Spotlight Sports and Racing Post Could Be Sold in $500M Auction

Sports media radical Spotlight Sports, possessor of leading UK horse racing publication The Racing Post, is up for sale, according to Sky News.

The British people broadcaster reports that Spotlight’s buck private equity owner, Exponent, is inwards talks with investment banks nigh a possible auction next year. Exponent wants $500 zillion for the media group, which also provides sports data feeds to the sports betting industry.

Exponent is eager to cash inwards on the new appetence for third-party information services, largely driven by the liberalisation of sports betting laws inwards the United States.

The exact for information saw marketplace leaders Sportradar and Genius Sports proceed public inwards the US earliest this year, with valuations of $21 one million million and $5.4 billion, respectively.

Spotlight on Post

While The Racing Post is the best known of Spotlight’s brands, it could make an incertain futurity below a unexampled US-focused owner, especially inwards publish form. The newspaper publisher is a staple fiber for UK gamblers, who tin can be seen studying its pages religiously in betting shops upward and land the country.

But Spotlight CEO disco biscuit Byrne told Bloomberg in mid-October that revenues had been strike firmly past the pandemic, which caused the temporary reprieve of racing and the closing of betting shops. The 16 percent pin inward revenues inward 2020 to $64.8 billion ($89 million) was partly countervail past digital growth, he added.

The Post suspended its impress trading operations during endure year’s racing cancellations.

Initially a impress media business, Spotlight now generates around 70 percent of its revenues from its digital media and sports information services.

Digital Growth

The Racing Post was launched inward 1986 as a competitor to the now-defunct Sporting Life, a form of address that was in invariable publication from 1856 until its demise inwards 1998. Founded past Dubai swayer and prominent bangtail possessor Sheikh Mahomet binful Rashid Al Maktoum, the Post has changed custody on several occasions in the intervening years.

The power acquired the title of respect inwards 2016 for an unrevealed sum. The common soldier equity grouping has since concentrated on growing digital channels below the Spotlight banner. These include the websites Free Super Tips and MyRacing, and the US-focused sports betting tips land site Pickwise.

Along with its sports data operations, subsidiary ICS Digital offers hunt engine optimization, digital marketing, and translation services for the betting industry.

Sheikh Al Maktoum owns the rights to The Racing Post figure in perpetuity, which substance the statute title could live revived if a unexampled proprietor didn’t want it. He is also the father of the world’s largest Equus caballus racing team, the Godolphin stable. He also owns Darley Stud, the biggest pureblood Equus caballus raising surgical procedure inward the world.