AmTote and Sportradar sign sports-betting agreement

AmTote, the bet-processing company owned by The Stronach Group, has reached an agreement with an international sports-data company in order to offer U.S. customers the ability to offer fixed-odds sports betting, the two companies announced on Wednesday.

The agreement with Sportradar, which is based in the U.K. but has clients in a number of countries, is intended to put AmTote in a position to capitalize on what many believe will be the legalization of sports betting in many U.S. states in the next several years, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May allowing states to legalize the practice, according to Keith Johnson, the president of AmTote.

“Hopefully we’re going to see that in the not-so-distant future,” Johnson said on Wednesday.

Under the agreement, Sportradar will provide AmTote with sports-betting data and “managed trading services,” a term that refers to the use of multiple fixed-odds betting platforms allowing one bookmaking operation to place wagers with other bookmaking operations in order to reduce risk by laying off bets. The balance of risk is critical to a profitable bookmaking operation.

“You need managed trading elements to make it work,” Johnson said.

Johnson said that AmTote’s current betting terminals, which are in use at many racetrack and off-track betting locations in the U.S., will be integrated with the Sportradar system so that U.S. customers can use their existing terminals to also provide sports-betting options. AmTote also provides bet-processing services to XpressBet, the account-wagering company owned by The Stronach Group.

XpressBet provides the bet-processing capabilities for DRF's account-wagering operation, DRF Bets.

The agreement comes in the wake of a number of consolidations and partnerships in the U.S. betting market as companies attempt to prepare for the roll-out of sports betting regulations in U.S. jurisdictions. So far, Delaware and New Jersey are the only states to launch full-scale sports-betting operations since the Supreme Court ruling, but a number of other states are considering their own rollouts.

“The challenge is that it’s a state-by-state slog, and each state is going to present different opportunities,” Johnson said.