We advise and invest in public and private companies who innovate in the global digital gaming ecosystem
We provide a wide range of advisory services, including mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, private capital raising and strategic advice
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he has overseen multiple mergers and acquisitions and has raised over $2.0 billion in debt and equity capital to support the companies he has led.
Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV:NYX) for $631m, where Mr. Davey served as Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and after the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. NYX was the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform. These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017 and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey was named 2018 CEO of the Year at the prestigious Global Gaming Awards.
Since leaving Scientific Games, Mr. Davey established Tekkorp Capital as one of the pre-eminent investors in the global digital ecosystem and is now its Chairman. Mr. Davey is also Executive Chairman of BetMakers Technology Group (ASX:BET) an ASX listed provider of technology and data solutions to the global gaming industry.
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) (now part of Flutter Entertainment) and William Hill (now part of Caesars Entertainment), and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across all aspects of the digital gaming value chain.
From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of FOX Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective. Transactions include:
Mr. Chhabra established Tekkorp’s advisory arm, Tekkorp Capital Advisors. He is also on the Boards of several fast growing companies including Chairman of Red Knot Communications, a leading Public Relations Agency to the global sports and gambling sector and Chairman of Department of Trust, a pioneer in the igaming RegTech space . Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Mr. Nieboer is a corporate development and strategy specialist with 24 years' experience, with the last 16 years exclusively in gaming. He is the former CEO of William Hill’s global online business (ex-US), employing c.1,800 people in eight countries, with revs of £600m+ and EBITDA of £160m+, with the strongest markets being UK, Italy and Spain. At William Hill Online he delivered a transformation of the business, taking it from net revenue decline of -11% and profit decline of -33% when he took over, to net revenue growth of +13% and profit growth of +32%, adding £32m in organic profits.
From 2018-21 Mr. Nieboer led William Hill’s global M&A and corporate development, focusing on diversification in Europe and LatAm, and expansion in US. He helped deliver a string of deals in the US including William Hill’s $700m JV with Eldorado Resorts, a $50m Strategic Partnership with CBS, the $2.9bn sale of William Hill PLC to Caesars Entertainment, and the recent $3bn sale of William Hill ex-US to 888.
Outside the US he also delivered the £242m acquisition of Mr Green in Europe, as well market entry into Argentina via a JV with local market leader Argenbingo, and an acquisition of licensed operator Alfabet S.A.S in Colombia.
Mr. Nieboer started his career at leading investment N.M.Rothschild & Sons in London, and also held corporate development roles with leading UK media companies ITV and BSkyB. He ran his own online gaming and media business from 2004-13 which he sold to esports broadcaster Ginx. Mr. Nieboer is now a Senior Partner at Tekkorp Capital Advisors. Mr. Nieboer received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Edinburgh.
Mr. McMillan is a corporate development and strategy specialist with 20 years' financial experience, with the last 12 years exclusively in gaming. He is the former CFO of William Hill’s US division, with over 1,000 employees operating and licensed in nearly 20 jurisdictions.
Originally acquired for $49m in 2012, the rapid growth of the William Hill US business during his tenure as CFO, both before and after the overturning of PASPA, was the primary driver that led to the sale of William Hill PLC to Caesars Entertainment for $2.9bn. During this time, a number of other deals were done, including the $700m JV with Eldorado Resorts, strategic media partnerships with both ESPN and CBS and the purchase of Cantor Gaming in Nevada.
Prior to moving to the US in 2016, Mr McMillan was at the forefront of William Hill’s acquisitions, including its purchase of a 29% stake in William Hill Online from Playtech, the dual-party acquisition of Sportingbet PLC with GVC and the 29% investment in NeoGames, which ultimately led to a technology partnership between William Hill US and NeoGames.
Mr. McMillan started his career at Ernst & Young, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant before joining HSBC in its Global Banking division, focussed on M&A execution with a global remit. Mr. McMillan is now a Senior Partner at Tekkorp Capital Advisors. Mr. McMillan received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Birmingham.
Mr. Clerkson has spent three decades building brands for media, sports betting and gaming companies in the USA, UK and Europe. Most recently he was a Strategic Advisor to Flutter, and advised The Stars Group on their partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet, for which he was responsible for the launch of the brand. Mr. Clerkson also established William Hill’s online marketing presence in the USA in 2018.
In 2007, Mr. Clerkson founded influential digital content and marketing technology agency Grand Parade, where he pioneered the interaction of digital and linear sports media and gambling. Grand Parade delivered technology that connected top-tier operators including Ladbrokes, Skybet, Coral, Bwin, OPAP, Betfair and PaddyPower to media brands such as Sky Sports, News Corp, and Telegraph Media Group. Grand Parade was acquired by William Hill in 2016.
Previously Mr. Clerkson had a media career in New York culminating in managing Dennis Publishing, where he established and grew Maxim into the world’s most successful men’s lifestyle magazine, which sold to private equity for $400m in 2007.
Mr. Clerkson is now a Partner at Tekkorp Capital Advisors and Special Advisor to many growth stage companies targeting the global gaming sector. He is also Founder of Red Knot Communications, a leading Public Relations Agency to the global sports and gambling sector. Mr. Clerkson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Warwick.
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s acquisitions and capital raises and was transaction-lead in the sale of NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million. From 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the CFO of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino. As CFO, he provided managerial oversight over annual gaming revenues exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he was instrumental in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion.
Mr. Matejevich is now a Partner and Chief Financial Officer of the Tekkorp Group including his role as Chief Financial Officer of NASDAQ listed Tekkorp Digital Acquisition Corp. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Lu leads Tekkorp’s Cryptocurrency and Blockchain initiatives working with crypto entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. He has a particular focus on the Avalanche (AVAX) defi ecosystem, where he is an investor (seed, private and public) and advisor for many leading projects. His areas of expertise include defi strategy, business development, partnerships, investment research and tokenomics.
Previously Mr. Lu had senior leadership roles in Strategy & Finance at The Stars Group (TSG), where he helped transform TSG from a private, single vertical business into the largest, publicly listed Online Gaming company in the world. In his most recent TSG role, he was a founding team member of FOX Bet, a first-of-its-kind partnership with TSG & FOX Sports, where he led Strategy & BI functions as it scaled from greenfield start-up into a 220-person organization to deliver over $125m in revenue in its first year.
Mr. Lu is now an Associate Partner at Tekkorp. He has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BSc in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Randver provides strategic operational advice to Tekkorp’s clients and portfolio companies. Mr. Randver has more than a decade of operating experience in leading iGaming companies. He joined PokerStars in 2009, where he set up and ran significant parts of the business for more than 11 years. He looked after the company’s entry into a number of regulated markets and led a complete revamp of the company’s Player Account Management and Platform software.
Following that, he was appointed to head PokerStars Sportsbook, where he led the platform and technology selection process, built the Operations teams and was responsible for the successful roll-out of the product in over 100 markets world-wide. More recently, he was the Managing Director of the Group’s Asia Business, setting up a local office and infrastructure, and drove a consistent double-digit monthly growth of the business.
After leaving PokerStars, Mr. Randver has advised several leading Online Gambling companies on M&A due diligence and Product, Marketing and Operations strategy in Asia, Europe and North America.
Mr. Schrier has been in multi-national global commercial roles for over 25 years in the technology and gaming sectors, including the UK and the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been on the journey from start-up to exit several times in his career and focuses on high growth through proven commercial techniques.
In betting and gaming, Mr. Schrier was part of the team that built and sold Ash Gaming to Playtech in 2011, where he served for five years as Head of Commercial. Most recently, he served as Chief Commercial Officer of SG Digital, while running his own consultancy and advisory business for the last two years.
Mr. Schrier has deep knowledge of companies, products and business models globally in the sector. He has been involved with many projects, and works on successful commercial and product strategies, deal making and M&A.
We love to solve complex business problems.
It’s what drew us to the sector two decades ago. The shift to digital was the headline but other factors would determine how best to ride that growth; ever-shifting regulations and fiscal regimes, technological change, distinct local market preferences and complex payment networks to name a few. These elements create a flux where the routes to success are distinct for different geographies, different parts of the value chain and different phases of a market’s development.
Figuring this out is what gets us excited.
We each came to Tekkorp having achieved more than a measure of success in our industry. We are corporate strategists and dealmakers who have executed some of the most complex M&A that our sector has seen (over $24bn and counting). We back fearless entrepreneurs to help them realize their visions. Our advice and investments are grounded by our real-world operating experience. We’ve founded start-ups, scaled them to IPO or sold them to the majors. We have run public companies, turned them around, created brands, developed new business models, built technology platforms for B2B and B2C, entered just about every regulated new market and set up operating units all over the world.
Our progress has rarely been smooth. Of course, we have made mistakes along the way. The payoff from all this scar tissue is we get the biggest buzz now from sharing our experiences; helping friends, colleagues, portfolio companies and advisory clients avoid falling for the same traps. We rarely encounter business issues we haven't already had to face, and our collective muscle memory allows us to anticipate problems and deal with them before they become overwhelming.
We are “veterans” who remain fiercely curious.
We love to hustle and we love to learn. New markets keep coming. Web3 and various forms of the “Metaverse” will play an increasingly important role as our sector has always been an early adopter. We stay alive to these opportunities by building teams and forming partnerships with people who offer different perspectives, knowledge and skills. We do not subscribe to ‘Not Invented Here’ and ‘We Know Best’ syndromes that, at times, impeded our progress on the way up and we will not tolerate that at Tekkorp.
Gambling is a sector that isn’t for everyone. We believe this is partly why those who are in this industry are truly passionate about what they do. It attracts entrepreneurs, innovators and out-of-the-box thinkers. It attracts characters. This may surprise outsiders but the best people in our space are also empathetic and socially responsible. We expect this from ourselves, our teams, our portfolio companies, and we see these qualities in the brilliant businesses we advise.
We are great collaborators.
We are fortunate. We can choose who we work with, and we devote our resources only to those projects and investments where we have a strong conviction that we can make a material difference.
Above all, we want to form long term relationships with smart, ambitious and energetic people who share our values. We know you have choices. More often than not our competitors are our partners in other initiatives, and we can work together with them for your benefit. But having been in your shoes, as operators and business builders, we think we bring a particular perspective you may find valuable.
If we sound like we’re the right fit, we’d love to hear from you.
Tekkorp Founders
Tekkorp Capital Advisors advises companies in the global gambling sector on M&A, JVs, strategic partnerships, disposals, carve-outs, and private capital fundraisings. The company also provides consulting services across a broad range of areas including growth strategy formulation, new market-entry, product, technology and operations due diligence and vendor selection.
Our team is made up of people who have all been in CEO, MD or CFO roles at major operators, as well as having distinguished M&A backgrounds, giving us stronger knowledge of what works from an operator standpoint in M&A, compared to other advisory firms.
Get in touch info@tekkorp.com
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