MLB: Operators not using official data “won’t last long”

US sportsbooks not using MLB’s official data feed “won’t be around for long”, according to MLB’s executive VP of gaming and new business ventures, Kenny Gersh.

In a Sportradar media briefing in London last week, Gersh claimed that official MLB data was a key part of building a competitive sportsbook product in the nascent US market.

MLB is working on a slightly different model in the US than it has traditionally in Europe, where the league has an exclusive deal with Sportradar for the firm to distribute its official data to betting operators.

In the US market, however, MLB wants to deal directly with the sportsbooks, in part so it can work with firms to develop more innovative products and in part because it is more difficult to put a price on the value of its data and the betting market.

So far in the US the league has done an official data deal with MGM, with Gersh saying MLB also “essentially has deals done” with FanDuel and DraftKings.

Elsewhere, Gersh said the league was “making good progress” on a deal with The Stars Group (which will operate under Fox Bet), but some of the Nevada operators were proving more resistant.

“Some of the old school Nevada guys, they say ‘we’ve been doing this for years, why are we going to pay you?’,” Gersh said.

“And my view is, you’ve been doing this for years and what you’ve been doing isn’t that interesting. So if you want to keep doing it fine, but you’re going to lose in a mobile-led marketplace where fans have choice between apps and the best product will win, and they guys we partner with will have the better products.

“So I think we have critical mass of operators. There’ll be some that don’t partner with us and I don’t think they’ll be around that long.”

Kenny Gersh, left, and Sportradar’s David Lampitt at Friday’s media briefing in London

Read the full story on EGR North America.