Diamond Eagle is Still a Diamond in the Rough…

Tonight we had a surprise filing from Jeff Sagansky with the debut of his fifth “Eagle” SPAC, Diamond Eagle.  Diamond Eagle is a $350 million IPO, but we don’t really know much more than that just yet (there are a lot of blanks).  In fact, there were so many blanks that the filing appeared to be a mistake.  Meaning, this was meant to be filed confidentially, but someone pushed the wrong button.

Nonetheless, I was told through the grapevine that this was, in fact, meant to be filed tonight and that Deutsche Bank will once again be left lead. The question I was still left asking is, why file an incomplete prospectus at all?  Well, the explanation was, the Diamond Eagle team was just anxious to put the deal out there and build a little momentum.  However, I find that reasoning a little curious.  Is it better to file early with blanks and (potentially) build some buzz or, wait to provide the complete picture?  Especially since everyone most likely assumes this incomplete filing was an error.  Mostly, a filing with blanks subtracts rather than adds.  It leaves too many questions that people are more than willing to fill in on their own and the most important blank (why file this now?) is best not left to speculation.  Hence, this feels more like a mistake, but who’s to say… maybe the media guys know best and really are building buzz.  After all, this IS news now.  It remains to be seen how this plays out, but as of right now, it’s not clear if this was planned or not.

Regardless, this is what we know so far:

That’s a lot of “TBDs”.  All the same, this is the first big, tier-1 SPAC at $350 million and we haven’t seen a big SPAC like this in awhile.  We’ll evaluate further once we have more information in subsequent filings.