Sport Industry Report: Bespoke sport at scale
Blaz Zitnik, SVP of BET, Sportradar
The deep integration of sport and technology has been a defining factor of the industry for some time. Now, the relationship between the two stands at the point of another step-change.
The past two decades have been marked by dramatic shifts in media consumption and connection. The growth of digital communities and distribution has meant that more and more fans have a primarily online sporting experience.
That move towards connected devices initially saw longstanding linear conventions ported to a new venue. Since then, however, it has come to profoundly alter what fans watch and how they communicate. Supporters can now construct entire media environments around their own interests, choosing from an apparently endless supply of content in a busy marketplace for attention.
The Sport Industry Report 2025 survey found that 59% of fans want ‘data, stats and insights pre, during and after a match’; 47% are consuming fewer full games, preferring short-form clips and highlights; and 52% chat with friends and use social media midgame on second screens.
This in turn has challenged expectations and unsettled business models, heaping pressure on sports bodies and their media partners. Yet those organisations also know that the right offering could unlock unprecedented revenue and engagement potential. The evolution of Sportradar underscores just how this influence of technology on sport has progressed. Founded in Switzerland in 2001, the company now works with hundreds of the biggest rights holders, media groups and sportsbooks in the world – including UEFA, ATP, NBA, MLB, the Bundesliga, Snap, ESPN and FanDuel.
“Organisations know that the right offering could unlock unprecedented revenue and engagement potential”
Sportradar first rose to prominence as a leader in statistical aggregation and analytics, earning a reputation for reliability that made it a valuable partner to betting companies. It was soon able to capitalise on adjacent opportunities. It added sports integrity services, harnessing its data-gathering capabilities to help rights holders and bookmakers spot unusual betting patterns early to counter match-fixing and other corrupt activities.
Shortly afterwards, it moved into the OTT space, developing fast, dependable and secure live streams that built from its understanding of the unique demands of bettors and bookmakers. The solutions it created there were then repurposed for wider media use – taking it to the point of convergence between viewership and transaction that looks set to reorganise the sports content economy in the years ahead. Blaz Zitnik, the senior vice president of Betting Entertainment Tools at Sportradar, notes how the company has gone from serving “historical statistical information” and real-time “live metrics” to a vast array of rich and rapidly available data. Today, that acts as the foundation of powerful, flexible engagement tools for regular fans and bettors alike.
Over the past year, Sportradar has continued to bring together data collection, analytics and graphical visualisations to enable new immersive experiences. Its 4Sight streaming product deploys artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision technology capable of analysing live video at 120 frames per second, converting the resulting data into 3D animations and projections like heatmaps.
In October 2024, it announced it would be bringing that solution to its long-term partnership with the NBA, along with other proprietary products like its Virtualized Live Match Tracker, NBA Advanced Visualizations and the emBET service – which allows bettors to follow their wagers across a wide range of connected devices.
Taken together, this suite of solutions promises ever more sophisticated personalisation for fans – and more responsive commercialisation for rights holders and their partners.
“We have 14 cameras in each NBA venue, which are tracking 29 different data points on each player – plus, of course, the ball – at 60 frames per second,” explains Zitnik.
This generates enormous amounts of usable data. In the past, Zitnik reveals, Sportradar would have needed to trade off those volumes against the needs of its partners in the betting sector – whose priority was to get reliable information as quickly as possible…
This is an extract from the report – to read the full interview with Blaz Zitnik download the Sport Industry Report 2025.
