In an exclusive interview with Focus Gaming News, Mateo Lenoble, Vice President of Account Management for LatAm at Sportradar, shares how the company is preparing for ICE Barcelona 2025.
Exclusive Interview – Mateo Lenoble, Vice President of Account Management for Latin America at Sportradar, spoke with Focus Gaming News about the company's plans for ICE Barcelona 2025, where Sportradar will demonstrate how it is leveraging AI to redefine the sports betting experience and create the next generation of betting products and services.
ICE 2025 is just around the corner. How is Sportradar preparing for the fair?
ICE is always a date we mark on our calendars and look forward to each year. It provides us with a valuable opportunity to meet face-to-face with our global network of partners and clients, as well as to showcase our industry-leading portfolio of products and services.
We always focus on making eye-catching demonstrations for visitors. But in 2025, the year the fair is held for the first time in Barcelona, we plan to present something very special.
At our booth, we have several exhibits that demonstrate how we are leveraging AI to redefine the sports betting experience and create the next generation of betting products and services. You will see how we use this technology to transform the way operators and rights holders engage customers and offer new revenue-generating opportunities.
What will attendees find at the company's booth?
Attendees at ICE can find us at booth 5L40 in hall 5. In addition to demonstrations of our custom products, such as marketing services, managed trading services, streaming, data, and odds, we also have some exciting new features.
We will have a 3x3 basketball court, where two teams will play each hour. In real-time, visitors will witness the cutting-edge technology we use to collect, process, and contextualize player data to drive the next generation of live betting products and engage customers more deeply with the sports action. These include "Sportradar 4Sight," our live match tracker, retail audiovisual broadcasting with betting stats, and a custom-made betting microgame.
For the first time, we will also have a lab dedicated to Generative AI, showcasing our developing AI products, and an igaming area, where our online casino offerings will be displayed.
What do you think will be the most relevant topics of discussion at this edition?
I expect AI to continue to be a major topic for the industry. In recent years, almost everyone has had access to large data sets, but AI is the real game-changer that allows us to extract meaning and opportunities from this information and subsequently create market-leading products across the entire sports betting value chain.
Without the application of AI-generated solutions, data is just a set of coordinates and not very useful. At our booth, visitors will see how we use cutting-edge technology to transform raw sports data into innovative products and services that offer hyper-personalized, hyper-intelligent, and hyper-immersive experiences to bettors.
AI is evolving rapidly and Sportradar is one of the most advanced companies in this regard. Is there any innovation that the company will unveil in the short term?
Sportradar was one of the first to adopt AI, combining it with our wealth of data to create the next generation of betting products and services. We have the deepest sports data sets in the industry and apply AI across our entire portfolio of value-added products. We have accelerated our commitment in this area and this year we hired Behshad Behzadi, our Director of Product, Technology, and AI, from Google.
In our basketball demonstration, guests will see firsthand and in real-time how "Computer Vision" (a subset of AI) captures player data and how our algorithms process this information to generate our vast array of hyper-personalized and immersive betting solutions, such as advanced visualizations, enhanced in-game markets, and sequence overlays.
At our booth, you will also find a lab dedicated to GenAI, showcasing the new technologies we are developing. Powered by our historical data, these GenAI products include a smart sports "brain," stats bots, audio ads, and podcasts.
In 2024, Sportradar deepened its agreements with sports leagues and associations such as UEFA, MLB, and NBA. What is the importance of strengthening ties with these organizations?
The industry has greatly noticed the new products we have supplied to the NBA and ATP in the last two years. For us, it is great to work with rights holders who are so forward-thinking in leveraging the full potential of their data to unlock all its value for their partners and fans. Close collaboration is essential to understand the vision the rights holder has for their sport and how we can conceptualize exciting ideas that end up becoming the most innovative and cutting-edge fan engagement opportunities.
These relationships are also a great example of how we use innovative technology to transform the rights holder's data sets into value-added products that contribute to the growth of their sport. This not only benefits them but also directly their partners, operators, fans, and bettors.
The company recently opened an office in Sao Paulo. What are Sportradar's expansion plans in Brazil and the rest of Latin America? How will the start of the regulated market in Brazil affect the sector?
We are committed to supporting the growth of a responsible and sustainable market in Brazil, which has the potential to become one of the largest regulated sports betting markets in the world, with online gaming gross revenue (GGR) projected to more than double in the next five years.
We have been working in the country for nearly a decade, providing sports betting operators with innovative fan engagement solutions based on AI to establish a market share and drive growth. We collaborate with major regional and local sports federations, helping them monetize their data and protect the integrity of their competitions, and we have solid formal working agreements with the Brazilian Federal Police and the Ministry of Finance, which oversees the regulation of sports betting.
