Sportradar’s CEO Fired Back Hard at Short Sellers Who Claim It Profits From Illegal Operators

Sportradar has spent years positioning itself as one of the sports industry’s most trusted data providers — a company that simultaneously powers the odds pipelines of licensed sportsbooks and helps governing bodies like FIFA and UEFA fight corruption. That dual identity is now under serious scrutiny, and the fallout has been swift and costly.

On April 22, 2026, two short-selling research firms — Muddy Waters Research and Callisto Research — published coordinated reports accusing Sportradar of knowingly profiting from illegal gambling operators across the globe. Both firms disclosed that they held short positions in the company, meaning they stood to gain financially from a drop in Sportradar’s stock. The market responded with striking speed: shares of Sportradar Group AG (NASDAQ: SRAD) closed 22.57 percent lower at $13.04, erasing more than $800 million in market capitalization in a single session.

What the Short Sellers Alleged

Muddy Waters led with the more operationally detailed report. The firm said it conducted an undercover investigation — including at the ICE 2026 gaming conference in Barcelona in January — where its representatives posed as startup sportsbook operators looking to target markets where online gambling is prohibited. According to Muddy Waters, a Sportradar sales executive walked the undercover team through product offerings tailored specifically to those illegal markets, without objecting to or flagging the stated intent. An Asia-focused sales executive allegedly offered to connect the undercover investigators with the Yabo Group, described as China’s largest illegal gambling operator, despite knowledge of its legal status.

Muddy Waters also said it interviewed 15 current and former Sportradar employees and conducted proprietary website code analysis to identify nearly 50 companies it considers current or recent Sportradar clients operating in illegal markets. The firm’s headline conclusion was unambiguous: “SRAD has actively aided and abetted illegal gambling across the world’s black and grey markets — not as an accident or an oversight, but as a business strategy.” Muddy Waters estimated that illegal operators account for approximately 20 to 40 percent of Sportradar’s total revenues, and argued that without that revenue, the company would be unprofitable.

Callisto Research came to similar conclusions through a different methodology. The firm examined hundreds of gambling platforms and said it found evidence that more than 270 individual platforms — representing more than a third of the roughly 800 operators Sportradar claims to serve — are using Sportradar’s products or services while operating illegally in regulated or prohibited markets. Callisto said many of those operators hold no license whatsoever. A senior former employee quoted in the Callisto report estimated that the exposure to unlicensed operators could represent as much as 30 to 40 percent of Sportradar’s revenue. The firm also said it had already shared its findings with regulators in the United States and Europe, with reviews described as already underway.

The accusations strike at the structural tension baked into Sportradar’s business. The company provides sports data and live odds to legal sports betting operators in licensed markets while simultaneously operating integrity services that are supposed to detect match-fixing and suspicious wagering activity for leagues and governing bodies. The idea that it might also be supplying those same data products to illegal operators — and profiting from it — would represent a fundamental contradiction between its commercial interests and its integrity mandate.

Koerl Hits Back Hard

Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl did not stay quiet. On April 24, Koerl posted a detailed rebuttal on LinkedIn, calling the allegations “a personal attack” and stating he found it “alarming to see so many false, misleading and defamatory statements” about himself and the business. In the post, he wrote: “There are numerous allegations in these reports that are either entirely false, poorly researched, deliberately taken out of context, or, at best, repackaging the same tired stories we have heard for years.” He also defended the company’s compliance infrastructure, writing: “We have one of the most rigorous compliance processes in a complex, highly regulated industry.”

A Sportradar spokesperson echoed the pushback, stating that the company “works exclusively with licensed operators, and follows strict compliance and due diligence standards,” adding that the company stands by its “independently audited financial statements, risk disclosures, and information provided to investors and regulators.” Koerl’s framing — positioning the short seller reports as a financially motivated smear rather than a legitimate business investigation — is a common counter-narrative in activist short selling situations. Both Muddy Waters and Callisto had disclosed their short positions before publishing, meaning they had direct financial incentive in seeing the stock fall.

That context matters. Muddy Waters in particular has a long track record of publishing research that triggers significant stock moves, with mixed results in terms of long-term accuracy. Critics of activist short selling argue the model creates perverse incentives, while defenders note that firms like Muddy Waters have uncovered genuine corporate fraud in the past. The credibility question here will ultimately rest on whether the specific factual allegations — the ICE Barcelona undercover operation, the specific operators identified, the revenue estimates — hold up to independent scrutiny.

The Compliance Gap on Display

One of the more damaging threads in both reports was the contrast between Sportradar’s public compliance posture and the behavior allegedly uncovered in the field. As recently as November 2025, Sportradar management told investors that the company is “only working with licensed operators, and we have contracts which are enabling those operators only to work in the territory where they are licensed in.” The company has also publicly touted a four-level know-your-customer framework designed to screen clients and monitor for illegal market activity. If the undercover findings from Muddy Waters are accurate, those assurances look significantly less robust than advertised.

National shareholder rights firm Hagens Berman opened an investigation shortly after the reports dropped, focusing on whether Sportradar’s pre-April 22 disclosures to investors may have violated federal securities laws. The firm specifically focused on statements about the company working only within legal gambling markets. The company is scheduled to report Q1 2026 results on May 6, which will be watched closely for any management commentary on the allegations.

What This Means for the Broader Industry

For anyone operating in or adjacent to the legal sports betting ecosystem, the Sportradar situation carries implications beyond one company’s stock price. Sportradar holds official data rights partnerships with major North American sports leagues and is woven deeply into the infrastructure that licensed sportsbooks depend on for odds feeds, live data, and integrity monitoring. If regulators in the U.S. or Europe find merit in the Callisto findings and open formal proceedings, the ripple effects could reach licensed operators who rely on Sportradar’s technology stack.

The situation also highlights how difficult enforcement of data licensing boundaries can be in practice. Sportradar’s contracts may technically restrict clients to their licensed territories, but verifying compliance across hundreds of global operators — many of them in jurisdictions with minimal regulatory oversight — is an enormous operational challenge. Callisto’s suggestion that Sportradar faces a binary choice between cutting ties with unlicensed operators or risking regulatory action underscores how complicated that path forward is, given that doing so could have significant revenue consequences under either scenario.

For bettors placing wagers through regulated U.S. sportsbooks, the immediate practical impact is minimal. The odds products and live data that power the platforms they use are not going anywhere in the near term. But the broader question of where sports data flows — and who profits from it — is now very much an active story, with regulators, lawyers, and short sellers all pulling at the same thread from different directions.