Casino giant Delta Corp joins fantasy sports venture

On Friday, India-based Delta Corporation announced that they had purchased 31,994 equity shares from Halaplay Technologies, the founder of HalaPlay, an online fantasy sports website. The nearly 32,000 shares constitute 15.52% of the capital shares in HalaPlay and the final transaction to purchase the shares will be concluded by May 1.

In a filing required by the stock exchanges, Delta announced that they had invested the money to purchase the equity shares. As part of the transaction, Guassian Networks Private Limited, a subsidiary of Delta, will be transferring their fantasy sports division to HalaPlay. That will give Gaussian an additional 4.03% of the equity shares in HalaPlay.

That Delta would purchase shares in HalaPlay should come as no surprise to anyone. In November 2017, it was announced that Kae Capital and Nazara Games had each invested in the fantasy sports platform. HalaPlay had created some rather sophisticated algorithms to help users draft teams according to behavior and statistics the analytics had determined. Their programs were able to learn on the fly, helping to improve the experience for users.

Almost exactly a year later, it was announced that Nazara was looking to expand the operations. Through investments from WestBridge Capital and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the company sought to create four additional locations, with Africa and India being the primary destinations.