Endeavor Combines IMG Arena, OpenBet Under Single Brand
Endeavor is integrating its two main betting businesses—OpenBet and IMG Arena—under a single name and leadership team, a move that it hopes will allow the two teams to better package their products to sportsbooks around the globe.
Starting immediately, both will continue under the overarching OpenBet umbrella. The group will be run by OpenBet CEO Jordan Levin, reporting to Endeavor president and COO Mark Shapiro. IMG Arena will operate as a brand under OpenBet.
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“We were operating as cousins under the same ownership, functionally in our own swim lanes and coordinating when necessary,” Levin said in an interview. “This combination is an opportunity to provide a more wholistic and synchronized set of solutions to our customers, and speak with one voice to our customers.”
IMG Arena is a data partner—similar to Genius Sports or Sportradar, it helps sports leagues and governing bodies package their stats (and some live streams) for sportsbooks. OpenBet, on the other hand, is a business-to-business product, offering tech and infrastructure to operators around the globe.
As a concrete example of what the combined entity might be more efficient at handling moving forward, Levin mentioned odds pricing. In the past, IMG Arena would gather official data from its clients, then contract a third party to integrate pricing. Now the combined entity will be more able to weave in OpenBet’s pricing capabilities.
The two companies serve a combined 450-plus sportsbook operators and betting brands around the world, Levin said. IMG Arena’s base, by virtue of its business, is the larger of the two, but Levin said there is “considerable overlap” between the two brands’ customers.
Endeavor (NYSE: EDR) purchased OpenBet in 2022 for $800 million, comprised of $750 million in cash and $50 million in Endeavor stock. (That topline price was 33% less than the original $1.2 billion deal announced in late 2022—a discount that reflected challenges in the sports betting market at the time.) After the acquisition closed, Endeavor rolled the two into a new “sports data and technology” reporting segment. The segment reported $356.3 million in revenue across the first three quarters of the year, including $124.8 million in the third quarter. OpenBet will now be the organizational umbrella for that segment.
Shapiro said during that earnings call that the company was “very bullish” about the OpenBet business. He also provided color on how IMG Arena was assessing the growing cost of data rights. He said the company would stay away from the highest-priced properties—which he called “Tier 1 Trojan Horse money-loser properties”—and continue to bid for Tier 2 and Tier 3 packages.
Both IMG Arena and OpenBet have been active lately. IMG Arena recently announced partnerships with Conference USA and Cricket West Indies. OpenBet recently partnered with Finland’s government-owned betting operator, and Greek gaming operator OPAP.
"When we acquired OpenBet in 2022, we envisioned a holistic integration with IMG Arena that would create a leader in the global betting, sports data and technology industry," Shapiro said in a statement. "Today is the culmination of that ambition."
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