Sportradar has announced the completion of its acquisition of IMG Arena from Endeavour Group to significantly expand its sports data rights coverage.
The portfolio will integrate across Sportradar’s platforms totalling more 70 sports data rights, 38,000 official data events and 29,000 streaming events across 14 different sports, including football, tennis and basketball.
Leagues and competitions acquired from IMG Arena include Wimbledon, the PGA Tour, EuroLeague Basketball, the WTA Tour, Grand Slam tennis tournaments, and Major League Soccer (MLS).
Sportradar is now projected to cover more than 1 million sports games annually with insights and analytical data for its clients.
Carsten Koerl, CEO of Sportradar, said the acquisition of IMG Arena “marks a significant milestone” for the company, in its bid to become the leading sports data, media and intelligence company.
“We are [now] uniquely positioned to deliver even more immersive, data rich experiences to our clients, partners and fans around the world while accelerating innovation at scale across the global sports ecosystem,” Koerl said.
Unique financial details
Initially announced in March 2025, Sportradar’s acquisition of IMG Arena is worth $225m in total.
This consists of a “unique transaction structure” in which Sportradar is not required to provide any financial consideration as part of the deal. Instead, the $225m will be split, with $122m in cash repayments from IMG Arena to certain sports rights holders, while Sportradar will receive $103m.
The payments to Sportradar, which are subject to customary purchase price adjustments, will be made over a two-year period.
The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Sportradar’s adjusted EBITDA margins and free cash flow conversion, likely to boost the company revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow growth.
Why the CMA had to get involved
The scale of the merger, which combines two of the largest players in the sports data market, triggered an investigation by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) earlier this year.
The CMA determined that the transaction constituted a “relevant merger situation” under the Enterprise Act 2002 because Sportradar and IMGA are competing enterprises in the UK market for the supply of Sportsbooks Support Services (SSS).
The CMA’s jurisdiction was met because the merged entity would have supplied greater than 25% of the Live Data, AV, and Odds in the UK, or a substantial part of it, and Sportradar had a turnover exceeding £10 million.
The central question for the CMA was whether the merger would result in a Substantial Lessening of Competition (SLC). The parties argued the CMA should assess the merger against an “exiting firm” counterfactual, essentially arguing that absent the merger, IMG Arena (IMGA) would have exited the market anyway, and thus the acquisition did not substantially change the competitive situation.
The CMA ultimately accepted this view on October 3, concluding that the evidence demonstrated it was inevitable that Endeavor would have either closed or sold IMGA due to strategic reasons.
