Sportradar Group AG (SRAD) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Sportradar Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Jim Bombassei, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Sportradar's Earnings Call for the Second Quarter of 2026. Please note that the slides we will reference during the presentation can be accessed via the webcast on our website at investors.sportradar.com and will be posted on our website at the conclusion of this call. A replay of today's call will also be available on our website. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the call to questions from analysts and investors. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note that some of the information you will hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding revenue and future business outlook. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or trends to differ materially from our forecast. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our annual report on Form 20-F and Form 6-K filed with the SEC, along with the associated earnings release. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates. Also during today's call, we will present IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures and operating metrics. Additional disclosures regarding these measures and metrics including a reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS measures are included in the earnings release, supplemental slides in our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted to our Investor Relations website. We may also discuss certain forward-looking non-IFRS financial measures that cannot be reconciled to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measure without unreasonable efforts. Joining me today are Carsten Koerl, our CEO; and Craig Felenstein, our CFO. And now I'll turn the call over to Carsten.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I will discuss our second quarter results and operations, including our continued success monetizing IMG ARENA content as well as our product innovation across key sports. I will also discuss the progress we are making against our key strategic priorities as we capitalize on prediction markets and continue to roll out of iGaming. Sportradar is a mission-critical provider position at the intersection of sports betting and media industries. We are executing on a number of strategic initiatives that we are expanding our addressable market and will ensure our long-term success. This will enable us to drive durable and profitable growth along with substantial cash flow. Now turning to our second quarter results. Today, company revenues increased 19% year-over-year as we benefit from strong performance in betting and gaming content, including continued strong progress monetizing IMG ARENA rights. We delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20% and generated significant free cash flow. We also accelerated our returned capital to shareholders through our $250 million enhanced open market share repurchase program. During the second quarter, we repurchased approximately $140 million worth of shares. Since inception, we repurchased $422 million or 26 million shares through last week under the $1 billion share repurchase program, as we take advantage of the volatility in the market as well as the value we see in our shares. In terms of the underlying market dynamics, we are continuing to see moderation in the U.S. market growth given no significant state openings and the growth in prediction markets as well as some impacts in certain Rest of the World territories due to increased tax regulation. While we continue to have confidence in our long-term ability to drive growth as we execute on our strategic initiatives, we are updating our full year guidance to reflect some of these trends, which Craig will discuss in more detail. Turning to our operating highlights. We continue to make great progress integrating our IMG ARENA rights portfolio, including capitalizing on revenue synergies, expanding key rights and ramping up our next-gen products. Demand across the global client base continue to be strong, and we remain on track to exceed our previously communicated revenue synergy target of 25%. We also continued to expand our premium product offering, launching player and micro markets as well as 4Sight Streaming for Roland-Garros and the upcoming U.S. Open. In addition, we expand the rollout of our premium golf service for the PGA, including live match tracker, live streaming and advanced in-play betting markets, which will enable operators to offer rich in-play golf experiences. We also brought our new live match tracker regionalization to additional sports league, including the MLS and the UFC. During the quarter, we secured a multiyear expansion to provide exclusive data and audiovisual betting rights for Wimbledon. This renewal strengthened and allows for further innovation across our premium tennis portfolio which spans three of the Grand Slams. In addition, we recently completed NBA and NHL season further demonstrated our ability to maximize the value of our premium sports rights. Both partnerships delivered strong full season results, reflecting continued customer adoption of our betting products and solutions across our customer base. This continued strong progress underscores our ability to monetize rights across our large global client base and broad products to deliver significant accretive revenue growth. Switching to Managed Trading Services. We continue to scale the business with strong Q2 turnover to benefit from major U.S. sports playoffs as well as the World Cup group stages. We manage approximately $56 billion of turnover on behalf of our clients on a trailing 12-month base, which is up 26% compared to the prior period. Moving on to our Marketing Services. Affiliate Marketing delivered its strongest months on record in June. We saw strong demand from North America sports books clients as well as from our clients, including prediction market exchanges. We have been actively working with operators such as Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig among others. In terms of our growth pillars, we continue to expand our pipeline and upsell and cross-sell our content and product portfolio. At the same time, we are investing in capitalizing on exciting adjacent opportunities. One of these significant opportunities is in predictions markets. With our premium content, global scale and unmatched product portfolio and capabilities, predictions market is a natural adjacency. It expands the U.S. TAM by opening up new states, attracting new players and increasing engagement with sports. Similar to our position in online sports betting, we will power key players in the prediction market ecosystem, including exchanges, market makers and brokers. To this end, in June, we announced a multiyear global agreement as an official sports data and solution provider for Kalshi. Under this agreement, Sportradar will deliver a broad portfolio of premium sports and content and services across major sports, including MLB, ATP, NHL, MLS and UFC, amongst others. We will provide Kalshi our real-time data ops to help them to ensure timely settlements, fan engagement solutions designed to drive deeper engagement, customer acquisition service to help them to acquire high-value sports fans and our industry-leading integrity services. As we also recently entered into a multiyear agreement with Polymarket in coordination with TDI for the ATP tour. As part of the deal, we are providing Polymarket in the U.S. with streaming of ATP matches on an exclusive basis, along with a nonexclusive base, our real-time data and odds for settlement, fan engagement solutions, customer acquisition services and integrity services. Notably, we have the ability to enter into agreements with Kalshi and Polymarket key partners, including brokers and market makers. Overall, we are excited to partner in what is an emerging fast-growing segment of the sports market and believe this demonstrates Sportradar's unique value proposition within our industry. Looking ahead, we continue to have active conversations across the prediction markets ecosystem and anticipate entering into additional commercial deals in the coming months. Now turning to Playradar, our newly established iGaming business. This is a natural extension of our core business. The vast majority of our customers operate across both sports betting and iGaming. While these businesses have traditionally been managed separately, operators are increasingly focused on driving greater crossover between the two. That's because a player who engages in both sports betting and iGaming can generate up to 5x the lifetime value of a sports betting-only player. We are creating differentiated entertainment experiences that seamlessly connect sports betting and iGaming. One example is our 24/7 live experience, where players can watch live sport events in a multiplayer setting while simultaneously engaging with complementary casino games or making real-time predictions on a live match. We are also gamifying historical sports content, starting with ATP, which will allow consumers to participate in a fast-paced gaming experience built around historic points from some of the world's greatest tennis matches. We have secured iGaming regulatory certification across multiple jurisdictions in South America, Europe and Canada, and we expect to expand into additional major European markets and several U.S. states throughout the remainder of the year. Importantly, we are doing all of this organically and efficiently using existing resources. More broadly, we continue to focus on driving increased operating leverage across our business. Last quarter, we announced steps to further streamline our operation and drive cost efficiencies, which will result in significant annualized savings. A key enabler of this effort is the increasing usage of AI across the business. We are leveraging AI to automate workflows, enhance coding and data collection and accelerate product innovation. We will continue to look for ways to deliver cost savings and further enhance our margins while maintaining our commitment to innovate across the product portfolio. In closing, we believe the progress we are making on our strategic initiatives as well as our premium content and broad product suite will enable us to continue to deliver durable revenue growth. We are confident in our ability to capitalize on the expanding addressable market for our products and solutions, including the prediction markets and in iGaming. This growth, combined with expanding operating leverage and strong cash flow generation positions us to deliver long-term shareholder value in the months and years ahead. Thank you. I will now hand over the call to Craig, who will discuss our financial results in greater detail.

Thanks, Carsten, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. Over the last 2.5 decades, Sportradar has built unmatched global scale across the sports, media and betting industries, continually creating additional value for our clients and partners. The strong growth we delivered in the second quarter once again demonstrates the power of that platform as the demand for our robust content portfolio, diversified product suite and leading technology and services solutions continues to expand. Not only is it generating sustained results today, but as markets evolve and grow and the new opportunities arise such as prediction markets, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize. The fundamentals of our business remain strong. And while there are a few headwinds impacting our short-term results, we remain poised to deliver sustained revenue growth, consistent margin expansion and increasing cash flow generation in the years ahead. Turning to the second quarter results. Sportradar generated revenues of EUR 378 million, an increase of EUR 60 million or 19% compared with the second quarter of 2025, driven by the continued cross-sell and upsell of products and solutions to existing clients, including the strong uptake of IMG content. Additionally, we've begun to just stretch the surface on the prediction market opportunity, which had limited impact in the quarter, but which is poised to accelerate growth in the back half of the year as we further expand our addressable market. The revenue growth in the quarter was negatively impacted by the slower growth from traditional U.S. sports books as well as the impact of foreign currency headwinds, particularly from the U.S. dollar relative to the euro. Excluding the impact of FX movements, revenue growth in the second quarter would have been 21% on a constant currency basis. Turning to our individual product groupings. Growth was driven by our Betting Technology and Solutions' products, with revenue of EUR 314 million, increasing 21% versus the second quarter a year ago. This growth was due to a 27% increase in betting and gaming content revenues as we continue to see strong demand for both streaming and betting engagement products as well as odds and live data products, most notably from the upselling of IMG content across our global client base, and integrating it further into our diverse product suite. Managed Betting Services revenues were in line with the same quarter a year ago as increased revenue in and Managed Trading Services from higher turnover as we benefited from the World Cup and NBA playoffs, and strong margins was offset by lower revenues in our Platform business. Moving to our other product group, Sports Content, Technology & Services delivered revenues of EUR 64 million, an increase of 9% year-on-year, driven by growth in Marketing and Media Services as we benefited from increased spend from Media and Technology customers as well as increased affiliate marketing spending as prediction market exchanges and sports book customers ramped up their customer acquisition campaigns. Partially offsetting this growth were a reduction in sports performance revenues, primarily as a result of foreign currency headwinds. The growth in the quarter was once again geographically broad-based, with Rest of World revenue increasing 20%, while U.S. revenue was up 16% on a reported basis. Headwinds from foreign currency movements continue to impact U.S. reported revenue, which would have increased approximately 22% on a constant currency basis. Turning to adjusted EBITDA. The revenue growth, combined with our stable sports rights portfolio and our continued focus on cost efficiencies, including synergies related to IMG in areas such as engineering, scouting, AB production and personnel, enabled us to deliver another quarter of margin expansion as adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 76 million, up 19% year-on-year. Looking at the individual cost buckets, I will be speaking to adjusted expenses to provide a breakdown of the expenses that impact adjusted EBITDA. We have detailed in the earnings release and the financial section of the earnings presentation, the bridge from IFRS amounts. This past quarter, sports rights expense increased 30% year-on-year to EUR 138 million, due primarily to the addition of IMG content, which, from a seasonality perspective, has a higher value of matches in the second and third quarters, giving the tennis, golf and soccer calendar. As we have said previously, our major rights deals are locked in long term. So we have significant visibility on sports rights costs moving forward, giving us confidence in our ability to drive operating leverage as we capitalize on the value of our high-demand sports portfolio, and the premium products we have developed for our global customer base. Adjusted personnel expenses were EUR 77 million in the quarter, down 4% year-on-year despite the inclusion of IMG headcount as we begin to realize the benefits of a cost efficiency initiative that we announced last quarter and from a reduced bonus accrual versus a year ago. Overall, we have further streamlined our operating structure, better aligning resources with our strategic priorities, and going forward, we will continue to capitalize on efficiencies while focusing resources on the most profitable growth opportunities. Adjusted purchase services were EUR 52 million, up 20% year-on-year, primarily due to the inclusion of IMG as well as higher cloud costs. Adjusted other operating expenses of EUR 35 million in the quarter were up 42% year-on-year, with the increase predominantly driven by costs related to our Brazil operations and legal expenses due in part to supporting adjacent market growth opportunities. Overall, we continue to focus on delivering meaningful margin expansion over the long term, given the inherent scale we have in our business and our long-term cost visibility, including the benefits of sports rights being amortized on a straight-line basis. Looking at the full P&L. We generated a net loss for the quarter of EUR 4 million versus a profit of EUR 49 million in the second quarter a year ago, as our operating growth year-on-year was offset predominantly by unrecognized foreign currency losses of EUR $9 million, primarily associated with our U.S. dollar-denominated sports rights versus a gain of EUR 54 million in the same period a year ago. Additionally, we recognized restructuring costs of EUR 11 million related to the efficiency initiatives we mentioned earlier. Turning to the balance sheet. During the quarter, we successfully amended our revolving credit facility, extending the maturity to 2031 and upsizing the facility to EUR 250 million while significantly reducing borrowing and commitment fees. Overall, Sportradar remains a very strong liquidity position, closing the quarter with EUR 251 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt outstanding. In the first half of the year, the company generated free cash flow of EUR 103 million, an increase of 23% from the same period a year ago, and we continue to convert more of each dollar of EBITDA into free cash flow as demonstrated by free cash flow conversion of 73% versus 68% a year ago, despite a nonroutine legal settlement payment during the quarter. Looking forward, we continue to anticipate strong free cash flow growth for the full year and excluding the legal payment, expect free cash flow conversion above last year's rate of 56%. Cash and cash equivalents declined EUR 114 million since year-end 2025 as the strong free cash flow generation was more than offset by accelerated share repurchases. Last quarter, the Board approved a $250 million enhanced open market repurchase program under the broader $1 billion share repurchase program, reflecting our conviction in our business, our durable growth trajectory, and the value creation opportunities we see ahead. Since the beginning of May, we have already repurchased over 13 million shares for approximately $190 million under the plan, and we expect completion of the enhance program early next month. Year-to-date, we have already repurchased 20 million shares for approximately $311 million which is 17% of our free float at the beginning of the year. Given the continued disconnect between the share price and the fundamental strength of our business, we believe that this is a continued compelling use of capital. Turning to our expectations for the year. There are a variety of opportunities for the remainder of the year that we anticipate will accelerate growth in the second half, including further capitalization of IMG synergies, expansion of our addressable market through the prediction market ecosystem and a variety of global customer renewals. Despite these opportunities, given the recent underlying U.S. market trends, short-term tax and regulatory headwinds in the industry, as well as the timing of executing on prediction market deals, we are updating our short-term expectations. For the full year 2026, we now anticipate constant currency revenue growth of 19% to 21%, which at current FX rates is expected to be between EUR 1.518 billion and EUR 1.533 billion reported. We expect to drive operating leverage on this revenue growth with adjusted EBITDA growth of 24% to 27% on a constant currency basis, which at current FX rates is expected to be EUR 360 million to EUR 368 million reported. For the back half of the year, we expect the strongest revenue growth to occur in the third quarter given the timing of sporting events and the inclusion of IMG content. We also expect an acceleration of adjusted EBITDA margin growth. However, given the seasonality of IMG content, we anticipate adjusted EBIT margins will be down in Q3 year-on-year. Overall, the fundamentals of our business remain strong as the global scale we have built and the investments we have made in content, technology and products is delivering sustained revenue growth. With markets continuing to expand and new opportunities arising, our diverse platform and sustained focus on innovation will deliver increasing value to our customers and partners. At the same time, we are becoming even more efficient with our cost structure, which should enable us to deliver significant margin expansion and further ramp free cash flow, building shareholder value in the months and years ahead. Thank you for your time this morning. And now Carsten and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Eric Handler with ROTH Capital.

I wonder if you could dissect sort of your guidance revision, if you don't mind, talk about [indiscernible] the puts and takes that went into the revision and is there any -- your view towards the back half of the year? Was there any change to how you're looking at the back half of the year? And then also, how should we think about some of the catalysts as we think ahead a little bit to 2027?

Sure. Thanks, Eric, and thanks for the question. So when you think about the guidance that we updated for the year, after the first quarter call, we indicated that we were keeping our guidance the same despite some softness in the first quarter, predominantly because we saw some good upside coming from prediction markets, and we saw a return of the advertising market in the back half of the year. The reality is those things have happened, right? So we have been able to construct some prediction market deals, and the advertising market for us continues to be strong. The challenge is, that the prediction market deals having got some time to come to completion. So just because we were ready for them to go at the end of the first quarter call, the reality is it took a little while for that to happen. So as a result, the timing of that delayed some of those revenues and as such, lowered our expectations for the year, even though we're going to have a really strong second half, partially because of prediction markets. Similarly, on the advertising side, you look at the growth that we delivered in the second quarter, the business is back to growing the way we expect it to grow. However, we're not making up the shortfall that we delivered in the first quarter. So those are really the two implications. And then you layer on some softness that we're continuing to see in the underlying U.S. market. And those are the three, I would say, primary drivers for why we decided to bring our guidance down for the full year. When you think to the fundamentals of the business and what's going to happen in 2027, all the fundamentals of the business remain exactly the same. When you think about the relationships that we have with our customers, when you think about the upside that you're going to see from prediction markets, when you see the quality of the content and the quality of the products and services that we deliver, we will continue to outperform the market in 2027, and we'll continue to deliver on that margin expansion and free cash flow generation that we talked about.

Your next question comes from Chad Beynon with Macquarie Capital.

Craig, I was wondering if we could just go into the U.S. market trends just a little bit more. That answer was really helpful. But just trying to get a sense of if the trends were decelerating as we kind of worked our way through the second quarter and then maybe what the World Cup benefit was. I think, Carsten, you said group stage was positive. So from a U.S. standpoint, did that also come in slightly below your original expectations?

Sure. So I'll let Carsten talk a little bit more about the World Cup. When you think about the U.S. market, it really didn't change very much from what we saw in the first quarter. If anything, I would say, pretty flatlined in terms of its growth. But you got to remember, it depends on ultimately where -- which sports are ultimately driving things and the time line along that side of things. But what I will say is when you think about our guidance for the rest of the year, we're not expecting a significant acceleration for the remainder of the year, but we would expect the market to improve slightly in order to get to the guidance numbers that we laid out there today.

Good. And Carsten here for the World Cup. We saw 2.5 billion turnover and 350 million tickets, a little bit more, which is very encouraging from a growth perspective, but also from the number of tickets and diversity. We saw a big chunk of it coming from LatAm and North America, which was very encouraging for us. Looking now to the results. At the group stage, we had a couple of surprises, but we had also a lot of favorites winning. So we're speaking here about quarter 2. In quarter 3, the final is in quarter 3, as we all know. The final was for us record-breaking. It was a match with the highest turnover, and it was super profitable because it was a draw, 0-0 after 90 minutes. So that comes in quarter 3. Looking into quarter 2, what was besides the World Cup, which was very positive, a bit of negative thing was the Knicks. Well, for a Knicks fan, it was not negative. But from a betting perspective, the Knicks have been a clear favorite. So that was in quarter 2 that explains the MTS results.

Great. And as a follow-up, just asking about the Playradar uptake. In the presentation, you spoke about the Q3 and Q4 opportunities, certainly some very big markets there. Can you maybe just talk about discussions or expectations if this has changed in the back half of the year? Or it's kind of a wait and see given the infancy of the product?

Well, the product is on a very early stage of its life cycle, but we will present end of September in Lisbon at the SBC when, by the way, together with Michael Jordan on stage, Playradar, and we will launch this in a bigger style. So the core idea here is our ePlayer is at the moment, present on roughly around about 400 bookmaker brands and sites, generating hundreds of millions of impressions. So we want to mix with the ePlayer, the live content, which we have, and we have the rights for it and create together with Playradar this excitement on the iGaming space. So there is always a correlation between the live sport and what you can play in the iGaming space. We believe that's a sweet spot. We believe nobody has the ability to do it because we are sitting on the rights, we have the distribution. And now we are ramping up and developing a very good performing iGaming portfolio for those solutions. The 24/7 channel, which I just mentioned, is really filled 24/7 with live video content where you have parallel opportunity to place iGaming or to place some matches in iGaming. So that's the main concept. We can do this live. We can do this prerecorded, and that's the first wave of rollout, which you will see. But it's on the very beginning of the life cycle. So it needs a bit of time that we can distribute this.

Your next question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

I appreciate the visibility by locking in long-term deals with your Tier 1 leagues over the past few years for rights. That works when things are going well and there's growth. But I guess, given the high decremental leverage we see in the guidance revision today, those fixed cost rights deals, so that makes sense. But does that volatility and the slowing of regulated sports betting growth in the U.S. and I guess, globally, does that change your internal strategy to potentially shorten these renewal deals so they can better match industry volumes, dynamic revenue expectations, et cetera, with kind of what you're paying the league and sharing that profitability with the league?

Sure. Thanks, Ryan, for the question. So I don't think our strategy is changing here at all. The reality is we have a really nice mix of content that we have strong partnerships with major Tier 1 sports leagues. We also have a really long tail of content that ultimately drives a significant amount of revenue and a significant amount of margin. We are margin positive on all of our Tier 1 rights. The challenge that you get when you have a little bit of a softer quarter is ultimately, you do see some margin degradation. That said, when you think about what's going on in the space today, you're seeing a market that's expanding, right? So what was happening in the first half of the year is you didn't see any revenue really from the prediction market side of the house. Well, now when you look to the second half of the year, you're going to have the ability to deliver on the existing OSB market, but also take advantage of what I would say is an expanding opportunity with prediction markets, all which is addressing or increasing your addressable market. So having the rights that we have is enabling us to capitalize on those markets, and we look forward to driving significant margin expansion, both in prediction markets and traditional OSB markets.

Maybe, Ryan, I'll add here. Looking to the prediction markets, it took us quite a while to negotiate these deals with the leagues and with the players in the space. We have these deals now in place, and we add more and more. So there is a delay here, but there is absolutely not a change in our strategy. Wimbledon is a statement for this. Roland Garros is a statement for this clear strategy that we built this around the major tennis rights that we built the products around this, and we are very bullish on this, but we execute this very disciplined. So we are looking in each and every deal, the deal must contribute our target margin, the deal must leverage. So that's something which we do since many years, and there is not a change in this. The delay with the prediction markets, like I explained, is not only in our hands, so we had to wait also partly for some of our league partners that we get this approved.

Yes, makes sense. And you definitely want to get those first deals, right, since those will be precedent for other prediction market deals. So even if there is a little bit of a transitory timing difference there. All right. My second question, just curious for an update. I know there was a lot of short report allegations earlier this year. Any updates you can provide whether it be regulatory, business or otherwise?

Well, with respect to the short seller reports, which are published or had been published in April, our Audit Committee with the assistance of our legal counsel, Paul Hastings, reviewed the allegations in the publications, and they determined that the short seller reports present a misleading narrative and that Sportradar has had in place rigorous compliance framework and contractual protections to seek and ensure that the products which are used by our customers are in compliance with the applicable laws. So that's the first thing. The second thing for the regulators, we received various regulatory approvals in the last couple of weeks for both the betting and the iGaming space all over the place in the U.S., but also in the rest of the world. And for the third one, the largest and most renowned sports organizations like, for example, Wimbledon or the German DFB, which is the Cup organization, gave us their rights. So that shows you that on every level, we have a high respect in the market, and we did our job and the Audit Committee did the job in a diligent way.

Your next question comes from Clark Lampen with BTIG.

This is Joe on for Clark. From a high level, I was hoping if you could help us better understand the economics or maybe the deal structure that you have in place with Kalshi. Is it a fixed fee, minimum guarantee, maybe like a combination of the two? And then just second to that, do you believe that the deal is a good template for how other agreements with different PM operators would be structured?

Sure. Thanks for the question. Listen, we're not going to get too specific on the deals themselves, but you can assume that the deals that we're doing with the prediction markets, especially the ones that we've done thus far, have a fixed fee component and a variable fee component, which allows us to capture the upside as the market expands. And each of these deals will be very different with every exchange, with every market maker, with every broker depending on ultimately what they're looking to achieve and ultimately, what we're looking to achieve. But as Carsten mentioned early on, the key for us when we do these deals is to make sure that they're accretive to the deals that we would have done historically with our OSBs. We want to make sure that the economics make sense for us and for our prediction market partners, but also for our existing OSB and lead partners. So that all goes into it. We are very much, I would say, locking down diverse deals. It's not just for one aspect of our business. We're getting involved with data and odds. We're getting involved with fan engagement tools. We're getting involved with marketing services. So they're very robust deals, and they have a very wide range of revenue opportunities.

Your next question comes from Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo.

This is Zach on for Trey. Just piggybacking on an earlier question on the prediction market deals. If I heard you correctly, you said it called out that it took a bit longer to get the deals done than initial expectations. Does this imply a bigger benefit to '27 and maybe '28? And how should we think about layering in some of the prediction markets upside to the guidepost you put around '27 and beyond at your Investor Day?

Of course, it implies that '27 and '28, we will see a ramp-up here. It was for us in '26, a lot of work to negotiate the deals, but also to convince our league partners that they're going into this. We are still in progress here with a couple of them. But we are very optimistic that we found the right framework. I think very important is that we have a transaction possibility with the exchanges by itself, Kalshi and Polymarket, but that we can also create new innovative products for market makers. Here, latency is key and center. Deep data is key and center. That gives new revenue opportunities. For this year, regarded that the upside is in the tens of millions. For next year, of course, this is significantly higher. Of course, this all depends also on the legal framework and the compliance in this sector, which is, as we all know, very fluent. But that's, at the moment, our best assumption.

Let me just add. At Investor Day, which is a little over 1.5 years ago, we laid out what I would say is the tenets for the revenue growth and the margin expansion and free cash flow generation that we expected over the next several years. One of the big drivers of that expansion was going to be continued market strength across the globe. And we are continuing to see that. It's just shifting a little bit, right? So previously, it was all about OSBs. And now you're seeing the OSBs plus the prediction market opportunity. So from our perspective, what we are focused on is we're focused on having the best content. We're focused on having the most diverse product suite, and we're having the best services that ultimately we can sell to whoever wants to see them and have us outperform the market. We want to continue to take share, and we've been doing that. When you look at the revenue growth we delivered in 2025 and you look at the revenue growth we're delivering this year, the continued outperformance of the market, I think, is a testament to what has been built here and provides the opportunity for us to continue to do that moving forward.

Got you. I appreciate the color. And just for my follow-up, just on some of your comments about moderating U.S. market growth. Could you give us a sense of just within the market, the fixed versus variable component of your contracts? And what should we expect given some of these comments on moderating growth? Should we expect less upside from the variable component? Or how -- maybe just give us a breakdown of what you guys expect from the fixed versus variable side of your contracts?

Sure. When you think about the breakdown of our revenues between fixed and variable, well, about 2/3 of our contracts are fixed and about the other 1/3 is variable. Now that may shift a little bit here with prediction markets. But for the most part, you can assume that those are the right percentages. The fixed side of the business, there's a certain number of contracts that come up every single year, and we would expect to see similar type increases that we've seen historically when those contracts come up because we continue to deliver value for our customers and our clients. When you think about the variable side, that is going to have some up and downs depending on what's going on with the market. I think overall, we feel like the market is still in a relatively good place when you look at prediction markets and the base market together. In the first half, that was more just focused on what was done on the OSB side of the house. I think to look at one of those without the other is a little shortsighted. So from an overall perspective, we expect the variable side and fixed side to both continue to expand nicely.

Your next question comes from Jordan Bender with Citizens.

Craig, I think in your prepared remarks , you talked about next year, you should see outperformance in the U.S. market. And I think historically, you've used similar language. I just want to kind of double-click on that. Is that our estimates? Or is that kind of industry estimates? How should we think about you outperforming estimates in the U.S. next year?

Yes, I wouldn't necessarily focus on just the U.S., although I do believe that to be the case. When we talk about our outperformance, our outperformance has really been across the globe when you think about the revenue growth that we've delivered versus what the market is delivering overall. And that is speaking back to the products and services, back to the content we have, back to the client relationships that we've built for 20-plus years. We've spent so much time with our clients over so many decades that we ultimately know what they're looking for and what can ultimately drive value for them, and we ultimately grow faster if we're driving value for them. And that really is the focus for us and why we think we'll continue to outperform. And you're seeing that now with some of the deals that we're starting to do on the prediction market side as well.

Okay. Perfect. And then just on the follow-up, going back to last quarter, you had baked in some future prediction market revenue opportunities, what is now the Kalshi deal. From here on out, how should we think about any incremental prediction market deals that you guys announced within your guidance for this year?

So when you think about the deals that we've done, we really think we're just starting to scratch the surface of what the prediction markets can offer. So from a guidance perspective, the deal that we have with Kalshi is pretty much locked in. Obviously, that still is dependent on the NBA agreement as part of that deal, and that's such a big driver for us in the fourth quarter. And that getting done is embedded in our guidance for this year. If that did not get done, that would certainly have an impact. But we think better the downside, there's actually significant much upside to the overall prediction of market revenues that we have in our forecast today. Can we do deals with other exchanges? Can we do deals with the market makers? Can we do deal with the brokers? Can we do deeper deals even with Kalshi and Polymarket? So there's a myriad of opportunities moving forward with regards to prediction markets. the value that you're seeing in there today is based off of what we know is the hotter today.

Your next question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

Just curious like how much cannibalization do you believe OSB is seeing from the prediction markets right now in the U.S.?

According to our clients, there is very limited cannibalization. That's what the clients are telling us. You're going to have to have a look where is the distribution in California, Texas, Florida, places where OSB can't be in. You're going to have to look to the regulation and you're going to have to look to the taxes. But from a cannibalization aspect, there is very little cannibalization in there. That's what our clients are telling us.

Got it. Okay. And then just as a follow-up, how are you thinking about M&A here? Are there specific areas you would be interested in? Is affiliate marketing one of them?

No, not specifically affiliate marketing. So we think we are very strong with our own tech stack. You will see various partnerships. But from an M&A perspective, that is not the area where we are deeply looking into. But we keep our eyes very open, everything which is around iGaming is very exciting and interesting. So we think there is a huge growth opportunity in there. But we also think that our shares and our stock provides the best opportunity and that is materializing in the share repurchase program.

And Barry, when you think about M&A, the lens that we use, we obviously want to make sure that when you think about the base business that we have here today and the revenue growth that we're generating, the margin expansion that we plan on delivering and the free cash flow generation ahead, any M&A transaction that we look at has to be accretive to those items. So it's very hard to find something that can do that. And as Carsten mentioned, when you see the disconnect between what we believe is the value we're creating here at the company and the stock price today, there's no better use of our resources than to buy back shares at this point.

Your next question comes from Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

I just wanted to circle back and follow up on -- I think it was Chad's question from earlier and confirm I heard right. Craig, did you say that the back half guidance does assume that sort of market-wide trends get a little bit better in the back half? And then as a corollary to that, are you exploring or is there any opportunity with the renewals that are coming up to sort of shift what economics are priced on and maybe move away from handle and more towards GGR or NGR, just given some of the structural tailwinds in the U.S?

Sure. Thanks, Jeff. Listen, I don't think we're looking for anything significant to change in the U.S. market. Yes, we're assuming that the market does get a little bit better in the U.S., but there's a variety of variability that can happen, whether it be more deals in the prediction market and that market expanding, it could be whether handle and GGR expands a little bit. So there's a variety of ways for the U.S. market to improve in the back half of the year. So I would not expect a significant change to have to happen for us to hit our guidance numbers. What I would say with regards to how we do our contracts, we believe that there's still significant upside to the U.S. market. So for us, being able to tap into the variable nature of this market is a positive for us over the long term. Yes, the short term has a little bit of choppiness to it. But over the long term, given the value that we're creating, both for our customers and for our league partners, we want to be able to capture some of that value as we move forward here. So I don't see a significant change in the contracts. Not to mention, a significant amount of those contracts are already locked in for the long term. So there's -- it's a little bit difficult to change them in the short term as well.

That's great. And then for a follow-up, I wanted to continue this threat of sort of initial prediction markets economics. I recognize that you can't give any deal specifics, but I'm curious, if you just look at and use the Kalshi deal as a sort of template for others and look at the breadth of products and services that you're providing, is it your expectation that sort of your all-in take rate will be similar, better or worse than a comparable dollar of volume in traditional OSB?

Sure. The first thing I'll say, thanks for the question, is that every one of these deals is different, just like every one of our deals with all of our OSB partners is different. You talk to your client, understand what matters to them, see if you can satisfy that need and then ultimately drive value for yourself over time. And that value for ourselves has to be incrementally positive. So when you think about an OSB deal, I wouldn't agree to a deal on the prediction markets that would give me a lower take rate than I'm doing on the OSB side of the house that wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. So all in all, we expect these prediction market deals to be positive for us, but we will again tailor them and tailor all deals moving forward to what is best for our clients and ultimately what's best for us in the long term.

Your next question comes from Mike Hickey with StoneX.

I guess just the first question on prediction market opportunity. Market making is a significant piece of that you're monetizing it today. But I guess, beyond just selling data and models to market makers, do you think you could eventually participate directly in market making similar to how you build your MTS business for traditional sports books?

Mike, Carsten here. So you are spot on with these opportunities. At the moment, we do not monetize really significant with market makers. What they first need is latency, lowest latency. And traditional feeds for online sports betting, they always have a settlement in the clearing time. Prediction markets and market makers don't need this because they are active on both sides. So latency is key and center. Deep data and the technical abilities is key and center. Now as a sample for the U.S. Open, we will cooperate there with the tracking partner, and they know within 0.2 milliseconds is that ball in or out. That is gold for market makers. Putting that into a special feed, which is optimized for the lowest latency is definitely a very high value for them. That's the first thing. This feed is ready, and we roll it out, with the U.S. open, but also with the start of the NBA season. That helps us now to leverage these technical abilities, which we have and the league partnerships with the deep data. The second thing, the deep data for the modeling that is highly interesting. So you know that we built the foundation model. And the foundation model begins to predict what happens in the next 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds. And if you can predict this with a high accuracy based on all the tracking information which is there, that enables also market makers to distribute the risk spread much better than they can do it at the moment. So that's a highly attractive area, and there is a lot of things which we can optimize.

I guess the next one is on the tax -- regulatory tax impact. I think you mentioned Rest of World business may have been influenced by that. I think I heard that. And so just sort of curious if you could flush that out. And then maybe specifically on U.K., they've obviously digested or digesting a big increase in April on iGaming. Obviously, that's a significant market for you. Wondering how that's sort of impacting your business and how we should think about '27 when you have the tax increase on the OSB side?

So within this year, tax regimes have been not really very beneficial from the point of our clients. The U.K., we saw a tax rate of shy of 100% from 1 year to another, which is a hurdle for our clients, and we saw problems here for the clients. And they're trying to optimize their cost structure, of course. We saw the same thing in Brazil on both sides, the gaming taxes, but also the taxes within the country. So both of them are not really beneficial for our clients. Looking now into next year, we do not have any indications worldwide that we see something like we saw it this year. There is a tightening of the tax regimes globally. Our clients, I think, get along with this very well. There are some bigger market opportunities. Japan might be a good opportunity, but there might be a couple of other opportunities around the globe here. So looking into it from now, from the perspective today, we don't see any major obstacles in '27, but U.K. and Brazil in this year have been not really beneficial. From the iGaming, it's much too early for us. We are in that start-up phase, we are believing that we are diving here in a deep blue ocean with that connects between what we have as inventory and iPlayer and the distribution of the client side and matching this together with an iGaming experience, that's unique. Nobody in the world has this. So this is not something where we see a lot of tax sensitivities. We see more the technical skills, how to connect sports betting with iGaming in this space.

Your next question comes from Bernie McTernan with Needham.

Wondering on the -- in the U.S. weakness, was there any like maybe weaker volumes with the MLB because of crowding out from the World Cup? Or is that really a broad market comment on the weakness?

It's a broad market -- a broad comment on the weakness in the overall margin. The MLB volumes continue to be strong for us. I can't speak to the -- obviously, the entire market, but overall, the MLB having a nice year so far.

Okay. Understood. And just to double click on prediction markets again. I just wanted to ask some specificity, if there's really any change in the exit rate that you expect for prediction markets, exit rate for year-end now versus 3 years ago -- or sorry, versus 3 months ago?

Well, I think the opportunity overall from prediction markets continues to be something that we're really excited about. And I think if you asked us 3 months ago, what this could be for us, I think our expectations would be a little bit lower than they are today. Given all the inbound interest that we've seen from across the ecosystem, whether it be the exchanges, whether it be the brokers or whether it be the market makers. Certainly, obviously, we now expect more growth year-on-year in '27 versus '26 because some of these deals got done a little bit later. But that's really just a timing issue. More importantly, the overall opportunity, I think, is really, really exciting, just because of the value of the content that we have and the value of the products and services that we deliver.

Your next question comes from Jason Bazinet with Citi.

I just had a question on the U.S. prediction markets. They somewhat famously sort of got around the state-by-state regime, by going through at the federal level. But there seems to be some pushback now among state AGs, I think New York comes to mind. Is that something that you anticipate if the judge does an injunction or something like that? Is that something that you anticipate impacting prediction market revenues in the U.S., these state-level legal challenges?

So from our perspective, Jason, obviously, we operate where we are supposed to operate, and we provide our services to our clients where they're allowed to use those services. I can't speak to what's going to happen with ultimately, all these lawsuits or injunctions. From our perspective, we are going to serve our clients the way we serve our clients. And as long as they're allowed to operate in jurisdictions, we'll continue to do so.

Operator, that ends our call. I'll turn it back to you for final comments. Thank you, everyone.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.