Take Me Out to the Ballgame…and Racetrack, and Concert, and Show

October 7th, Happy National Frappe Day! Who knew. That’s definitely a holiday I can get behind. Especially the pumpkin variety at Starbucks. This time of year is my favorite, and pumpkin flavored coffee ranks up there as very lecker, as my German friends might say. 

And, speaking of favorites…this post is an update on one of the SPAC warrants that is probably my favorite deSPAC currently.

HZAC/WS, Horizon Acquisition Corp. and their purchase of Vivid Seats. I’ve been accumulating this one for the deSPAC vote, which is finally coming up in one week, next Thursday, October 14th.

This one reminds me a lot of our play in DraftKings warrants as sports came back. It was my favorite play the second sports started back up after the pandemic lockdown, and it paid very well.

Ironically, Vivid just happens to have a deal with DraftKings…buy tickets on Vivid and get DK Dollars.

I’ve liked HZAC for a while, ever since their announcement of a deal with Vivid, and have been waiting for the deal to close. But, I think it got a little extra umph with the announcement last week from Merck of their new oral covid antiviral. 

All I needed to see was the 10% jump higher in Live Nation (LYV), the owner of Ticketmaster, and it holding that move, in the face of a very weak market, to make me like HZAC even more. 

Almost all of the news coming out of live event venues and ticket sellers has been positive lately. And this new antiviral, along with others announced by other companies, as well as the likely approval of vaccines for kids, is playing into what Live Nation has called a massive reopening ticket rush. 

Not only are people coming back to concerts, sporting events, etc. but they are spending MORE money than they did prior to the pandemic, which shouldn’t be surprising.

Anecdotally…I’ve been hearing from my kids that the event we’re headed to in a few weeks is expecting the largest crowd ever at the venue for any event (several hundred thousand), and they may have oversold parking passes (hoping that part is fake news!).

It’s my take that HZAC is being held back, not unlike NKLA of old, or several others we played in this way, because it’s a SPAC. 

In that vein, as I’m long, I also am keeping in mind that deSPACs have been EXTREMELY volatile lately with all of the cross currents blasting through the SPAC market. This has been true both to the upside, HLBZ and IRNT, and to the downside, DNA and IONQ (both of which I like as long term, forget that I own them, warrants as I talked about in the newsletter last weekend).

Let’s see if my HZAC ticket is good for the Super Bowl (I’d LOVE to see Eminem and Snoop at halftime) or a local little league game.