Penn National to buy sports-betting firm Score Media for $2 billion
Penn National Gaming will buy Canadian sports-betting firm Score Media and Gaming for nearly $2 billionꦏ in cash and stock, the companies said on Thursday.
The deal comes on the heels of a new betting bill that recently in Canada, aiming to legalize betting on single sports events including🌄 football and hockey. Currently, such betting is only allowed in horse 🤡racing.
Previously, betting on sports was legal on💟ly through parlays, involving tw🦂o or more games, or combinations of two or more bets in a single wager.
The upper cha♚mber of the Canadian senate approved the bill and it now awaits royal assent to become a law.
Under the terms of the deal, Score shareholders will get $17 in cash and 0.2398 shares of Penn National for each share held. That implies a per share value of $34, or a premium of nearly 87% to the stock’s last close on the Nasdaq.
The deal should lead to significant savings in third-party platform costs and allow Penn National to broaden product offerings, said Jay Snowden, chief executive of Penn National, which owns about a third of Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports.
“Strategically we think this deal makes a lot of sense, driving deeper integration and in-house capabilities, but we suspect the market will have a different opinion on the premium being paid,” analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets said.
Fol꧂lowing the acquisition, Score will operate as a standalone business based in Toronto, the companies said, with the Levy family continuing to oversee Score.
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The transaction has been approved by the boards of both companies and is ex🌊pected to close in the first quarter꧑ of 2022.
Goldman Sachs and Code Advisors were the financial advisers to Penn National, while✨ Morgan Stanley & Co and Canaccord Genuity Group were 🌞the financial advisers for Score.