Infinite Reality to Acquire Drone Racing League

Infinite Reality to acquire Drone Racing League in an all stock deal valued at $250M USD. Credit: Infinite Reality

Metaverse-focused company Infinite Reality announced Tuesday that it will acquire the Drone Racing League in a $250M USD deal. The company, which owns esports team Rogue and the Call of Duty League team Carolina Royal Ravens, said that the acquisition bolsters its “capabilities and IP,” and boosts its valuation to $3.5B.

The last point is important for the company, as it ties into its proposed “go-public transaction with Newbury Street Acquisition Corporation.” Infinite Reality delayed its plans to go public in early 2024, but was given a six-month extension to finalize some sort of deal by stockholders in March. This was also a delay from its initial plans revealed in December 2022 when it announced plans to go public in 2023 via a merger with Nasdaq-listed SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) Newbury Street Acquisition Corporation.

As part of this new deal, Drone Racing League CEO & Founder Nicholas Horbaczewski will be promoted to Infinite Reality global president and Drone Racing League President Rachel Jacobson will be appointed to the role of Infinite Reality president – global business ventures and partnerships.

The transaction, which is “subject to regulatory approvals and certain closing conditions,” is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024.

The Drone Racing League has raised total funding of $59.9M over eight funding rounds (according to Tracxn), with participation from RSE Ventures, Formula One & MotoGP owner Liberty Media, Ferrari owner Exor, ISOS Capital, WWE, T-Mobile Ventures, CAA Ventures, Lux Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Courtside Ventures, Sky, and Hearst Ventures. As the name implies, the Drone Racing League is a competitive circuit for drone racing using drone and virtual reality technology.

It is difficult to gauge the popularity of Drone Racing League on social media and streaming platforms in 2024; for example, it has 1.24M subscribers on YouTube, but the average video from the last 12 months only clocks in at between 1K – 5K views. In its heyday (2017 – 2019) the average video reached at least 100K+, and its most popular videos from 2017 reached well over 2M+ views each. Nevertheless, in its announcement, Infinite Reality noted that:

“DRL has reached over one billion annual digital video views and has a global broadcast footprint of 320 million households through top sports networks and streaming distribution agreements. In the past two years, DRL doubled their social media audience to over 15 million followers, including 5.4 million on TikTok, more than other major sports leagues.”

In addition, the league has partnered with the U.S. Air Force, Vodafone, WarnerMedia, and Universal Music Group, among others, over the years.

Infinite Reality owns a number of properties including ReKTGlobal, which is the home of its esports and gaming operations; in addition to being the home of Rogue and Carolina Royal Ravens, ReKTGlobal owns content creator collectives SwayLA and MADGMR, and creator economy/NIL monetization app, Fullcube.

In November 2023, Infinite Reality exited from a financial collaboration with Barcelona-based esports organization KOI; In January 2024 OverActive Media announced plans to acquire both KOI and Movistar Riders.

Editor’s note: This story contained factual errors on the nature of this transaction in the first paragraph and sub-headline. We have corrected the error and apologize to all involved for any inconvenience.

Due to a typo in Infinite Reality’s press release published on its website a previous version of this article referenced the transaction structure of the deal. IR corrected its mistake and asked TEA to remove “any reference to structure” as the company officially did “not disclose any transaction terms except for the price.” We adjusted the article accordingly.