{"id":2526,"date":"2026-04-24T13:51:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/?p=2526"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:53:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:53:36","slug":"throwing-mud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/bettingjobs-complianceandmore-partnerships\/throwing-mud\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwing Mud"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"header-anchor-post\">Dirty water<\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"header-anchor-post\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Sportradar saw its share price plunge 23% in New York yesterday after it was attacked on compliance and regulatory grounds by two separate short-selling reports from Muddy Waters and Callisto Research.<\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-alignItems-center pc-position-absolute pc-reset header-anchor-parent\">\n<ul>\n<li>In a voluminous 123-page report, Muddy Waters claimed 20-40% of Sportradar\u2019s revenue flows from clients operating illegally.<\/li>\n<li>The report alleged Sportradar \u201cintentionally combines a \u2018check-the-box\u2019 KYC review with a \u2018see nothing, know nothing\u2019 approach to illegal markets.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Muddy Waters said it identified 47 clients with in-code evidence of live Sportradar connections to illegal markets, including 34 operators, 11 API providers and resellers.<\/li>\n<li>In a separate report, Callisto Research claimed that after reviewing source code across thousands of gambling sites, it identified more than 270 platforms using Sportradar products while operating without appropriate licenses in their target markets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Who\u2019s who:<\/strong> Muddy Waters named Stake.com, 188Bet\/Taptap, Yabo, 8xbet, SBOBet and OKVIP as direct or indirect customers. Callisto alleged two former employees confirmed 1xBet is among Sportradar\u2019s top 10 clients.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Official response:<\/strong> Sportradar issued a statement yesterday challenging the reports as containing \u201cseveral factual inaccuracies\u201d and characterizing the authors as \u201cshort sellers trying to erode shareholder value and profit from stock disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The company said it \u201cworks exclusively with licensed operators, follows strict global compliance, and due diligence standards.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>It said it stood by its audited financial statements and information provided to regulators.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Follow the processing:<\/strong> The analysts at Stifel said they were \u201cstill processing\u201d the report but \u201cnet-net, we agree there may be some, mostly legacy pre-IPO, \u2018bad\u2019 revenue exposure that may need to be cleaned up eventually to de-risk regulator penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>However, the team added that they \u201cthink the quantum\u201d of revenue exposure is being \u201cmassively over-estimated.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The sting: <\/strong>Still, the team admitted that the \u201cbreadth of analysis and interviews with former employees (including what was effectively a sting operation at this year\u2019s ICE conference) is noteworthy and argues for more black end market revenue exposure and bad actor risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWe think this explains the \u2018shoot first, ask questions later\u2019 sell-off today vs. more moderate reaction to prior short reports,\u201d they added.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Talk like a pirate: <\/strong>But the Stifel team added that it is \u201cimportant to distinguish between Sportradar data\/products showing up on illegal sites vs. actual commercial agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWe understand there are many illegal companies\/individuals that steal data and products, and distribute out to black market operators without Sportradar\u2019s involvement,\u201d the analysts said.<\/li>\n<li>The team added that they understood the company as having procedures in place to identify these instances, \u201cthough we view this as a perpetual \u2018whack-a-mole\u2019 game.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCertainly, former employee quotes on specific operators are difficult to refute, though we think \u2018customers\u2019 identified via code-scraping tools may be accessing data\/products illegally.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Telling teacher:<\/strong> Callisto said it has shared its findings with multiple regulators in North America and Europe ahead of publication, alleging that three US gambling regulators have already commenced reviews.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Neither report named the regulators and none have so far confirmed an investigation publicly.<\/li>\n<li>Sportradar holds B2B supplier licenses in the UK, Malta, Sweden, several EU jurisdictions, Ontario and a number of US states, including New Jersey.<\/li>\n<li>Various regulators have previously given notice that they are now looking more closely at B2B relationships with licensed providers, including the UK and Sweden.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\ud83c\udf7fDiary date:<\/strong> Sportradar is set to report its Q1 earnings on May 6.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Plunge: short sellers achieve their aim<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sizing-normal\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!jrAy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png\" sizes=\"100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!jrAy!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!jrAy!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!jrAy!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!jrAy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png 1456w\" alt=\"\" width=\"1370\" height=\"804\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/12f8382c-0107-4b2d-a10f-ea8358f8a96d_1370x804.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:804,&quot;width&quot;:1370,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" \/><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/complianceandmore.substack.com\/p\/throwing-mud\">Read the rest of the article by clicking here!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dirty water Sportradar saw its share price plunge 23% in New York yesterday after it was attacked on compliance and regulatory grounds by two separate short-selling reports from Muddy Waters and Callisto Research. In a voluminous 123-page report, Muddy Waters claimed 20-40% of Sportradar\u2019s revenue flows from clients operating illegally. The report alleged Sportradar \u201cintentionally&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bettingjobs-complianceandmore-partnerships"],"acf":[],"post_author_name":"","post_authors_type":"","post_authors_from_team_members":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2532,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/2532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}