fuboTV (FUBO -10.35%) is moving into a very promising corner of the sports market. The company announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire sports betting and gaming specialist Vigtory. Leveraging this new asset, fuboTV said, it expects to roll out a sportsbook (i.e., sports gambling service) by the end of this year.
Neither the price nor terms of the deal have been made public.
Vigtory is a relatively new company, having been founded in 2019. Not coincidentally, that was amid a wave of legalization for sports gambling legalization throughout the U.S. That wave hasn't yet crested, as the coronavirus pandemic has put a strain on the finances of many states; at least some of them are likely to legalize in order to bring in more tax revenue.
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fuboTV is determined to be competitive in this segment. Last month, it acquired another sports betting tech company, Balto Sports. In the press releases trumpeting both the Balto and Vigtory deals, fuboTV cited an estimate from Zion Market Research predicting that the online sports betting market is poised to be worth $155 billion by 2024.
"We believe online sports wagering is a highly complementary business to our sports-first live TV streaming platform," the company quoted its CEO David Gandler as saying in the Vigtory press release. "We don't see wagering as simply an add-on product to fuboTV. Instead, we believe there is a real flywheel opportunity with streaming video content and interactivity."
fuboTV investors appear to agree strongly. On Tuesday, the company's stock shot 34% higher, well past the flat performance of the S&P 500 index.
