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PokerStars Owner to Buy U.K.'s Sky Betting in $4.7 Billion Deal
The Stars Group Inc. agreed to buy Sky Betting & Gaming in a deal valued at $4.7 billion, the biggest acquisition yet by Chief Executive Officer Rafi Ashkenazi as the owner of PokerStars moves to create what will be the biggest publicly listed online gambling…
The Stars Group Inc. agreed to buy Sky Betting & Gaming in a deal valued at $4.7 billion, the biggest acquisition yet by Chief Executive Officer Rafi Ashkenazi as the owner of PokerStars moves to create what will be the biggest publicly listed online gambling company.
Toronto-based Stars Group will pay cash and stock to owners CVC Capital Partners and Sky Plc, it said Saturday in a statement. The company expects to achieve $70 million in cost synergies.
The deal, the biggest since Stars bought PokerStars for $4.9 billion in 2014, opens new streams of revenue for the company and increases its exposure to sports betting -- the fastest-growing online gaming segment. It’s a bold move under Ashkenazi to bolster his firm’s scale after the company previously failed to take control of Sky-rival William Hill Plc in 2016, which would have given Stars access to the core U.K. market.
“Sky Gaming & Betting premier sports betting product is the ideal complement to our industry-leading poker platform,” Ashkenazi said in the statement. “The ability to offer two low-cost acquisition channels of this magnitude provides The Stars Group with great growth potential.”
The agreement follows a move last month to take a bigger slice of Australia’s CrownBet Holdings Ltd., which subsequently bought the Australian unit of William Hill. That deal sparked the group’s formal return to acquisition mode after making progress in paying down its remaining debt from its PokerStars purchase.
Ashkenazi signaled last year that he’d be on the hunt for targets as part of an effort to reduce Stars’s reliance on the online-poker business. The CEO took over the top job from founder David Baazov in December 2016 amid charges against the latter for insider trading as well as poor earnings performance.