Sportradar will sell shares to U.S. investors

Sportradar Group AG, a Switzerland-based sports data provider that has its U.S. operations based in Minneapolis, filed paperwork with U.S. securities regulators for an initial public offering.

Founded in 2001 by Carsten Koerl, Sportradar serves more than 1,000 companies across 80 countries and is an official partner of the National Basketball League, the National Football League and NASCAR.

Koerl had also co-founded online sports-betting platform Betandwin, which later came to be known as Bwin.

Sportradar's backers include basketball legend Michael Jordan, billionaire Mark Cuban and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

The company said in the regulatory filing that its revenue surged 42% to $318.60 million in the six months ended June 30.

It did not disclose the number of shares it looks to sell in the IPO and its target price range. It plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SRAD.

J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters for the offering.

Rob Phythian, who co-founded Fantasy Football Weekly and the website FanBall, and Dave Abbott, the founding chief technology officer of Internet Broadcasting Systems, started SportsData to do a better job collecting and distributing sports data. Initially, they paid college students to watch games and enter stats into a database.

Sportradar got its start in 2001 and remains led by Koerl, its founder. Executives decided to list for an IPO after negotiations failed for a sale to an already-listed special purpose acquisition company.

In its IPO filing, Sportradar said it employs more than 740 software engineers to refine its data collection and distribution. The company continues to employ hundreds of part-time statkeepers.