Sportradar appoints former Interwetten CEO Becher to US role
Sports data provider Sportradar has appointed former Interwetten chief executive Werner Becher as managing director of US betting.
According to Sportradar, Becher will oversee the development and execution of its US strategy, based in New York.
“We are delighted to welcome Werner as our managing director of US betting,” Carsten Koerl, chief executive at Sportradar said. “Since we first opened for business in the US several years ago, we have experienced the rapid growth of sports betting in the region and fully expect this to continue for many more years as new states regulate.
“I am confident that Werner’s deep expertise will help us to both maximise the tremendous opportunity we have to grow our market share and further enable the expansion of this key market.”
Becher joined Interwetten in 2011, having previously founded IT service provider Adesso Austria in 2003, and served as chief executive of the company until joining Interwetten. During Becher’s seven years at Interwetten, the company’s turnover doubled to €1.5bn, before he departed the role in December 2018.
He was replaced as Interwetten CEO Dominik Beier, formerly global head of advertising and sponsorship sales at Sportradar.
“On behalf of the board, we are extremely pleased that Werner has joined us to steer the company’s sports engagement platform in the US,” Tony Aquila, chairman of Sportradar’s board, said.
“Due to our continuing global success and strong balance sheet we will continue to be focused on deploying capital that helps us meet the accelerating needs of our clients through organic and inorganic investments for our US and global clients, like our recent acquisition of Optima.”
Becher said he was excited about the prospect of growing Sportradar’s footprint in the US.
“I am thrilled to have joined Sportradar during such an exciting period,” Becher said. “I look forward to working closely with Carsten, Tony and management to grow our market share and ensure the future success of the organisation.”
Sportradar also entered into a data partnership with EquiLottery Games in order to create lottery games based on sports results today (23 October).
Under the agreement, Sportradar will provide data for EquiLottery’s Baseball Bucks game, which EquiLottery last month announced a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB) to launch.
Baseball Bucks sees players purchase a ticket that features 10 randomly-selected games from that day's MLB slate. Tickets that feature seven or more winning teams will win prizes, depending on the number of winners selected.
“Development in the sports gaming space has been understandably dominated by sportsbook providers,” Sportradar’s corporate sales manager for US Betting, Joe Solosky, said. “As such, we are excited to join a true innovator that’s putting a new spin on engaging players with games based on live sporting events.
“We look forward to being a part of the success for Baseball Bucks and other future games that EquiLottery Games develops.”
EquiLottery Games founder and chief executive Brad Cummings said he believes that the partnership between the two companies may expand beyond the Baseball Bucks game in the future.
“We are thrilled to add another industry leader to our growing list of partners in the gaming space,” Cummings said. “Through this deal, our lottery partners can be confident the data we use to power our games will be of the utmost integrity.
“This is the next step in our development of this new lottery category – games of pure chance based on the results of live sporting events. We hope this partnership goes beyond Baseball Bucks as we continue to expand our vision to develop what is essentially the world’s first game of chance sportsbook.”
Earlier this month, Sportradar announced the acquisition of platform provider Optima for an undisclosed sum.