DraftKings Billionaire Sells $182 Million After Stock Surge

(Bloomberg) -- Shalom Meckenzie, the betting-technology executive who became a billionaire earlier this year after merging his company with DraftKings Inc., has unloaded $182 million of stock.

The Israeli sold the shares as part of a secondary offering by Boston-based DraftKings, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. He still holds a $1.1 billion stake.

Meckenzie, 44, founded online betting firm SBTech in 2007. In April, it combined with DraftKings through a reverse merger with a shell company that was already publicly traded. The stock has more than doubled since, trouncing the broader market.

Over the past week, the company and some of its stockholders sold about 46 million shares for roughly $1.84 billion. Among the dozens of sellers were entities held by billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the Dolan family, which controls Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp.

DraftKings spokesman Jamie Chisholm said Meckenzie was out of the country and couldn’t immediately comment.

Shares of DraftKings had surged in recent months despite the coronavirus pandemic that has give people scant opportunities to bet on live sports. They fell each day this week and were down 7.4% to $33.39 at 1:11 p.m. in New York.

Supreme Court

SBTech was founded in 2007 in Gibraltar, a European hot spot for online wagering. The company expanded to New Jersey and Mississippi after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 allowed states to offer sports betting.

DraftKings, founded in 2011, emerged as the leader in fantasy sports, where fans put real money on outcomes based on combinations of players. The company expanded into traditional online wagering following the court’s ruling.

The combined firm, with a market value of $12.7 billion, had more than 2,000 employees at the end of March. On a pro forma basis, its 2019 sales were about $432 million and losses were $141 million.

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