DraftKings is aiming to raise $1.03BN through a new public offering of 32 million shares of common stock.

The Boston-based, Nasdaq-listed group, which was formed earlier this year through the merger of sports and fantasy betting operator DraftKings and gaming technology company SBTech, says it will use the new capital for general corporate purposes. 

DraftKings itself is making 16 million Class A common stock shares available, while selling stockholders including SBTech founder Shalom Mekenzie, are making a further 16 million shares available. 

Underwriters will also be granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 4.8m shares of Class A common stock. DraftKings will not receive any proceeds from the sale of Class A common stock offered by the selling stockholders. 

Credit Suisse Securities and Goldman Sachs are acting as joint book-running managers and reps for the offering, which is subject to market and other conditions.

AYO.NEWS says:

With the US sports betting and gaming scene heating up, and the giants like Caesars Entertainment and BetMGM starting to flex their muscles and splash the cash, it’s not surprising to see DraftKings try to bolster its resources. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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Top flight Italian football club Inter Milan has announced SDY SPORTS as its Official Asian Online Gaming Partner. 

The two-year deal will see SDY SPORTS branding visible on LED boards around the pitch during FC Internazionale Milano’s home games at the Stadio San Siro. Other, yet to be revealed, marketing initiatives will also be revealed over the course of the season.

Commenting on the collaboration CEO of SDY SPORTS, Darwin Guo, said:

“Inter are one of the most popular football clubs on the planet with a strong international fanbase so this partnership is a major success for SDY SPORTS. We’re delighted to see the SDY SPORTS brand associated with one of the world’s biggest teams and we’re looking forward to developing exclusive activities for Nerazzurri fans with the club.”

The partnership, which is specific to Asia, does not include product category exclusivity.

Staying with Inter Milan, earlier this year the club entered esports through a partnership with Italian organisation QLASH. 

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Nigeria is the African market with the greatest potential for online betting and gaming operators, a survey of the expert speakers at this week’s SBC Digital Summit Africa virtual conference and exhibition has found.

The online event on 6 – 7 October will take an in-depth look at every aspect of the future of the industry in Africa, with invaluable input from senior executives with on-the-ground experience of working for operators and suppliers in markets across the continent. 

Ahead of the event, SBC asked those experts which African nation offers the best prospects for online operators. Nigeria came out on top with 31% of the vote, just ahead of South Africa on 28%, suggesting that there is still opportunity for significant growth in two of the continent’s most-established regulated markets.

A number of speakers were excited about the potential of online gambling in Ghana and Kenya (12% each), while there were also votes for the emerging markets in Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

The future of many of those markets will come under scrutiny on the first morning of the conference. After the opening keynote interview with Nigerian football legend and Interwetten brand ambassador Yakubu, the agenda features sessions on Opportunities in Eastern Africa, The Challenges of West Africa, and Tales from South Africa.

Jeff Halloran (MD, Sahara Games), Rostislav Kishenkov (Head of Africa Region, Melbet), Adekunle Adeniji (MD, BetBonanza), Ibukun Okeowo (CEO, Gibet), Tyrone Dobbin (MD, Sportingbet South Africa), and Simon Munsamy (Business Partner, Hollywoodbets) are among the speakers set to share their experience of and ideas for those markets.  

In the afternoon, there are sessions evaluating the future of the lottery and online casino verticals in the region, together with expert panels on practical issues such as the most effective marketing strategies in various African markets and tackling the challenges around payments. Experts taking part in the panels include Dmitry Belianin (CMO, Parimatch International), Tunde Aremu (CEO, Konfambet), Candice Moodley (Finance Manager, Gbets Online), Sean Coleman (CEO, South African Bookmakers’ Association), Dan Phillips (CEO, NEL Advisory), and Youssef Kaado (CEO, Lottomania Nigeria). 

Looking ahead to the opening day of the event, Phillips said:

“The African betting and gaming market is burgeoning with great people, innovation and a can-do attitude across the continent. SBC Digital Summit Africa is a must attend for those in the space, those looking to join it, or if you just want to find out more.”

On day two, attention turns to choosing the right content for success in each market, with sessions about football betting, virtual sports, and esports. Panelists include Neil Wilkie (CEO, LPB), Jimmy Keneth (Chairman, Tanzania Sports Betting Association), John Gordon (CEO, Incentive Games), Kwecy Hayford (President, Ghana Esports Association), and Douglas Ogeto (CEO, Ludique Works).

There are further panels about implementing effective KYC checks, tackling problem gambling, the changing profile of players in Africa, and the future of retail bookmakers. The experts ready to share their valuable insights include Tayo Atoloye (Country Manager Nigeria, Marathonbet), Dotun Ajegbile (Chairman, Betland Gaming), Hilton Hassan (Director, World Sports Betting), Kwadwo Amaning-Kwarteng (General Manager, Betyetu), and Robin Bennett (Head of Department: Regulatory Compliance, Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board).

Ahead of his participation in the Analysing the African Sports Consumer panel, Amaning-Kwarteng said:

“The sports betting industry in Africa is fast growing and you need to be aligned with all the innovations and changes happening. You need to join the SBC Digital Summit Africa to hear directly from the major stakeholders and experts in the African sports betting industry, to help you make that important game-changing decision.”

In addition to the conference, SBC Digital Summit Africa will also feature an interactive product display area with leading suppliers showcasing innovations tailored for local markets, together with a programme of networking roundtables to make it easy for delegates to connect and talk business with other decision makers. 

Click here to register for your free pass for SBC Digital Summit Africa. 

Sky Sports has announced a crackdown on the growing problem of social media abuse. 

The major broadcaster, which currently sees over 40 million users engage across its digital and social media platforms, says it has seen a “spike in hateful comments on the basis of race, colour, gender, nationality, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexuality, age and class.” 

Now, Sky Sports presenters and reporters have united to support a new campaign to raise awareness and tackle the growing problem. In addition to presenters from football, boxing, F1, basketball, Sky Sports News and horse racing sharing their own experiences, Sky Sports will also do the following:

• Use the power of its reach and voice to highlight the scale of online hate and abuse and the damage that it can inflict upon people 
• Remove as many abusive and hateful comments posted on skysports.com and its social media platforms as possible; 
• Block users using hateful speech on digital and social media platforms
• Report  hate and abuse to the social media platforms; and in the most serious cases, to the relevant authorities
• Commission journalism that ‘shines a light on social injustices and inequality in sport’. 
• Work with social media platforms and policymakers to make their platforms  safer and more respectful

AYO.NEWS says:

Anyone who uses social media knows there’s a whole lot of toxicity out there, so while this is obviously a well intentioned initiative from Sky Sports, let’s hope it keeps balanced, remains focused on stopping hate, and isn’t hijacked by the ‘woke cancel culture’ mob – which has an uncanny knack of further fuelling hate and division.

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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Liga Profesional de Fútbol del Ecuador (LigaPro) has appointed Stats Perform as its exclusive Official Data Partner for Serie A and Serie B domestic competitions.

Stats Perform’s trusted Opta and RunningBall data brands will exclusively deliver official ultrafast data and detailed player performance data to licensed betting operators, broadcasters, publishers, fantasy providers and the leagues’ own digital platforms.

Stats Perform’s Integrity Unit has also been appointed to help protect the integrity of the LigaPro. This will include monitoring global betting markets, an extensive integrity intelligence programme, and its unique performance integrity analysis service.

Miguel Ángel Loor, Presidente de LigaPro, Commented:

“We are excited to be working with Stats Perform. Not only will they help us improve on-field performances through deep and accurate data, they will support us in preventing match manipulation and betting fraud. Stats Perform’s pedigree for collecting deep, accurate and fast data and unrivalled distribution network will help us engage fans globally and grow the sport we love.”

The Liga Profesional de Fútbol del Ecuador exclusive data rights deal follows the recent news that Stats Perform added the exclusive betting streaming and data rights to the Brazilian and Colombian football leagues to its football content offering, which also includes Spanish La Liga, French Ligue 1 and numerous other European, South American and global sports.

Staying with Stats Perform, in recent months the company has also entered into a multi-year partnership with Beyond Sports (covering the usage of its positional tracking data of the English Premier League), renewed its partnership with Matchroom, announced an agreement with the Belgian Pro League, extended its exclusive betting data and streaming deal with Australia’s Hungry Jack’s National Basketball League (NBL), and its data partnership with US-based fantasy and sports betting operator DraftKings. 

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Copenhagen-based sports betting media group, Better Collective, has acquired Atemi Group in a deal worth up to €44M.

Atemi Group is one of the world’s largest companies specialising in lead generation for iGaming through paid media (PPC) and social media advertising, and the acquisition represents a major strategic move for Betting Collective, and presents significant synergistic opportunities. 

Founded in 2015, Atemi Group has mostly been focused on traffic acquisition towards iGaming (online casino, bingo etc), but has more recently pivoted towards building and investing in sports betting comparison platforms. 

Though it has a global presence, its main market is the UK, and the company’s operations are headquartered in London. In 2019, Atemi Group generated revenues of €33M, and registered an organic growth of 70% compared to 2018. 

For 2020, Atemi Group is on course to send over 180,000 new depositing customers (NDC’s) to their partners, and has set a revenue target of >€40M, and operational earnings of approximately €8M.

Discussing the deal CEO of Better Collective, Jesper Søgaard, said:

“This acquisition is a very important step for us to reach our strategic target of becoming the leading sports betting aggregator in the world. Atemi Group has been on an impressive growth journey since the company was founded in 2015, and has reached the large scale it takes to be competitive and profitable within paid media. 

“We see many opportunities for expansion into new markets and for harvesting synergistic effects between our assets and competences. The acquisition will immediately bring Better Collective in the absolute leading position when in comes to customer acquisition for the online operators, with an estimated annual NDC level of of more than 600.000, and from a financial perspective Better Collective will take a leap of having proforma annual revenue of estimated more than 120 million EUR with high operational earnings and cash flow.”

While founder of Atemi Group, Richard Skelhorn, added:

“We built a very successful gaming affiliate business over the past five years at Atemi.  All credit goes to the amazing team and now we are thrilled to be joining Better Collective.  Atemi and Better Collective are both market leaders in their respective areas, and the combination of the two companies, creates a very strong force in gaming affiliation. I  am certain this will take us to the next level.”

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