Fantasy sports company DraftKings will go public after merging with Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. ($DEAC) and SBTech. When the bookmaker makes it official, the company will have a market cap of $3.3 billion and be listed on Nasdaq u.
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said the company was looking to achieve three objectives: acquire SBTech, raise capital to fund launching in new states for sports betting, and go public. The deal got “all three of those objectives accomplished in one transaction,” he told Cheddar.
Diamond Eagle will change its name to DraftKings Inc. once the transaction closes, which is expected in the first half of 2020 and will create the first vertically integrated sports betting company. Through the merger with SBTech, which is a sports betting technology provider, and the already special purpose acquisition company Diamond Eagle Acquisition ($DEAC), DraftKings will become a publicly-traded company without undergoing a lenghthier, traditional IPO process.
According to the CEO, DraftKings uses a lot of its own homegrown technology, but he noted that "the one thing that’s not is the bets that are made and the systems and operations behind that.”
“We’re a tech company, we’re a product company and, for us, it’s absolutely critical to own and control that,” Robins said of SBTech.
Robins will lead the new DraftKings, and the company will remain headquartered in Boston, where it is one of the largest tech companies in the city, but will reincorporate in Nevada. The company was founded in 2012 and most recently had attempted to merge with its rival FanDuel, but the deal was abandoned after federal regulators sued.
A big-screen adaptation of the anime “Chainsaw Man” has topped the North American box office, beating a Springsteen biopic and “Black Phone 2.” The movie earned $17.25 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. “Black Phone 2” fell to second place with $13 million. Two new releases, the rom-com “Regretting You” and “Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere,” earned $12.85 million and $9.1 million, respectively. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” is based on the manga series about a demon hunter. It's another win for Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which also released a “Demon Slayer” film last month that debuted to a record $70 million.
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