Genius Sports CEO Mark Locke has said he was “surprised” about the reaction to the business acquiring Legend, arguing it was a “huge opportunity” for the group.
The New York-listed firm announced a deal worth up to $1.2bn to acquire the Casino.org and Covers.com parent in February, with Genius Sports’ stock falling almost 30% on the news.
The deal, which included an initial $900m outlay, completed at the start of May.
Genius Sports’ stock has since show signs of recovering towards the $8.54 mark it was trading at before the deal was announced.
In the past month, the shares are up some 47% to $6.46 at the time of writing.
Speaking to EGR, Locke said he was “pretty surprised at how aggressively [the stock] fell” in February, but remains confident in the strategy.
He remarked: “If you look at when deals are done, statistically you’re going to see a bit of fall in share price. We were pretty surprised at how aggressively it fell. There’s lots of excuses, right? People can say it’s a bad day that we launched.
“You’ve got the backdrop of things like the Iran war, credit markets drying up – it’s like a perfect storm in lots of ways, and I think it’s pretty much being proven there’s been a massive overreaction to the deal.
“Being in that room on that day, we were all together, and it was pretty tough. We take our responsibility to our shareholders super seriously, [we had shareholders] who were very upset with us.
“I was a little surprised people were so surprised that we were going to do a deal because for two years almost, I’ve been saying we’re looking at M&A in some way.
“The marketing business is a big focus for us. I can understand people being a bit surprised at the scale of it. We see a huge opportunity in the sector, we see an opportunity to be the dominant player in it, and we were going to go for it. Ambition has never been our issue.”
With the deal having closed on 1 May, integration plans are already afoot, with Locke citing the implementation of Genius Sports’ products within the Legend portfolio.
The CEO also pointed to fresh revenue opportunities, including cross-sell and upsell to existing sportsbook partners to tap into Legend’s affiliate and marketing prowess.
In a follow-up letter to shareholders in February, Locke said Legend was not a “simple affiliate business”.
“Some people think we bought a simple affiliate business,” he wrote. “Our view is different. We bought a participation layer built on two decades of technological investment that sits between official data infrastructure and the moment of transaction.”
Genius Sports is expecting to hit between $990m and $1.01bn in full-year 2026 revenue with the Legend deal closed, and adjusted EBITDA between $270m to $280m.
The completion of the deal comes against the backdrop of the affiliate sector facing challenges from the rise of AI, including around zero-click search and LLMs.
Locke added: “My view on AI is if you own the data and you own the end product, you’ll be fine, you’ll make a lot of money, and AI is a massive opportunity. If you are just processing someone else’s data and you don’t have anything independent, you’ve got a real problem. That’s my very simplistic view on the on the global world of AI.
“When it comes to LLMs, they’re a great source of traffic for us. Legend has an AI strategy which is working really well. It’s an interesting opportunity for us going forwards.”
The post Genius Sports CEO: “We see an opportunity to be the dominant player” first appeared on EGR Intel.
Mark Locke tells EGR the acquisition of Legend can push the sports betting supplier forward significantly, as he points to cross-sell opportunities
The post Genius Sports CEO: “We see an opportunity to be the dominant player” first appeared on EGR Intel.