, but that should give you a feeling for the dimensions in the global sports betting market.

No, that's great. I appreciate all the color. And just as a follow-up, just interested in how competitive the bidding process was for the NBA. I'm assuming you and Genius went pretty hard at it, but was there a sense that there were others involved as well? A big question that we get is what Endeavor and OpenBet is going to try to do and if they can be a greater competitor in the space. So, really if this is a two player bid for the NBA or if there's a much broader bidding -- amount of bidders for the asset?

All I can say is it was a very intensive process. I for myself, with the European team sitting here in Switzerland today, has been working on this until 3:30 in the morning this morning. And I'm very happy that we got super, super strong support with our US team, but still that was a night shift also in America.

So, it was a very intensive process. I don't want to give you details on how that was from a competitor side, but we are very proud and very happy that we could secure this partnership and this long-term deal with the NBA, which was for a key target for this year and we achieved it.

At this time we've reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'll now turn the call over to Carsten Koerl for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much and thank you all for your participation. We are very pleased with this quarter's performance and we are excited for the opportunities ahead. We have a high-performing company and we will continue to focus on maximizing shareholder value.

I'd like to thank many of Sportradar colleagues working around the world for their exceptional efforts and our customers and partners with whom we've worked seamlessly to deliver value to the market. Thank you for joining us on the call today and I wish you all a great day. Thank you very much.