ESPN-parent company Walt Disney secured a stake in daily fantasy sports-turned-sportsbook DraftKings as part of its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, SportTechie has confirmed.
Disney now owns DraftKings “through one of its subsidiaries,” according to a DraftKings spokesperson. Disney scooped up the stake as part of its $71.3 billion purchase of the film and entertainment business, a colossal media deal that closed at the end of March.
Interestingly, the revelations come just a few weeks after Disney CEO Bob Iger said Disney doesn’t “intend to go into the gambling business.”
“We’ve already done some things that we would integrate it into our programming, but not to the extent that we would be facilitating gambling as an entity,” Iger said on a conference call with analysts following the company’s second quarter earnings report on May 8.