Marquee Raine Acquisition Corporation is in Talks To Merge With a Tech Startup for $1.6B
Whether and to what extent you are warmed by the blanket Tom Ricketts and his fellow owners knitted with the yarn they spun about biblical losses in 2020, it’s no secret that several of their sports-adjacent enterprises are doing quite well. One of those in the Ricketts family’s case is Marquee Raine Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company that raised roughly $374 million in a December IPO with an aim to play in the technology, media, and telecom sector. More specifically, they’re expected to target online gambling.
According to a Bloomberg report, Marquee Raine is in talks with tech startup Enjoy Technology Inc., which is run by former Apple executive Ron Johnson and has operated mobile retail stores for companies including Apple Inc., AT&T Inc., BT Group Plc and Rogers Communications Inc. If completed, the merger could result in an entity valued at nearly $1.6 billion.
That’s not quite half what the Cubs are worth as an organization after a 5% increase in value from last year, according to Forbes. At an estimated $3.36 billion, the Cubs are behind only the Red Sox ($3.465B), Dodgers ($3.57B), and Yankees ($5.25B) among MLB teams. Their $163 million in revenue was second only to the Dodgers and their reported losses of $73 million, while nothing to sneeze at, were not as bad as those suffered by five other teams.
