BOSTON (AP) — Sports betting giant DraftKings plans to travel public and merge with two other firms, the Boston-based company announced Monday.
DraftKings said it'll complete its merger with gambling tech firm SBTech and special purpose acquisition company Diamond Eagle Acquisition sometime within the half of 2020.
DraftKings said the combined company are going to be valued at $3.3 billion, and it'll have $500 million available once the deal is complete. It didn't explain about its planned initial public offering.
The new company will retain the DraftKings moniker and company co-founder and CEO Jason Robins will still lead it, along side a management team that has co-founders Paul Liberman and Matt Kalish.
DraftKings said it'll reincorporate in Nevada but remain headquartered in Boston, where it's one among the city's largest tech companies, with roughly 600 workers in its recently opened headquarters within the Back Bay neighborhood.
DraftKings was founded in Boston in 2012 as a purveyor of daily fantasy sports contests, which are are online games that challenge players to create rosters of actual athletes so as to vie for cash and other prizes supported how those athletes neutralize games.
The company has since expanded into online and retail sports books operations within the few states that have legalized sports betting, including Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Jersey and ny.
DraftKings had previously attempted to merge with its chief rival, FanDuel.
But the 2 companies scrapped the plans in 2017 after the Federal Trade Commission and therefore the attorneys general of California and therefore the District of Columbia sued to dam it over antitrust concerns.
New York-based FanDuel completed a merger with Dublin-based gaming giant Paddy Power Betfair last year instead.
Robins said the new merger blends DraftKings’ established brand within the emerging U.S. sports gambling market with the “proven technology platform” developed by SBTech, a corporation founded in 2007 that has offices on the Isle of Man, in London et al. in Europe.
Diamond Eagle Acquisition may be a publicly-traded, l. a. company that invests in media and digital entertainment ventures. it had been founded earlier this year by Jeff Sagansky, a former president of CBS Entertainment, and Harry Sloan, a former chairman and CEO of MGM.