European sports data company Sportradar has closed a strategic funding and partnership deal with Revolution Growth, co-founded and co-led by Monumental Sports & Entertainment Chair Ted Leonsis, along with Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban and Hornets Owner Michael Jordan. Revolution Growth, Cuban and Jordan will collectively invest approximately $44.2M for an undisclosed minority equity stake in the company, and they will join the company’s U.S. advisory board. Both Leonsis and Revolution Growth partner Evan Morgan will sit on the Sportradar U.S. advisory board along with Cuban, Jordan, Sportradar U.S. President Ulrich Harmuth and Khezri Capital Research Int'l Founder & Chair Bijan Khezri. The deal is designed to significantly accelerate the company’s domestic expansion, which this year has already seen new partnerships with the NFL, NASCAR and NHL. Particular efforts will include a continued buildout of motion-based statistics and additional data services supporting the fantasy sports and gaming industries. “This adds significant profile to our U.S. operation,” said Harmuth. “We believe we can grow our U.S. operations significantly.” Harmuth acknowledged Sportradar “didn’t need the money” in the latest funding, and to that end, the deal does not represent a formal venture funding round. Rather, Sportradar intends more for the high-profile sports team owners to be value-added investors, a characterization to which Leonsis readily agreed, “As the industry landscape continues to change and become more connected, we believe data will become more and more important, and actually become content in and of itself. This is a dynamic company with a best-in-class technology built around analytics,” he said.
CONTINUING LEONSIS' TREND: Leonsis has long had a keen interest in sports data operations, as his Wizards were among the first NBA teams to align with Stats LLC for its SportVU player tracking system. As an AOL exec in the '90s, Leonsis played a key role in helping bring sports statistics onto a nascent consumer Internet. The four-year-old Revolution Growth is designed heavily for business acceleration investments, and often makes deals in the $25-50M range, placing the Sportradar transaction squarely in its sweet spot. After Revolution began to construct its deal with Sportradar, Leonsis brought Jordan and Cuban into the deal.
