Lack of Sports Doesn’t Stop DraftKings from Going Public

BOSTON (AP) — Sports daily fantasy and betting website DraftKings will debut as a publicly traded company Friday against a backdrop of a near-complete shutdown of athletic competition across the globe due to the coronavirus pandemic. DraftKings’ move to Wall Street was sealed Thursday after shareholders of a so-called blank-check company, Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp., approved a merger. Blank check companies typically are publicly traded but have no operations of their own and aim to acquire or merge with others. The two are also combining with sports gambling platform supplier SBTech. The combined company will have an initial market value of $3.3 billion.