The SBC Summit Barcelona Digital kicked off on September 8 with a hard look at the Future of Sports Betting. In the Keynote, Sue Schneider VP Growth & Strategy for SBC Americas led a conversation with Carsten Koerl, Founder and CEO of Sportradar, and Jason Robins, Founder, CEO and Chairman of DraftKings, on the Future of Sports Betting.

The conversation began with the elephant in the room, how Covid-19 affected their respective businesses. “There are three main phases. The first one, was for me, fear,” Koerl shared. He noted that he was the last person allowed to return to Switzerland, and had to immediately go into damage control mode as the world of traditional sports shut down.

Phase two was figuring out cash flow planning, protecting employees and figuring out how to increase the content Sportradar could provide. The company managed to triple their offering by July, which lead to what Koerl deemed the last and current phase, hitting the gas. “You can only achieve it with learning and being humble,” he said.

Robins has the unique spot in early 2020 of taking DraftKings public, which he thought was going very smoothly until the pandemic hit. But thankfully, the market started to throw out the current situation for the next quarter, he said, betting on companies that could come out strong from the pandemic.