A recent boom in business has facilitated an acceleration of future plans for esports betting company Luckbox who have announced their intention to become a publicly-traded company as they prepare to list the company on the Toronto TSX Venture Exchange.
Although based in the Isle of Man, the company has already signed a letter of intent with Elephant Hill, a capital pool company which itself is listed on the TSX and which enables companies to go through them to go public.
The agreement will see current Luckbox shareholders receiving 32,300,142 shares in Elephant Hill at CAD$0.42 per share. In addition, they will also receive a further 2,076,143 Elephant Hill share purchase warrants.
With Gravitas Securities as the lead agent bookrunner for their brokered private placement of subscription receipts, it is thought that Luckbox could raise at least CA$2 million from the listing, with a further over-allotment option of $1 million.
As part of the deal, when the transaction has been completed, the current Elephant Hill board of directors will resign their positions and they will then be replaced by a board of five members, which will be jointly appointed by Elephant Hill and Luckbox shareholders.
Spike in Esports Betting
Although the recent Covid-19 pandemic has seen many areas in business suffer a downturn, Luckbox has bucked that trend, recording an increase in total bets of 500%. This has allowed the company to speed up its progress towards a public listing.
However, it is not just the upturn in business in terms of esports betting over the last few months that has been the sole reason for the decision to list being moved forward. As Quentin Martin, the chief executive of Luckbox points out:
“All of our key performance indicators have been through the roof in the past three months…”
“As well as an increase in customers and betting activity, we’ve seen a huge level of interest from potential investors, who are realising that esports is resilient to many of the forces that affect traditional sports.”
The evidence cited by Luckbox is corroborated by other esports platforms with Stream reporting a record number of users for the current year since the service began, while the Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch has reported an increase in viewers of 80% since January 2020.
Key Markets
Licensed in the Isle of Man, Luckbox have earned their reputation in the esports betting industry thanks to offering a selection of real money betting opportunities across a number of top esports on over 100 territories. The company’s League of Legends betting and CS:GO betting options are particularly popular with customers.
The company also offers betting on a wide range of other esports including Dota 2, Overwatch, Call of Duty, StarCraft 2, NBA 2K and FIFA.
While the pandemic may have accelerated Luckbox’s decision-making, it is clear that the company was well on the way to listing itself given the increase in esports betting over the last few years.
As Mr Martin explained: “The potential of esports betting is well documented and these past few months have brought that into sharper focus, accelerating the numbers. Many fans of traditional sports have been exposed to the excitement of esports for the first time and hopefully they like what they see and will be sticking around.”
Back in December, CS:GO team Astralis mooted plans for their parent company to become the first esports team listed on a public stock market.
Photo Credits: Matt Lamers / MJBizDaily
