[image credit : Piqsels]
British digital sports media firm Perform Group has confirmed that it has agreed a deal to acquire sports data company Opta for approximately £40 million ($60.5 million).
Perform stated that the agreement was conditional upon raising the necessary funds to complete the acquisition from venture capital company Albion Capital, which owns Opta.
Opta, which has offices in London, Leeds and mainland Europe, collects, packages, analyses and distributes sports data in digital format to the betting, media and professional sports sectors.
The data company has long-term rights agreements with the English Premier League, German Bundesliga and the England and Wales Cricket Board along with other major sporting organisations.
Feltham-based Perform operates the LiveSport.tv on-demand and live sports video application, which is integrated into Facebook, and also owns football-dedicated Goal.com. Last year, Perform acquired real-time sports data provider RunningBall and recently purchased Dutch sports website Voetbalzone.nl.
Perform declared last week that it expects to report total revenues of around £92 million for the six months to June 30 while it has already contracted about £166 million in business for the whole of 2013, which represents a rise of 26.7 percent year-on-year.
Perform also revealed that 2014 licence renewal negotiations for its Watch&Bet live video streaming service had begun.
