Key Points
- Teamworks Innovations will send $170 million in cold hard cash our way for Atrium Sports, all done and dusted by the end of 2026.
- Sportradar is holding onto all the good stuff, though, including Atrium’s fancy automated cameras & graphics and computer vision tools, because, well, they already make their core products tick.
- On the face of it, the buyout looks a bit pricey, $40 million less than when Sportradar bought the business in 2021, yet they’re only selling a smaller chunk of the operation this time round.
What Sportradar Is Selling & Keeping With That $170m Atrium Sale
You might recall Sportradar built its name on betting data, but for the past 5 years or so they’ve also been flogging video scouting tools to basketball and baseball teams. Now that bit of the business is hitting the road, and it’s the price tag that gives us a real insight into what’s going on.
Teamworks Agrees to Pay $170 Million For Atrium
So Sportradar has decided to offload Atrium Sports, the sports coaching and scouting arm of Synergy Sports, to Teamworks Innovations. According to the official word from Sportradar, they’re getting a nice fat $170 million check from the buyer. All done and dusted by the end of 2026, subject to the usual closing conditions, of course.
Behind the official announcement, though, is a bit more detail in a report on a filing, a Form 6-K to be precise. According to that report, the agreement was signed on 6th October, and the final price might still be tweaked a bit with the buyer taking on all of Atrium. Teamworks will get all the coaching and scouting software Atrium built, and the final cost may still be subject to some purchase adjustments.
Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl tried to spin the sale as a “focusing our efforts” thing, rather than a pull-back from the market. To quote the man himself: “This deal allows us to tighten up our business and focus more on our core areas of betting, gaming and media, while giving us a chance to keep hold of those key tech assets that are a real game-changer for us.”
The Cameras Stay, The Coaching Tools Leave
Not everything that Atrium cooked up is heading off to North Carolina with Teamworks. Sportradar is keeping hold of the automated video production cameras and automated graphics, certain computer vision tools and competition management products, and, of course, the revenue that comes with ’em. That’s because all of those tools are already powering the core Sportradar products, after all.
Teamworks, on the other hand, will get to keep all the Atrium bits that teams actually use for daily coaching and scouting, the video and analytics stuff that helps them get an edge on their rivals.
According to Koerl, what Teamworks is getting is a “leading team-side analytics platform for baseball and basketball.” And he reckons this sale is going to be a real game-changer for the business, positioning it for the next big thing.
On the face of it, Teamworks seems like a pretty natural fit, they’re already one of the biggest players in the market when it comes to performance, scouting and operations software for sports organisations around the world.
The Price Paid by Sportradar in 2021
The figures have changed quite a lot compared to five years ago. In March 2021, Sportradar entered into an agreement to purchase Atrium and closed the deal in May of the same year. In the 2021 annual report to the SEC, the total consideration is stated as €192.2 million including €134.5 million of goodwill.
In the period after its acquisition until the end of the year, Atrium generated €19.1 million of additional revenue and €15.5 million pre-tax loss for Sportradar.
With the European Central Bank exchange rate of $1.1177 on 7 October, $170 million would be approximately €152 million, some €40 million less than the 2021 price. However, these figures cannot be directly compared as Sportradar is retaining some of the technology it initially acquired.
A Little Product in a Big Betting Company
It is the difference in scale that allows the management to make such a move. The coaching products are part of Sports Performance, which posted €10.6 million in revenue in Q2, declining 13%. According to Sportradar, this decline was mostly currency-related. Over the same three months, the Betting Technology & Solutions generated €313.6 million, up 21%.
Shares Remain Under Pressure
The investors were not too excited with the news either. The shares closed 0.99% lower at $12.06 while declining over 45% for the year, according to European Gaming. Jefferies maintained its Hold rating and $14 target, noting the expectation that the proceeds would flow back to shareholders’ pockets.
This view is confirmed by Sportradar’s balance sheet. As of 30 June, the company held €251 million in cash without any debt. By the end of July, it had repurchased $422 million worth of shares under a $1 billion programme.
Weak guidance has added to the pressure. On 3 August, Sportradar lowered its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of €360 million to €368 million. In light of this earnings level, even a $170 million sale makes little difference.
Prediction Markets Start To Steer The Ship At Sportradar
You could see Sportradar’s new direction coming a few months before Atrium actually went up for sale. In June, the company signed a multi-year deal with Kalshi to cover data, fan engagement and all the integrity services. And the first thing to come out of that was a Polymarket agreement that was specifically about tennis, that allowed US users to get access to roughly 20,000 matches each season.
But that deal didn’t stay small for long, and before you knew it the tennis thing had mushroomed into something much bigger. On August 27th, Sportradar and Polymarket expanded their partnership to cover over 20 leagues and some major competitions. This new deal covers roughly 300,000 matches every year, and that’s not counting the Bundesliga or Euroleague Basketball, for example.
On the August earnings call, Koerl was really upfront about why they were so keen to get this sort of deal with Polymarket. According to the iGaming Business, he said “With our premium content, global reach and the best product portfolio and capabilities out there, a predictions market is just a natural fit for us.” But he also admitted that delayed league approvals had pushed off the real gains until 2027.
US rules on this sort of thing are still pretty murky. New York is in the process of suing Kalshi at the moment, and the federal regulator is still fighting over whether it has the authority to control these markets.
There’s another problem that’s still hanging over the shares too. In April, short sellers Callisto Research and Muddy Waters Research made some claims that Sportradar was supplying some of its sportsbook customers to some operators who weren’t licensed to bet. This caused the stock to fall by around 20% and Sportradar called the claims “factually inaccurate”. But those allegations are about the sportsbooks, not the new prediction market partnerships.
What’s Likely To Happen Before The Deal Actually Goes Through
Until the deal is finally completed, Atrium’s clients won’t really notice any difference. Koerl promised to “work closely with everyone at Teamworks to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible for our clients, partners and employees”. Neither company has mentioned a specific date beyond the fourth quarter.
One question, though, that’s still bugging investors is whether we’ll actually get a clear picture of Atrium’s standalone revenue and earnings. Sportradar hasn’t said whether they will, and even if they do, there’s no guarantee we’ll get the level of detail we’d like.
Expert Analysis: A Smart Sale That’s Been Shrouded In Mystery
We think Sportradar did the right thing in selling Atrium, but we have a few problems with the way they described the price they got for it. According to Sportradar, it was “an accretive double-digit EBITDA multiple” when compared to its own market value. But without knowing what Atrium’s EBITDA is, though, we can’t do our own maths to see if that stacks up.
So we had a look at it ourselves, and if we use exactly ten times earnings, then $170 million implies Atrium EBITDA was probably around $17 million. If we assume a higher multiple, then the earnings must be smaller still. That’s just our calculation, we’re not claiming it’s correct, but it does suggest Atrium was making a pretty modest profit.
We think the “accretive” label says more about Sportradar’s share price, though, rather than Atrium itself. Beating your own valuation multiple gets a lot easier when your stock is down by half.
The more interesting bit is that Sportradar is now even more dependent on sportsbooks and prediction markets, which are both areas of the business that are facing a lot of regulatory changes in the US. That’s a pretty bold bet to make, and some people might disagree with it.
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