Genius Sports Review
7.4/10A London-run sports-data company on the NYSE since 2021 (GENI), exclusive on NFL play-by-play, Next Gen Stats, betting feeds, and watch-and-bet streams through the 2029 season, on Premier League, EFL, SPFL, and Serie A data through 2028-29, and on NCAA data to 2032, with eight US states requiring its NFL feed for in-play betting, BetVision in 100+ books after one season, and every price sales-gated.
Our read
- The NFL gate is total: every official data and betting-stream lane is exclusive through the 2029 season (extended June 11, 2025), and in the eight official-data states an in-play NFL product cannot legally run on anything else.
- Football DataCo rights to the PL, EFL, and SPFL run through 2028-29, and the 2022 CAT settlement ended with Sportradar stopping in-stadia scouting and buying a delayed secondary feed from Genius.
- BetVision went from 6 partners to 100+ across the 2025 season, with live wagers around 74% of handle through the player and live NFL betting near 30% of NFL handle in the season's first six weeks.
- Serie A landed August 4, 2025 through 2028-29 after Stats Perform walked away mid-cycle, the NCAA runs to 2032, and the Pac-12 signed March 16, 2026.
- The FY2025 net loss widened to $111.6M from $63.0M, and Q1 2026 lost $55.5M.
- Data and streaming rights cost $85.6M in Q1 2026, the NFL deal runs at an estimated $120M a year in cash and stock, and Legend added the first heavy debt on the balance sheet, an $825M term loan plus a $220M revolver.
- The 2021 switch to official NFL data repriced feeds at roughly 4x the prior era, and in mandate states operators cannot walk away from the feed.
Any US book running in-play NFL in the eight mandate states, where there is no alternative, books that want watch-and-bet streaming as a product edge, and operators outsourcing pricing and risk to a desk that already serves 300+ books.
Cost-sensitive books in non-mandate markets where unofficial feeds price far lower, operators shopping for a turnkey sportsbook platform (Genius does not sell one), and rival vendors that need raw real-time Premier League data, which Genius sublicenses to them only on delay.
Markets & licensing
Sports data is mostly an unlicensed business, so Genius Sports carries registrations where US state rules demand them instead of a gambling-license stack. The count stood at 41 licenses or equivalent across US states, territories, tribes and Canada at the Massachusetts temporary-vendor announcement (February 1, 2023), Tennessee's SWC register carries Genius Sports Media Inc, and Ohio approved it as a supplier. Nothing UKGC or MGA exists because nothing is required for data supply in those markets.
Eight states require official league data for in-play bets: Tennessee, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Virginia. Tennessee wrote the mandate into statute with no league request needed (repeal bills have been proposed), Illinois applies it to live and prop betting, and Michigan triggers it for in-play only after a US-headquartered league asks in writing, with a commercial-reasonableness escape for operators. For in-play NFL in those states, Genius is the compliance path through the 2029 season, and the supplier registrations (41 licenses or equivalent, 2023) cover the vendor side of the paperwork.
Genius runs from London and holds Football DataCo's exclusive official live betting data for the Premier League, EFL, and SPFL through 2028-29. Data supply requires no UKGC authorization. The 2022 CAT settlement ended with Sportradar agreeing to stop unofficial in-stadia scouting and take a delayed sublicensed feed. UK-facing books buy the official product here or run delayed.
- US state supplier registrationsUnited States + Canada
- Sports wagering supplier and vendor registrations held where state rules require them for data and related services · 41 licenses or equivalent, Feb 1, 2023
- Tennessee SWC vendor registrationTennessee
- Genius Sports Media Inc on the Sports Wagering Council's vendor register · Mandate needs no league request
- Massachusetts temporary vendorMassachusetts
- Temporary sports wagering vendor status announced ahead of the state's 2023 launch · Feb 1, 2023
- Ohio supplier approvalOhio
- Approved as a sports gaming supplier
Licensing tier: US supplier registrations rather than a gambling-license stack, because data supply itself is unlicensed in most markets.
Downstream, the feeds run wherever licensed books buy them, with more than 300 sportsbooks worldwide.
Market access is the operator's problem rather than the data supplier's.
Sportsbook & verticals
A vendor's lineup often mixes its own builds with other companies' products plugged in. When the sportsbook is third party, a second company stands behind your contract.
Integrations & engineering
One contract and one API instead of a separate deal per studio, feed, or PSP. Here's what connects, how fast, and on what stack.
Four lanes into one relationship. Data and odds arrive over REST and streaming APIs documented on the Developer Centre, with sport-specific docs for soccer, basketball, and NFL Next Gen Stats distribution and API-key or OAuth2 auth for calls. BetVision embeds as an interactive player with stats overlays and an integrated betslip inside the operator's own app. Genius Trading Services layers managed pricing and risk on top of the feeds, and FANHub runs the ad and audience side. There is no turnkey sportsbook platform.
Products & tools
Four product families: official data and odds feeds built on exclusive NFL, Football DataCo, Serie A, and NCAA rights, the BetVision watch-and-bet player, outsourced pricing and risk through Genius Trading Services, and the FANHub ad stack that Legend's media brands now feed.
Official Data
Real-time official data and odds built on the exclusives: NFL play-by-play and Next Gen Stats through the 2029 season, Serie A through 2028-29, and NCAA postseason data to 2032, sold as feeds and APIs across 400+ leagues.
- NFL: official play-by-play, Next Gen Stats, and the official betting feed, exclusive to sportsbooks and media globally through the 2029 season (extended June 11, 2025)
- Football DataCo: 4,000+ PL, EFL, and SPFL matches a season captured in-stadia and distributed in under a second, with sub-second skeletal tracking added in the 2024 extension
- Serie A data and betting streams through 2028-29, signed August 4, 2025 after Stats Perform's mid-cycle exit
- NCAA official data to licensed sportsbooks through 2032, covering March Madness and every postseason tournament, plus NASCAR since 2019
- Coverage runs 400+ leagues and 240K events, with 700+ sports organizations partnered
BetVision
The watch-and-bet lane: an embedded low-latency player for NFL, soccer, and basketball with stats overlays and an integrated betslip, launched September 2023 and carrying live NFL streams inside sportsbooks on the exclusive NFL rights through the 2029 season.
- Launched September 2023 with Caesars, Fanatics, and BetRivers, FanDuel added later, Hard Rock Bet through an expanded deal on September 8, 2025
- From 6 partners to 100+ across the 2025 season, unique devices up 35%, average time spent up 25%
- Live wagers around 74% of handle through the player, and live NFL betting near 30% of total NFL handle in the first six weeks of the 2025 season
- Serie A betting streams signed through 2028-29 feed the player's soccer lane
- Ad sales inside BetVision joined the offer with the June 2025 NFL extension
Genius Trading Services
Managed pricing, trading, and risk tooling for more than 300 sportsbooks, run by 500+ trading staff on models tied to the exclusive feeds, with the liability staying on the operator's book.
- Pricing and risk delivered as a service
- Models built on the exclusives: NFL markets on Next Gen Stats, in-play soccer on DataCo's sub-second in-stadia data
- Own BetBuilder engine, launched with HollywoodBets
- Admiral at 14% margin on EPL feeds and Betplay beating CPA targets by 20%
- 20 years of trading experience behind the desk
FANHub
The audience-and-advertising stack: FANHub ad tech, exclusive representation of NFL in-game ad inventory and BetVision ad sales since the June 2025 extension, and, from April 30, 2026, Legend's Covers.com, Casino.org, and Casino Guru with 320M annual visits.
- Legend closed April 30, 2026: $800M cash plus 10.1M GENI shares at closing, announced February 5 at up to $1.2B with a $300M earnout
- Financed with a new $825M term loan and a $220M revolving facility, the first heavy debt on the balance sheet
- Media revenue of $41.7M in Q1 2026 beside $146.2M from betting
- Sports Innovation Lab, the fan-data shop, closed at the start of the 2025 NFL season
- GeniusIQ powers the Madden NFL Cast alternate broadcasts (2024 and 2025 Thanksgiving on Peacock)
Platform & capabilities
Everything the product does out of the box. If a feature isn't listed, the vendor either doesn't offer it or doesn't say.
Risk maturity
Operators check this capability first, and depth varies enough between vendors to grade it.
The history
Longevity in this industry usually comes with a change of owner somewhere in it.
Betgenius started in London in March 2000, founded by Mark Locke and Steven Holmes, and became Genius Sports in the 2016 merger with SportingPulse International. The 2021 dMY Technology SPAC merger put it on the NYSE as GENI in the same month the NFL chose it as exclusive data partner, a deal paid partly in penny warrants that made the league Genius's largest shareholder from 2021 to 2025, holding around 8% worth roughly $135M in June 2025. Locke still runs the company he co-founded, now a 2,600-person operation across 18 locations, and one that turned $669.5M of FY2025 revenue (+31%) into a $111.6M net loss before closing the Legend acquisition on April 30, 2026 with its first heavy debt attached.
Brands & clients on the platform
Corporate
- Second Spectrum (2021)
- Sports Innovation Lab (2025)
- Legend (2026)
Leadership
Milestones
- 2000
Mark Locke and Steven Holmes found Betgenius in London, the data-and-odds business the company still runs on.
- 2016
Betgenius merges with SportingPulse International and the combined company takes the Genius Sports name.
- 2019
Football DataCo hands Genius exclusive official live betting data for the Premier League, EFL, and SPFL from the 2019-20 season, and NASCAR signs on in May.
- 2021
The company lists on the NYSE in April via the dMY Technology SPAC merger, wins the NFL partnership the same month (four years plus two one-year league options, 18.5M penny warrants plus 2M per extension, an estimated $120M a year in cash and stock), and buys Second Spectrum for $199.4M in June.
- 2022
The Sportradar CAT litigation over DataCo scouting settles on October 11, with Sportradar taking a delayed sublicensed Official FDC Secondary Feed from Genius through 2024.
- 2023
SoftConstruct settles into a multi-year data license (January 4), the NFL swaps 4M later-year warrants for cash, BetVision launches in September with Caesars, Fanatics, and BetRivers, and EGR North America names Genius its Sports Betting Supplier.
- 2024
Football DataCo extends through 2028-29 with sub-second skeletal tracking added (August 5), the Second Spectrum stack goes live as the Premier League's semi-automated offside tech, and FIBA's long-term extension lands in July.
- 2025
The NFL extension lands June 11, rolling every exclusive to the 2029 season and adding ad-inventory representation, the NCAA expands to 2032 in May, Serie A signs August 4 through 2028-29, Hard Rock Bet joins BetVision September 8, and Sports Innovation Lab closes at the season's start.
- 2026
Legend is announced February 5 (up to $1.2B) and closes April 30 for $800M cash plus 10.1M shares on a new $825M term loan, and the Pac-12 signs March 16.
Where they're pushing next
- Media and audience through Legend (Covers, Casino.org, Casino Guru: 320M visits in 2025) plugged into FANHub ad tech
- BetVision beyond the NFL, with Serie A streams secured through 2028-29 and soccer and basketball already in the player
- College sports on the NCAA deal to 2032 and the Pac-12 partnership signed March 16, 2026
Awards & recognition
Longevity and ownership
Switching vendors is expensive, which makes the company's staying power part of the purchase. What the contract says about your data decides how expensive an exit gets.
Genius Sports vs alternatives
Most buyers in this market shortlist three or four vendors long before they take a single sales call.
| Attribute | Genius Sports | Sportradar | Stats Perform | LSports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2000 | 2001 | 1981 | 2012 |
| Team | 2,600+ | 3,900+ | 3,300+ | — |
| Sportsbook | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Licenses | Tennessee, Massachusetts, Ohio | — | — | — |
| US market | Available | Available | Available | Available |
| Pricing | — | — | — | On request |
| Trading model | Managed | Managed via MTS or tools-only | None sold | Tools only |
| Bet builder | Own engine | — | — | — |
| Sports | — | — | — | 100+ |
Pricing & terms
Genius Sports quotes pricing per project. Here's how the model and the terms are structured.
Sales-gated across every line, with multi-year rights-backed contracts
Turnkey
The NFL deal runs near $120M a year in cash and stock, data and streaming rights cost $85.6M in Q1 2026, and that bill gets passed downstream. The 2021 move to official NFL data repriced feeds at roughly 4x after an operator standoff, and in the eight official-data states books cannot decline the feed for in-play NFL. Contracts follow rights cycles, so terms tend to run against the NFL's 2029 and DataCo's 2028-29 horizons.
Path to launch
- 1Open with sales and a product map across feeds, Genius Trading Services, BetVision, and FANHub
- 2Check your states against the official-data mandate map first
- 3Clear the compliance leg, with Genius's supplier registrations (41 licenses or equivalent, 2023) covering the vendor side and your own state approvals covering yours
- 4Evaluate the APIs on the Developer Centre and the GitHub org before anyone signs
- 5Integrate by lane: feeds over REST and streaming APIs, BetVision as an embedded player, trading as a managed desk with liability staying on your book
- 6Time the contract against the NFL, DataCo, and Serie A rights horizons