Former CBS CEO Joe Ianniello and former ViacomCBS Chief Digital Officer Marc DeBevoise have filed with the SEC to create a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).  to target private companies in the media, entertainment and sports sectors that they can merge with, thereby taking that company public, in contrast to a traditional IPO, or a direct listing.

The SPAC, Argus Capital, filed with the SEC on July 22 and they will now go through a review process with the federal regulatory commission that handles public stock regulation.

When that review process is completed and the SEC has deemed Argus to be “effective” then they can commence the IPO. Once the IPO is successfully completed Argus will seek to find companies in their areas of expertise that they believe would be good performing public companies.

The SPAC market has been under a lot of scrutiny from the press, investors and the SEC over the recent months and many SPAC IPOs have been delayed, curtailed or cancelled. Many other SPACs are lined up with approval from the SEC, but are waiting to conduct their IPO. The IPOs provide part of the investment cash needed to fund a proposed merger, along with, usually, a PIPE (private investment in a public entity). Both the IPOs and the PIPEs have become difficult to execute in the last few months in the SPAC markets.

On the bright side many SPACs have performed quite well and have allowed strong companies to go public with the benefits of a SPAC, such as the ability to project out-year earnings, ability to approve your major investors, some certainty with regard to capital raised that will go on the balance sheet, and speed/ease of the process vs. a traditional public IPO.

Argus said in their SEC filing, “Within these (media, entertainment and sports) sectors and other sectors, we seek to partner with late-stage growth companies as well as mature companies with the potential to accelerate growth through organic and transaction-driven strategies,” adding that “we also intend to leverage our management team’s considerable industry relationships to seek out potentially mutually beneficial corporate carve-outs from existing conglomerate companies.”

GSN has had a long history with a number of mergers and acquisitions. Originally GSN was only a cable channel started in 1992. In 2006, Worldwinner—a platform to play skill-based games online for real cash payouts—was acquired by Fun Technologies and merged with Skilljam, a skill-based gaming company similar to Worldwinner. In 2001, Liberty Media bought 50% of GSN and in 2007 bought Fun Technologies and merged those assets into GSN. At this point GSN was partly owned by Sony and partly owned by Liberty. The Liberty portion of GSN was transferred to Liberty-owned DirectTV which was later acquired by AT&T. At this point GSN became an asset owned by AT&T and Sony and was under the active management of Sony Pictures Television.

For the last few years, GSN has remained a joint venture of Sony and AT&T, though Sony was the active manager of the channel and its online game assets. GSN continued to grow its digital gaming assets and eventually those became a significant part of the total company, plus its cable TV channel. GSN had become both a TV-centric channel, as well as a major player in the skill-based, casual and social casino online game genres.

And now the merger and acquisition maelstrom that combined various digital gaming assets with GSN has been entirely consolidated under Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television. This gives Sony a big chance to build its cable channel (or use the “shelf space” for other programming) as well the opportunity to build as its already large digital game division, mostly on mobile devices. As the mobile gaming business in the U.S. reaches double digit billions of dollars of revenue, this is a big opportunity for Sony to build a major, profitable business in the more casual gaming environment, as opposed to its console PlayStation business.

TV content and cable channels remain powerful revenue and profit drivers for their owners, and with the digital gaming portion of GSN, this is an even bigger opportunity for Sony as the sole owner of GSN.