MultiChoice has gone betting and it likes what it sees. The media giant is increasing its stake from 20% to 49% in BetKing in a US$281 million deal: “MultiChoice will make a formal offer of around R4 billion (USD281.5m) to increase its stake in Blue Lake Ventures Limited (BetKing) from 20% to 49%, the company has announced.” This is strategic because there are many products within MultiChoice which will capture value via sports betting.
The board approved the formal offer to acquire more of the sports betting company on 10 June 2021.
It said that the offer is subject to the substantive conditions being met and the transaction becoming effective.
The equity investment will also result in payment of the contingent consideration of USD31m (ZAR0.5bn) relating to the acquisition of the first 20% in BetKing.
This comes after MultiChoice announced in November last year that it had acquired a 20% stake in BetKing for approximately R1.8 billion.
“Sports betting is an interesting market that is aligned to our Pay-TV business,” MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela said at the time.
“We have a lot of sport on our platform, and many people that are betting watch more games.”
BetKing started in Nigeria and Mawela said that it has shown rapid growth over the past two and a half years.
“They plan to be pan-African and will be entering South Africa at some stage too,” Mawela said.
This will reverse the lost value where MultiChoice was creating value for betting websites. Now, it wants to keep the value in-house through BetKing. Indeed, MultiChoice/DStv was not capturing any of those massive betting revenues. During the last edition of BBNaija, many betting sites built products around BBNaija, and many of them made tons of money.
For DStv, buying a part of BetKing is to keep that value in house by now using the betting platform as its official partner. Possibly, through that, it would capture value. This is a good example of a Double Play Strategy: MultiChoice is going to capture tons of monetary value through BetKing with the show serving as the One Oasis.
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