Chinese company Wanda Sports Group held its IPO in the U.S. on Friday, listing on NASDAQ. Wanda Sports initially sought to raise $500M from its IPO, according to an SEC filing last month, but ended up raising $190.4M, with 23.8 million shares selling at $8 each. Wanda Sports is a subsidiary of Dalian Wanda, one of China’s biggest multinational conglomerates. It hosts global sports events and offers marketing and media platforms. Wanda Sports has close to $2B in debt, according to NASDAQ. Wanda Sports said in its SEC filing that a portion of the IPO proceeds will go to paying down that debt. At presstime Friday, shares of Wanda Sports Group were trading at $5.57, down 30% from the $8 starting price.
The IPO was big news for Wanda Sports’ World Triathlon Corp., which puts on the Ironman Triathlon and has spent the last few years solidifying its position as the world’s mass participation event industry leader. “Being a public company is going to provide a vehicle to, over time, potentially enable us to be even more ambitious about growth,” WTC CEO Andrew Messick said.
The mass participation event industry had long been characterized by fragmented, individual operators. WTC’s acquisitions in recent years, including Lagardere Sports’ stable of 21 endurance events, the Cape Epic South African mountain bike race and Competitor Group’s Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon series, have put the company in possession of 10% of the market, according to Messick. Total participation in triathlons has dropped from 527,168 in '13 to 356,159 last year, according to data from USA Triathlon. Messick said WTC is still focused on growing in North America, citing recent purchases of events in Tulsa, Des Moines and the Finger Lakes region in New York. “Nothing that happened today changes that,” he said.
