Genius Sports Group Grows In Argentina
In a joint announcement, Genius Sports Group and the Argentine Football Association revealed a long-term anticipated collaboration for sports betting. According to press coverage, this new alliance means that Genius Sports Group will disseminate live data from the Argentine Football Association, which oversees more than 3,300 games in an average season. Genius Sports Group then has exclusive permission from AFA to distribute said data to international sportsbooks.
This new partnership will bring AFA data to more than 150 sportsbooks worldwide. ©jstarj/Pixabay
What Is Genius Sports Group?
Genius Sports Group is a sports data aggregation and technology developer centrally run out of London, with other offices in 15 locations worldwide. In total, Genius Sports Group is operated by more than 1000 employees, and boasts partnerships with some of the world’s premier sports leagues.
In addition to its latest partnership, Genius Sports Group has affiliations with America’s PGA Tour, an internationally renowned competitive golfing league, as well as the NCAA — America’s top college football league — and the English Premiere League, the UK’s most prestigious competitive soccer (or, as they call it, football) league.
Using the data Genius Sports Group acquires from its league partners, the company then outsources said data to more than 150 participating bookmakers around the world, bringing exclusive and cutting-edge information to a world of enthusiastic sports betting fans. Genius Sports Group also offers uniquely tailored options for its partners.
Partners of Genius Sports Group on the sports betting end can expect to receive not only high-quality sports data, but also a full turnkey solution. And that’s not all: Genius Sports Group offers its sportsbook partners marketing campaigns designed in-house for their new collaborative ventures.
At The End Of October, Genius Goes Public
This announcement came just a few weeks after Genius Sports Group Limited merged with dMY Technology Group II, culminating in the company going public on the New York Stock Exchange. At the time, the company — known as GENI and GENI WS — was listed with an enterprise valuation of around $1.5 billion USD.
Argentine Football Association Joins The Ranks With Genius
The latest sports league to come on board with Genius is the Argentine Football Association, or AFA. In an announcement made public in mid-November, the two forces revealed that they had inked a long-term contract, wherein AFA would share data from its more than 3,300 games annually to be distributed to Genius’s sportsbook collaborators.
What Genius Users Will Be Able To Access
In addition to these thousands of exciting games beloved by soccer fans around the world, the AFA organizes 13 major soccer championships, including the Liga Profesional de Fútbal (once known as Superliga), Copa Argentina, Primera Divisón, Primera División A (Women’s), and Supercopa Argentina.
A huge number of soccer teams in Argentina fall under the umbrella of the Buenos Aires-based AFA, including all of the country’s prominent national teams for both women’s and men’s soccer, the Olympic teams, and even children’s, youth, and more local teams. Today, the President of the AFA is Claudio Tapia.
The partnership means that Genius will be the sole company with access to AFA’s live game data. This information will then be used to offer betting products for AFA fans around the world, which can be accessed as games play out in real time. The partnership also offers a wholly new advantage to AFA sports betting: legitimacy.
A Legitimate Partner To Offset Corruption
As Argentina continues to move toward increased legal gambling, it makes sense that the country’s leading soccer league has elected to establish a well-known and legal partner to distribute its information to sportsbooks. This partnership will ensure that risks of foul play — such as corruption, bribes, and rigged games — are mitigated.
In fact, Genius has specific software designed to crack down on any improper sports betting play. Its unique Bet Monitoring System scrutinizes user activity at all times, a software designed to compare how bets are being placed to specific predictive algorithms. This is to ensure that no suspicious bets indicating game rigging are taking place.
Argentina Continues To Warm To Legal Gambling
For the last year, the state of legal gambling in Argentina hung in the balance as the government dramatically shifted following surprise election results in August and October of 2019. The political tumult resulted in the plummeting of the Argentine currency, the peso, and the subsequent halting of any progress being made in gambling legislation.
A Seeming Reversal Following Months Of Stagnation
For months prior to the pandemic, it seemed that Argentina’s leftist government was moving towards a stricter approach than their more conservative forbears, including reclaiming the lottery as a state-run only enterprise, putting more than 1300 companies out of business, and dramatically altering rules for online payments in iGaming.
As recently as May, a prominent court in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital province, effectively stalled further conversation about legal online gambling in the region, stating that land-based casinos would not be able to offer iGaming options, even to offset the tremendous financial pain incurred by the ongoing pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.
Things Turn Around
Then, in the fall, sudden and dramatic upswings began to occur in Argentina’s legal gambling landscape. A number of prominent gambling companies, including Gaming Innovation Group and Codere, secured permissions from Buenos Aires to operate legal gambling in the region.
Around the same time, a casino in Buenos Aires, known as Casino de Puerto Madero, was able to secure government permission to open an online gambling option for sports betting. According to contemporaneous reports, a legal sports betting industry in Argentina alone could generate around $7 million for the city — a saving grace in these times.
