Newly launched special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Tekkorp Digital Acquisition Corp (TDAC) has confirmed its $250m initial public offering on the Nasdaq this week. In a statement, the firm said that it is now ready to unlock the potential of fast-growing digital sports, media, entertainment and gaming companies by bringing speed and certainty to the process of becoming public.
Leading the blank check company’s $1bn-plus acquisition plans are Matt Davey, CEO, and Robin Chhabra, President, backed up by a board of directors which features a who’s who of digital and gaming industry titans, including former Caesars’ CEO Tony Rodio, Sean Ryan from Facebook, and Atlantic City veteran Morris Bailey.
The management team combines for an enviable track record of building, investing, nurturing, acquiring and leading digital companies in the public markets across an ever-evolving media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming landscape. Its stated plan is to embark on an “…aggressive acquisition drive to identify the sector’s most innovative and exciting companies whose transformation into public entities will foster metamorphic growth impact”.
Matt Davey is an experienced public company executive officer, who has overseen more than 10 mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2bn in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led. Most recently he was CEO of SG Digital, the digital division of Scientific Games Corp, following a $631m purchase in 2018 by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Ltd, where Davey also previously served as CEO.
For his part, Chhabra has been front and center of many of the biggest M&A deals in the digital gaming marketplace over the past decade, namely when at The Stars Group and William Hill, as well as launching FOX Bet, a landmark media-betting partnership with FOX Sports, as CEO.
CEO Davey said: “An acquisition by a blank check company with a management team that is well-known to, and respected by, technology company founders, their current third-party investors, their management teams and the public markets, we believe, can provide a more transparent and efficient mechanism to bring a private technology company to the public markets.”
“We intend to focus our target-sourcing efforts on assessing companies that we believe would benefit significantly from being publicly-traded.”
Chhabra, President, added: “We look forward to providing attractive investment opportunities to our shareholders which capitalize on trends that fundamentally reshape the way we consume sports, media, gaming and entertainment.”
