Cricket is a top 5 strategic growth sport for Sportradar: Piyush Choudhary

Choudhary, Director Sales (South Asia), Sportradar, spoke about the strategic value of the InteractSport acquisition and how it will help the company grow its India business

by Javed Farooqui
Published: Jul 5, 2021 8:41 AM | 6 min read

Sports data company Sportradar has been on an acquisition spree in 2021. Recently, the company acquired Australia-based InteractSport to bolster its position as a leading cricket data and content provider. The acquisition is expected to help Sportradar in strengthening its cricket specific offerings in India. In an interview with exchange4media, Piyush Choudhary, Director Sales (South Asia), Sportradar, spoke about the strategic value of the InteractSport acquisition and how it will help the company grow its India business.

Excerpts:

What was the idea behind acquiring InteractSport?

We see India as a strategic market for Sportradar, and we know cricket is the sport that is most engaged with, so our acquisition of InteractSport reinforces our commitment to helping cricket grow even more than it already has. The acquisition provides us with the opportunity to widen our data and content offerings to all media and broadcast partners globally. They already have key relationships in place including with the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB), Cricket Australia (CA), various other leagues and federations, and we hope to bring their solutions to the sub-continent to reach even more fans.

What kind of value are you looking to unlock through this acquisition?

InteractSport has a lot of tools that provide insights to cricket federations, as well as fan engagement services, competition management and so on. Indian cricket has already grown, it has matured, but these services would help the sport even further at all levels and will offer a lot of commercial and engagement solutions. Through InteractSport and our expertise in digital transformation solutions, we can help the leagues and federations capture the data and for media purposes and provide it to Indian broadcasters and media companies and distribute it globally.

India is the biggest cricket market and InteractSport has expertise in cricket. How do you plan to leverage this acquisition in the Indian market?

The acquisition enables Sportradar to offer a broader range of solutions to help cricket leagues and federations engage with fans and business opportunities in the digital age. Fan engagement, player, club and game management and administration at all levels will be key to help grow the sport even further in India and the acquisition ensures we are best placed to support that growth. We can also assist the game with its monetization of data for broadcast and media content, as well as global distribution deals.

Beyond cricket, we have seen the proliferation of different sports leagues in India driven by the IPL, such as the ISL, the PKL and now different state leagues as well. We are looking to support this growth and the overall ecosystem, by providing all leagues and federations with integrity services, our digital transformation solutions, and we can support them in monetising their data and media by distributing that all over the world. For Indian publishers, broadcasters and gaming companies, we can provide them with detailed cricket data which they have been constantly in need of for better engaging their users and customers.

What kind of work is InteractSport doing with ECB and CA?

InteractSport has rights holder deals with ECB and CA. They also work on their Play-Cricket Scorer application with these two boards. This offers teams, clubs and leagues, the ability to live score any type of cricket match — one-day, two-day, Pairs Cricket and Twenty20 matches on both phone and tablet devices. The Play-Cricket Scorer app gives scorers the ability to score a match in a ball-by-ball fashion, with full control to undo, edit, re-order and change any aspect of a ball, over, team or the match as a whole. Scorers have full control over match settings, including the maximum number of overs per bowler, balls in an over, overs in an inning and much more. Live scores are then available for participants and the public to view on the Play-Cricket public portal, while the game is “In Progress” and the ability to share on social media platforms.

Sportradar has been on an acquisition spree. Is there any specific area where you will explore acquisition going forward?

InteractSport is Sportradar’s third acquisition in 2021 and Sportradar’s first key acquisition in the Asia region, showcasing our strength to be able to make these strategic plays at a time of significant growth for the company. Cricket is a top-five strategic growth sport for Sportradar and acquisition of InteractSport provides an opportunity to boost our offering by bolstering relationships within cricket, enhancing our products for cricket rights holders and acquiring cricket data rights.

While sports leagues and media companies focus on their respective core competencies, we focus on leveraging data and technology to help them run their businesses efficiently and create more engaging experiences. This attracts new leagues to partner with us, and with each new league partner comes more events, deeper sports data and insights, and new opportunities for media companies to engage fans.

What is Sportradar's game plan in 2021 for India and global markets?

Growth in Asia is important for Sportradar with a specific focus on India and China. We look to grow in these markets by engaging with the most popular sports in those regions, which have hundreds of millions of passionate fans. Sportradar has been in India for a few years but has really strengthened its position over the last 24 months, and we have built very strong relationships with leagues and federations, particularly on integrity. Less well known is that Sportradar also has data and media agreements with some leagues and federations.

We provide data to media houses, gaming companies and broadcasters, and some companies Sportradar is working with are Dream11, 11Wickets, and Fancode, to name a few customers. We also provide broadcast content to Sony Pictures Networks India. Going forward, we will also demonstrate how our expertise in media and broadcast data deals can do for rights holders, leagues and federations in terms of monetisation and global distribution.

On the integrity side of the business, we have worked with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for the last two editions of the IPL, which is the biggest T20 League in the world in terms of volume and participation. We also work with the biggest professional football league in the country, the ISL and with the PKL, which is a traditional sport with a huge fan following. All these organisations still have huge growth potential and market implications in the Indian sporting ecosystem.

Globally, apart from our partnership with ECB and CA, we have partnerships with football’s world governing body FIFA, the European football body UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the K-League etc. Elsewhere, we are also partners with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and we have partnership with the European TT Federation.

What impact did the pandemic have on Sportradar's business?

Given the breadth of coverage for Sportradar (Over 400K games across 60+ sports), the pandemic meant there was a big gap caused by the lack of Tier 1 live sports events. We engaged with fantasy game content companies and our customers benefitted from this as emergency content across different sports.