The United Soccer League (USL) has reached a global betting partnership with Sportradar (NASDAQ: SRAD), signing a six-year deal that grants the Swiss technology company exclusive rights to collect, license and distribute the league’s official betting and media data.
As the league’s official betting and technology partner, Sportradar will also offer live streaming of USL competitions for sports betting to its global network of more than 900 regulated betting operators and 350 media outlets.
The agreement will cover over 600 USL matches per year across all three USL professional leagues, including the USL Championship, USL League One and the newly formed USL Super League, a women’s league set to launch in August 2024.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“The USL aims to be the most widely available league for fans both domestically and abroad,” USL chief commercial officer Court Jeske said. “This partnership demonstrates a significant step forward in the betting and technology space for USL’s men’s and women’s professional leagues.”
Additionally, the USL will continue to utilize Integrity Services, Sportradar’s bet monitoring and detection tool, for its three leagues and an online education platform to educate USL’s athletes and stakeholders on USL’s betting/gambling policies and anti-match fixing.
The USL partnership is Sportradar’s first with a major soccer league in North America.
In August, the company announced an eight-year global partnership with U.S. Soccer to expand the federation’s data and content worldwide. The Swiss company also has the exclusive distribution rights for live audio/video streaming of U.S. Soccer competitions for betting purposes, available outside of the U.S., which covers more than 111 matches per year across U.S. men’s (USMNT) and women’s (USWNT) national team competitions and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
“This is the most important decade ever for soccer fans in the U.S.,” Eric Conrad, Sportradar’s EVP of strategic partnerships, U.S. & LATAM, said in an email. “And together with our partners we look forward to reaching fans with innovative products and data driven insights across platforms that will lead to record levels of engagement.”
Founded in 2001, Sportradar has partnerships with the NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, CONMEBOL, and an audio/video deal with nine teams in LigaMX, among others, and covers nearly a million annual events across sports.
The USL retained Sportfive to manage the negotiations with Sportradar.