Sports data and solutions provider Sportradar has appointed former Bloomberg executive Andrew Bimson in its newly created role of chief operating officer for North America.

Bimson will manage the growth of Sportradar’s three core business areas; Betting and Gaming, Sports Entertainment (media solutions), and marketing services.

At Bloomberg, Bimson spent a decade in a number of senior management roles, most recently as global head of business marketing operations and analytics. He will now report to Sportradar North America CEO Arne Rees.

“Andrew joins Sportradar at an important time as the North America market is primed for significant growth and remains a key focus of Sportradar’s overall strategic plan,” Rees said.

The company has also named experienced former NCAA executive Jim Brown as its new Head of Integrity Services & Harm Prevention in North America.

For the past eight years, Brown has worked for the NCAA in various risk management roles, most recently as the Managing Director of Enterprise Risk Management, wherein he was instrumental in guiding the organization’s approach to sports wagering risk mitigation. He collaborated on the development of a comprehensive program featuring the integrity-related monitoring of 12,500 games annually.

Brown said: “As new sports betting markets open up across the US, the need for robust and resilient integrity services has never been greater. Sportradar sets the standard in our industry and I’m excited to join the team to lead the development of existing and new offerings that will both protect the integrity of competitions as well as safeguard the well-being of athletes.”

Canadian Hockey League deal

Meanwhile, Sportradar has agreed a new integrity support deal with the Canadian Hockey League. The multi-year education and bet monitoring services agreement will see the three CHL member leagues – the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League, and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League – monitored by Sportradar Integrity Services through its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS).

The agreement takes Sportradar’s portfolio of ice hockey partners to nine leagues and federations around the world.

“By engaging Sportradar, a leader in providing integrity services, the CHL is putting itself in a strong position to protect the integrity of their competitions as well as educate and inform all their key stakeholders about potential risks within a sports betting environment,” said Sportradar Integrity Services director of global partnerships Andy Cunningham. “As new sports betting markets open up across North America, we look forward to supporting the CHL through our best-in-class products and services.”

Canadian Hockey League president Dan MacKenzie added: “The CHL is fully committed to protecting all of our league-wide stakeholders from the threat of match-fixing, and Sportradar’s eLearning tutorial will be integral to ensure they are fully equipped with the necessary knowledge and understanding of how best to recognise and react to integrity threats.”

This is the latest partnership for Sportradar, which extended its sports betting partnership with Kambi and announced a new partnership with PointsBet last month. It also joined forces with FansUnite back in October 2021.