Flutter Entertainment increasing its interest in FanDuel Group

British and Irish gambling behemoth Flutter Entertainment has reportedly agreed a deal worth about $4.2 billion that is to see it acquire a further 37.2% stake in American online sportsbook operator FanDuel Group.

According to a Thursday report from the Financial Times newspaper, the London-listed firm already held a 61% stake in FanDuel Group courtesy of a $770 million arrangement inked in May of 2018 and will be purchasing the additional interest from a consortium known as Fastball Holdings, which consists of Google Ventures, KKR and Company Incorporated, Verizon Ventures, NBC Sports Group, Shamrock Ventures and Comcast Ventures.

Share swap:

Flutter Entertainment was known as Paddy Power Betfair until undergoing a May rebranding and is responsible for over 620 land-based betting shops spread across the United Kingdom as well as online sportsbetting domains including Betfair.com, PaddyPower.com and Adjarabet.com. Its latest deal reportedly values FanDuel Group at about $11.2 billion and will see Fastball Holdings receive about $2.1 billion in cash alongside a 7% shareholding in its own business.

Plentiful potential:

Peter Jackson, Chief Executive Officer for Flutter Entertainment, reportedly declared that FanDuel Group already offers online sportsbetting to punters in the American states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Indiana and could well be present in jurisdictions containing roughly one-third of the nation’s population by the end of next year. The executive purportedly moreover asserted that such an enterprise would be ‘equivalent to the size of our businesses in Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland combined’ and represent a ‘transformational’ element to his firm’s overall holdings.

Future forecast:

The newspaper reported that 25 jurisdictions in the United States have legalized some form of sportsbetting since the 2018 revocation of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). The first nine months of 2020 purportedly saw the market’s aggregated gross revenues rise by 27% year-on-year to top $677.8 million with this amount likely due to rise as more states move into the sports wagering realm in hopes of being able to offset coronavirus-induced slumps in their tax revenues.