The smartest deal, in hindsight, done in recent years by a FTSE 100 company must be Flutter Entertainment’s purchase in 2018 of a majority stake in FanDuel, a US business running online sports-based fantasy games for prizes. It was a punt that leadership in the fantasy market could be converted into something very big if US rules were liberalised to allow locals to bet on sport for serious dollars in European style.
At the time, Flutter, then called Paddy Power Betfair (which still describes the bulk of the company), viewed the deal as akin to “an option” on US liberalisation, says chief executive Peter Jackson. But the bullish projection has played out in spades.
