Last week’s purchase of Bloomberg Sports is likely only the beginning of a run of acquisitions by Stats LLC, company officials said.
The deal to buy Bloomberg Sports for an undisclosed low-eight-figure sum was the first major move for Illinois-based Stats since it was acquired in May by San Francisco-based venture capital firm Vista Equity Partners. Stats Chief Executive Officer Gary Walrath pledged it will not be the last for the sports data and analytics company.
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Bloomberg Sports (top), acquired by Stats LLC, brings with it 27 MLB team clients.
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“Vista is all about growth,” Walrath said. “They’re being very forceful, and there has not been a day in the last three-plus months since our deal with them in May that we haven’t been discussing how to accelerate this company. This announcement with Bloomberg is absolutely only a first step, and there are a number of attractive possibilities out there.”
Part of Vista’s goal is to double Stats’ annual revenue, estimated at $60 million, in the next four years through both acquisitions and organic growth.
Walrath declined to specify any potential acquisition targets, but the sports data and analytics market remains highly fragmented, with dozens of companies providing services to teams, leagues and media outlets.
While Walrath remains careful to praise Stats’ prior ownership, a partnership between News Corp. and The Associated Press, he said the current strategy would not have been possible with that group, particularly as Stats in recent years expanded into areas, such as player motion tracking, well outside the core businesses of the parent companies. News Corp. and AP late last year put Stats up for sale.
“The prior ownership was not as inclined to put additional money into the business,” Walrath said. “That’s where this whole conversation all started, bringing in an additional investor that led to the outright sale to Vista.”
The Bloomberg Sports name was among the assets acquired in the purchase. Bill Squadron, head of Bloomberg Sports, will expand his duties under Stats and help advise Vista and Stats on growth opportunities in addition to continuing to lead the operations of Bloomberg Sports as he has since 2009.
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Squadron
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“We’ve talked broadly about how I’ll figure into that. Not yet a lot of specifics,” Squadron said. “But there’s no doubt there’s a lot of big potential in this business. You look at the areas where we’ve already been growing ourselves at Bloomberg, things like predictive analytics and the European market, there’s immense opportunity.”
There are 30 employees at Bloomberg Sports, and the company has 27 MLB team clients, plus several in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
For Bloomberg L.P., the parent company that gave birth to Bloomberg Sports, the five-year experiment into leveraging its financial expertise into sports will likely be a footnote at best. The purchase price is a tiny fraction of the company’s annual revenue of more than $9 billion. And in many media circles, the Stats acquisition was lost amid news last week that company founder and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is returning to lead the company, replacing Chief Executive Dan Doctoroff.
“Bloomberg was pleased with our progress but also supportive of a path that would allow us to grow as quickly as possible,” Squadron said.
The Bloomberg Sports acquisition extends a run of news for Stats that includes the recent departures of co-Chief Executive Officer Steve Byrd and Brian Kopp, senior vice president of sports solutions.
“We were very sorry to see them go. They both did great work,” Walrath said. “But we have a very deep bench here.”
