What does the Genius v Sportradar settlement mean for sports data rights holders?

It was recently announced that the long-standing dispute between Genius Sport and Sportradar has come to an end because the parties have now settled the case1.

We wrote about this case at the start of 2021, wide eyed and eager to see how exclusive data rights arrangements would fare in the face of the competition claims, and whether rightsholders would continue to be able to rely on ticketing terms, rights of confidence, and the laws of trespass and conspiracy to protect the integrity of their exclusive rights deals against unofficial data scouts2.

The terms of the settlement will remain confidential, but what we do know is that Sportradar has agreed to refrain from posting data scouts in UK football stadiums, and has obtained a sublicence from Genius for an ‘official secondary feed’, which will have greater latency (i.e. a longer delay) compared to the primary feed.

The settlement in Genius v Sportradar follows the settlement in June 2022 of another key data rights case, The Racing Partnership (TRP) v Sports Information Services (SIS). The Supreme Court had granted SIS permission to appeal a Court of Appeal decision in October 2020 which found SIS had engaged in an unlawful means conspiracy by providing an unofficial feed of live horseracing data and associated odds data. While the Court of Appeal’s decision was generally seen as pro-rights holder, unanswered questions remained which were due to be addressed by Genius v Radar.

With settlements now reached in both TRP v SIS and Genius v Sportradar, much remains to play for in the market for live sports data.  Rights holders and their exclusive licensees will need to remain alive to the ways in which they actively protect their rights and to competition law issues which the Courts have still not had an opportunity to comment on in this particular context.

This article discusses the background to the dispute and looks at the issues raised by the dispute that remains unresolved because of this settlement.