Sports data technology company Genius Sports Group Ltd. is going public in a $1.5 billion deal with blank check firm dMY Technology Acquisition II, people familiar with the matter said. It is believed to be the first sport-related SPAC deal involving a U.K. company.
DMY Tech II has about $276 million held in escrow from its IPO earlier this year and will raise more than $300 million from institutional and industry investors in a PIPE offering of $10 a share.
Genius Sports and dMY II should complete the transaction in the first quarter of 2021, with the new company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, likely with the ticker GENI, sources close to the transaction told Sportico.
Genius Sports acquires data from some 240,000 sports events annually, distributing the data to sports betting operators. Genius has official deals with about 170,000 of those events to be the official data feed of live sports statistics. The London-based company has relationships with the English Premier League, NCAA, NBA, FIFA and NASCAR among other organizations.
dMY Technology Group II is a special purpose acquisition company founded by Niccolo di Masi, chairman of Glu Mobile, a publicly traded developer and publisher of mobile games, and Harry You, formerly chief financial officer of Accenture and Oracle. The pair have formed two other SPACs, dMY I and dMY III. DMY I is taking online casino and sports wagering firm Rush Street Interactive public in a pending $1.8 billion deal while DMY III filed last week to raise $250 million in an IPO.
Genius Sports was founded in 2000. Its Betgenius service has been supplying book makers for 15 years and has arrangements with 150 globally, according to the genius Sports website.