Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl has said the best use of company funds is for share buybacks, as opposed to largescale M&A sanctioned by its primary rival Genius Sports.
Last month, Genius Sports splashed an initial $900m to acquire Legend in a deal that could rise to $1.2bn.
Asked about the deal by Barry Jonas of Truist Securities on Sportradar’s Q4 earnings call, Koerl said Sportradar was aware of M&A opportunities but would not approve a deal lightly.
He remarked: “We are constantly looking at what opportunities we have. We laid out during our Investor Day our strategy with adjacent markets.
“One is, of course, advertising and the opportunities we see around this. Of course, we’re looking into it.
“We’re looking [to see if] it is accretive for us to buy such a business. Does the growth rate fit? Does it fit our EBITDA profile? We’re deciding on this. In this case, I think the answer is clear. We didn’t do a deal here.
“We believe that at the moment it is best [use] for the capital we have to increase our buybacks.”
In March 2024, the Sportradar board approved a $200m share repurchase scheme.
This was upped by a further $100m in October 2025 and another $700m in February 2026 to take the total plan above the $1bn mark.
As of 27 February, Sportradar has repurchased 9.2 million shares under the plan for a total of $171m.
The last M&A deal Sportradar approved was the move for IMG Arena in November 2025, in a transaction which saw the New York-listed business part with no fee to snap up the asset.
Instead, former owner Endeavor paid Sportradar $103m and sent $122m in cash prepayments to certain sports rightsholders to offload IMG Arena.
IMG Arena has relationships with 70 rightsholders which cover around 38,000 official data events and 29,000 streaming events across 14 sports.
Following the deal, Sportradar’s coverage extended to more than one million matches each year.
The firm also paid $21m to snap up XLMedia’s North America-facing assets as the affiliate shuttered its doors.
Koerl also called out Sportradar’s igaming potential during the analyst call.
Included in the presentation deck was a slide that noted Sportradar’s “primary focus” for adjacent market expansion would be igaming.
Sportradar has added former Playtech Live CEO Edo Haitin as executive vice-president of igaming and is due to roll out an igaming sister brand to Sportradar.
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The post Sportradar CEO: Cash better used for buybacks rather than M&A first appeared on EGR Intel.
Carsten Koerl says supplier was aware of Genius Sports’ move for Legend, as he points to igaming opportunity as part of adjacent market expansion
The post Sportradar CEO: Cash better used for buybacks rather than M&A first appeared on EGR Intel.