Sportradar is evaluating potential acquisitions as the sports betting data and analytics market seems destined to consolidate into two competitors.

During Tuesday’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts, founder and CEO Carsten Koerl was asked why Sportradar’s previously approved $200 million stock buyback program has so far spent only $7 million. The executive gave three reasons—preserving cash for general organic growth and investing in growth areas such as its ads business were two.

The third was more intriguing: “We are looking into opportunities which are arising on the market—you might have followed some of the statements. ­There is a consolidation going on and some properties are coming to the market. We are looking into all opportunities here.”

Koerl didn’t say what the opportunities may be, and Sportradar declined to comment beyond what was on the call. But one possibility is the Open Bet arm that Endeavor Group Holdings just last week said it’s putting up for sale. Another possibility is Stats Perform, which was floated for sale in 2021 and has been said to be on the market since. With Genius Sports, they are the four businesses that essentially dominate the world market for sports betting-related data, analytics and technology.

“These same assets come up for sale from time to time, and so the math for [Genius Sports] and [Sportradar] is if they need any of the rights or underlying tech that these operators have,” said Bernie McTernan, an equity analyst with Needham & Company.

As Endeavor moves toward the almost certain closing of its going-private transaction with majority shareholder Silver Lake, the company announced last week it wants to sell Open Bet and IMG Arena and has classified the business as a discontinued operation in its latest quarter.  While Endeavor has a track record of some exceptional acquisitions–UFC and more recently WWE among them–the Open Bet purchase doesn’t seem to be one of them. Endeavor agreed to acquire Open Bet, a tech infrastructure and risk management platform, from lottery tech specialist Scientific Games in 2021 for an announced value of $1.2 billion. That acquisition was part of a gambit to combine it with IMG Arena, which packages official league data to sell to sportsbooks, and create a tech and data giant to challenge Sportradar and Genius Sports.

The move seemed to sour from the start. By the time the purchase closed in 2022, the sale price had been revised one third lower, to $800 million, as the high cost of data rights roiled the sports betting sector generally. At the time, the combined Open Bet-IMG Arena business had 12-month trailing revenue of $340 million. That meant Open Bet-IMG Arena was actually the second largest player in the sports betting data and tech sector, since Genius Sports had trailing 12-month revenue of $310 million at the same time. Sportradar had about $600 million, accounting in part for the weak Euro-to-dollar exchange rate of 2022.

By 2023, Sportradar revenues had grown to about $951 million, helped in part by a stronger Euro that year, and Genius to $413 million. In the first three months of that year, Open Bet-IMG Arena had generated $356 million, according to data compiled by Sportico. Information is incomplete about the fourth quarter of the Endeavor business, so it’s not quite apples-to-apples, ­ but it seems the growth rates of Sportradar and Genius were outpacing Endeavor’s combined divisions.

What’s more, Sportradar and Genius have largely cornered the market on premium data rights to the world’s most popular sports: The NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, English Premier League and lower English soccer divisions are among the rights the two companies have split between them.

“As we sit here today, all the major global data rights sit with only the two largest players for the balance of the decade,” Genius CEO Mark Locke said on a call with analysts last week. “This was not the case a few years ago, where a more fragmented market led to greater competition with both rights holders as well as sportsbooks.”

The eroding Open Bet-IMG Arena business is seen in Endeavor’s latest quarterly report. It reclassified the business as a discontinued operation, and the balance sheet shows Endeavor found earlier this year it needed to write off $206 million as impairment charges “for goodwill driven by lower streaming and data-rights projections,” Endeavor stated in its regulatory filing. That implies the value of Open Bet may be at best $600 million (the 2022 purchase price less the impairment charge).

In the past six months through June, Open Bet-IMG Arena generated $194 million in revenue. That actually supports an argument Open Bet could be worth more. Based on the price-to-sales ratio Sportradar and Genius trade at today, it implies the Endeavor division could be worth more than $900 million. But Sportradar and Genius are growing. Open Bet-IMG Arena isn’t; its revenue was down 16% from the first half of 2023. What’s the value of a declining business that’s locked out of the official data for sports most people bet on? If it were worth a lot, Endeavor probably wouldn’t be selling it.

Then there is the question of if someone in the apparently small world of potential buyers can afford it. Sportradar has $554 million in cash and receivables on its balance sheet, while Genius has $171.9 million of cash and receivables. Each does have its own liabilities, such as accounts payable and debt servicing that make available cash lower.

Stats Perform, owned by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, could also be in play. A June 2024 ratings note from S&P Ratings says the business revenue should grow 10% this year to an undisclosed figure—but that the business has about $708 million in loans coming due in 2026 in part from earlier moves to secure its own data rights. Vista paid $618 million for the business in 2019 when it had $540 million of debt, S&P noted. Adding so much debt to a business would probably lead to more punishment from shareholders of Sportradar or Genius.

For his part, Needham analyst McTernan sounded a skeptical note on whether any acquisition is in the works. “I think this more so speaks to this industry has really moved increasingly to a duopoly vs. four-player market prior,” he said in an email.

Endeavor declined to comment, while Genius Sports and Vista Equity Partners didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.