Australia’s Bluebet Holdings Ltd, which operates online sports betting platform betr, said Tuesday that it has successfully completed the acquisition of smaller market rival TopSport, including the migration of key customer data.
A month after its bid to acquire fellow ASX-listed sportsbook operator PointsBet was rejected, Bluebet – which hasn’t yet given up on the PointsBet opportunity – said it had migrated more than 63 million rows of TopSport customer data, including transactional data, pending bets and account balances. TopSport customers experienced a frictionless experience, the company claimed, and will now continue wagering via the betr platform.
In a filing, Bluebet added that it had made a cash payment of AU$1.52 million to TopSport to acquire certain assets from its parent, Merlehan Bookmaking Pty Ltd, with the amount representing total payment minus TopSport customer account balances, pending bets and employee entitlements.
It has also issued 8,823,529 fully paid ordinary shares to Merlehan Family Investments and may, contingent on the satisfaction of certain milestones, be required to issue up to 23,000,000 performance options and make future cash payments to TopSport in accordance with the terms of the asset sale agreement.
TopSport CEO Tristan Merlehan will now join the betr management team as Chief Trading Officer.
“We have successfully completed the acquisition of TopSport, executing an innovative transaction structure that enabled us to migrate TopSport customers onto the betr platform prior to completion,” said BlueBet CEO Andrew Menz.
“This materially de-risked the transaction and ensured that all anticipated cost synergies were fully realized within just 55 days of announcing the deal, without the need to operate the TopSport brand or wagering platform during the transition.
“This outcome reflects our repeatable and scalable M&A model, underpinned by the speed and precision of our migration team. Our ability to rapidly execute on the integration and migration with no disruption to our offering remains a key competitive advantage, delivering immediate value for our shareholders.
“With the successful integration of TopSport, our focus now shifts to further inorganic growth opportunities in the Australian market, including our compelling and fully funded proposal to acquire PointsBet.
“By providing the flexibility for PointsBet shareholders to choose a mix of cash and scrip, we believe ours is a superior proposal for shareholders to realise value in the short and long term. Our engagement with PointsBet shareholders remains overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to progressing our discussions with the PointsBet Board.”
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