IMG Arena, the sports betting arm of the IMG agency, has entered into a long-term agreement with the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL).
The agreement is for a period of five years, commencing at the beginning of the 2020/21 season and will see IMG Arena providing the international betting market with SPFL content and also introducing a ground-breaking automatic production set-up for specific matches.
The deal will cover the Ladbrokes Premiership that features the ‘Old Firm’ Glasgow derby between Celtic and Rangers, which attracts global TV audiences in the millions quite regularly, the Championship, League One and League Two as well as the Betfred Cup and Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer Cup.
In order to support the SPFL partnership, IMG Arena has also entered into an agreement with AI-automated sports production company Pixellot, to deliver a heightened experience and enable more extensive fan engagement.
Pixellot’s patented technology will be installed at SPFL Championship grounds, using advanced production algorithms and a network of cameras tracking play, to generate match footage that can be used online as well as across mobile devices. An international audience will gain access to the footage, which will be restricted to countries outside the UK and Ireland.
IMG Arena processes official data for over 45,000 sporting events each year. More than 70 million hours of content from IMG Arena was watched by 42 million unique viewers around the world last year.
The company is headquartered in London and works with over 350 leading sportsbook operators around the globe. Its innovative data collection system ensures that the fastest and most accurate sources of data are delivered live from the action to the end user in less than a second.