fuboTV has announced a merger with FaceBank Group, Inc., a celebrity and sports focused virtual entertainment company. FaceBank, an OTC traded stock, with a ~$230 million market cap, plans to rename as fuboTV Inc. after the merger.
The exact strategic purpose of the combination isn’t clear, but it seems like an effort to get fuboTV public on a major stock exchange. “In the current COVID-19 environment, stay-at-home stocks make perfect sense - we plan to accelerate our timing to uplist to a major exchange as soon as practicable. We look forward to working with John and his team of creative visionaries,” said fuboTV CEO David Gandler.
Gandler continued: “The business combination of FaceBank Group and fuboTV accelerates our ability to build a category defining company and supports our goal to provide consumers with a technology-driven cable TV replacement service for the whole family. With our growing businesses in the U.S., and recent beta launches in Canada and Europe, fuboTV is well-positioned to achieve its goal of becoming a world-leading live TV streaming platform for premium sports, news and entertainment content.”
This isn’t the first time fuboTV has tried to combine with another company. The company was approached by PlayStation Vue, prior to their shutdown, about merging the two user bases in order an effort to grow the service. While exact subscriber numbers aren’t known, they last reported having 250,000 subscribers in October 2018. Recent projections by analysts suggest that they now have ~300K subscribers.
The company last raised $75 million in investment in April 2018 bringing the total to $150 million. The round included AMC Networks, which is joined by existing investors 21st Century Fox, Luminari Capital, Northzone, Sky and Discovery, Inc. (through Scripps Networks Interactive).