IXUP Limited to acquire DataPOWA for A$12 million
SYDNEY: IXUP Limited has entered into a binding Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) to acquire UK-based sports technology company DataPOWA Limited, for a maximum purchase price of A$12 million.
IXUP’s Managing Director, Mr. Marcus Gracey, commented: “DataPOWA was originally introduced by our strategic advisor Tekkorp Capital, and progressing to an Acquisition was a logical next step from our collaboration announced in February this year.
“It quickly became clear while working with DataPOWA, that we had a strong cultural alignment and that a combination of IXUP’s Secure Data Engine and DataPOWA’s POWA index could create a market-leading sports sponsorship valuation platform with valuable deep analytics capabilities, creating a new compelling product within the sports market.
“I am encouraged that the sports market has already confirmed our view –including via the marquee FIFA Confederation Concacaf’s adoption of the POWA Index 2.0 –and we are working towards further commercial agreements in the near term to further verify demand and market appetite.
“Our recent strategic review of the Company highlighted a number of opportunities for IXUP within the sports data market and confirmed that an Acquisition of DataPOWA was the best means of pursuing strong shareholder returns. Given the potential for our Secure Data Engine to become the missing ‘key’ required to ‘unlock’ the trillions of dollars of information assets previously unable to be commercialised by organisations due to concerns around privacy, cyber security and compliance, we intend to leverage this technology to unlock this dormant value in the large and lucrative sports data market, which is currently being fueled by the significant demand for sports data from the US sports betting markets which are deregulating.
“Acquiring DataPOWA now not onlyenables IXUP to benefit from the expected accelerated growth of the business and its customer base, it also delivers to IXUP shareholders the benefit of 100% of expected associated revenues and provides IXUP with maximum control over the important initialmarket deployment of its technology.
“We are excited by the potential of this strategic initiative for IXUP and consider the Acquisition to be the first of many strategic opportunities we will actively pursue.”
Michael Flynn, the founder and CEO of DataPOWA, added: “Merging DataPOWA’s unique AI driven sponsorship data platform for the sports industry and IXUP’s Secure Data Engine creates a world first product offering in the sports data sector. By seamlessly incorporating our proprietary POWA index platform with IXUP’s industry-leading secure data sharing and analytics technology, we will be able to deliver rich insights across datasets not previously capable of being shared and analysed in a safe, secure and compliant manner.
“As data becomes increasingly important in the world of sports business, rights holders and sponsor brands will now be able to optimise and track their sponsorships and investments in new, relevant and highly effective ways.
“We are excited to be working with the IXUP team to focus on the aggressive commercialisation of the POWA index and POWA index 2.0, our joint technology offering, which is already gaining market traction, adoption and interest with key international customers”.
DataPOWA is a UK headquartered business offering specialist data and technology services to the global sports sponsorship data market. DataPOWA employs 5 staff in London and has an 8 person offshore development team.
IXUP Ltd (ASX: IXU)
Share price
0.17 AUD −0.010 (5.56%)
19 May, 4:10 pm GMT+10 · Disclaimer
About The Author
