SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Sports betting incumbents have been warned not to rest on their laurels, as a disruptive decade faces more changes driven by AI adoption.
The message comes from sports figurehead and technologist Carsten Koerl, the founder and CEO of Sportradar, who believes without hesitation that the terms of play for sports and betting will be re-written by the end of the decade.
Taking time to speak to SBC at the ICE 2025 Conference in Barcelona, Koerl leads Sportradar’s showcase of new products, solutions, and services for clients to visualise sports betting’s next phase of disruption.
An important dynamic for Sportradar to reflect is its status as the most significant technology business in the global sports betting sector, overseeing core functions such as pricing, risk management, sports integrity, data gathering, intelligence, marketing, and many other key components.
One of Sportradar’s lesser known services is its Integrity division “We have been doing this for more than 15 years now. We do this because sport and the integrity of sport should not be up for debate. Also, it is one of the core values of Sportradar – integrity is key, at the heart of what we do.”
Although integrity services are non-profit, Koerl highlights how they have provided Sportradar with a clear view of the evolution of sports through the Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS).
Serving FIFA, UEFA the NBA, MLB, IOC, and many others, UFDS functions as Sportradar’s AI-enhanced system, monitoring global betting markets to identify suspicious betting patterns and market movements, which are then analysed by a team of experts for verification.
The significance of UFDS learnings is emphasised: “We covered hundreds of thousands of matches last year with the UFDS. The match-fixing number went down, which shows that systematic monitoring makes it more difficult to manipulate. The numbers we publish are entirely objective, and we have been doing this consistently for many years.
This carries weight for the industry, and we are very proud that we see this effort is reducing the cases of manipulation. They are still there, but making this public and showing a consistent approach, I think, is very helpful, as it assists sports federations and the industry.”
Yet, UFDS isn’t the only system that Sportradar continues to upgrade through dedicated AI engineering. Amid a conference filled with AI discussions, Koerl asserts that Sportradar is one of the few technology incumbents that can truly determine and visualise AI innovations and disruptions through its business and commercial solutions.
“Everybody has access to this technology, and if you’re not applying it, you’re not competitive. It’s very simple.” Sportradar’s AI solutions have introduced over 450,000 automated components to enhance customer support layers, ensuring better operational efficiency.
On the product side, Koerl highlighted the development of Sportradar’s 4Sight, a next-generation streaming solution that merges AI and machine learning modules to analyse and collect data at 120 frames per second from live sports. “We have so many examples. With 4Sight, there will be an interaction of advertising, retention, and simulation—all in one product that also creates visualisations. This is only possible by applying Large Language Models. Any tech company that does not apply this will not be competitive in the future.”
2025 will see Sportradar expand its services into the wider iGaming sector, where it views its ad:s marketing solution as a game-changer for cost-focused operators. “It’s a natural extension for us. More than 80% of our clients offer both sports betting and iGaming through their licences. Their common issue is around client acquisition, whilst aiding retention.
We have products for this, through our Marketing Services portfolio, one of which is called ad:s, and it is very intelligent. Through its front end, also driven by AI, we see who is coming in by searching against our data pools. Through ad:s, we are delivering a higher acquisition rate in a hyper-competitive market. However, as markets become more saturated, the focus has shifted more towards retention and for 2025 we’ve brought our VAIX retention product into the fore.”
The ability to interpret, determine, and visualise AI innovations is seen by Koerl as the core competency of Sportradar. As the 2020s unfold, Sportradar will continue supporting global partners in navigating disruptions, just as it did in its previous challenge of combating sports integrity threats and upholding its founding ethos—to redefine professional sports through technology.
Koerl concluded: “We have a very robust, very solid engine. We feed this engine with content, with data from everything we highlighted. And then we only need to look at how we are consistently solving problems for our clients and making them successful. The bigger you get, the easier that gets.
“There is an economy of scale in this. So, I think, because of this, we are sitting in a very good position. And we are doubling and tripling down—every time, we want to get better. We want to stay curious, and to stay curious means you need to listen to your client: how can you make them more successful? It is a very exciting 2025 ahead.”
