CEO Carsten Koerl has insisted Sportradar’s reputation hasn’t been harmed by the short seller reports released in April which suggested the sports data supplier was supporting black market operators.
The claims by Muddy Waters Research and Callisto Research triggered more than a 20% selloff in Sportradar’s shares, wiping around $800m off the value of the business.
The stock recovered most of the losses over the following month, before steadily falling to $12.52, at the time of writing, which is below where Sportradar ended up immediately after the two activist short sellers published their evidence.
Despite Koerl’s claims that the reports were a “personal attack”, Sportradar investors are seeking damages by filing a class action lawsuit against the supplier.
Speaking on Sportradar’s Q2 earnings call on Monday 3 August, Koerl claimed the reports created a “misleading narrative”, and the deals the company has subsequently struck are proof of its standing in the industry.
“With respect to the short seller reports, published in April, our audit committee, with assistance of our legal counsel, Paul Hastings, refuted the allegations in the publications,” Koerl said.
“They determined that the short seller reports presented a misleading narrative and that Sportradar has had in place rigorous compliance framework and contractual protections to seek and ensure that the products which are used by our customers are in compliance with the applicable laws.
“For the regulators, we received various regulatory approvals in the last couple weeks for both the betting and the igaming space all over the world.
“The largest and most renowned sports organisations, such as Wimbledon or the German DFB [domestic football federation], gave us their rights. That shows you that on every level, we have a high respect in the market. We did our job and the audit committee did the job in a diligent way.”
Sportradar reported a 19% year-on-year (YoY) increase in revenue to €377.8m for Q2, though its shares slumped by almost a fifth at one point following the announcement. The company is down almost 50% in 2026.
The New York-listed firm pointed to strategic partnerships signed with major prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket as major contributing factors to its Q2 efforts.
Koerl went on to remark on the opportunity presented by these deals: “It was, for us in 2026, a lot of work to negotiate the [prediction market] deals, but also to convince our league partners that they’re going into this. We are still in progress here with a couple of them.
“We are very optimistic we found the right framework. It’s important to note that we have a transaction possibility with the exchanges by itself, Kalshi and Polymarket, but that we can also create new innovative products for market makers.
“Here, latency and deep data is key and centre, which presents new revenue opportunities. For this year, the upside is in the tens of millions. For next year, this is significantly higher.”
Tax hikes on operators came up on the call, too, especially as remote gaming duty in the UK increased from 21% to 40% from April, while the Brazilian government approved a new tax rate of 18% in December, up from 12% previously.
“This year, tax regimes have not been very beneficial from the point of view of our clients,” Koerl added.
“In the UK, we saw a tax increase just shy of 100% from one year to another, which is a hurdle for our clients. They’re trying to optimise their cost structure.
“We saw the same thing in Brazil on both sides, both with the gaming taxes and the also the taxes within the country. Both of them are not really beneficial for our clients. Looking ahead to next year, we do not have any indications worldwide that we will see something like what we saw this year [but] there is a tightening of the tax regimes globally.
“There are some bigger market opportunities. Japan might be a good opportunity, and there might be a couple of other opportunities around the globe. Looking at it from the perspective of today, we don’t foresee any major obstacles in 2027.”
The post Sportradar undeterred by “misleading narrative” presented in short seller reports first appeared on EGR Intel.
CEO Carsten Koerl says the supplier maintains its reputation in the industry despite the previous damaging claims made by Muddy Waters Research and Callisto Research
The post Sportradar undeterred by “misleading narrative” presented in short seller reports first appeared on EGR Intel.