Fubo Gaming moved last April into the 1 N. Dearborn St. office it subleased from Narrative Science.
Roughly a year after subleasing a new office in the Loop with plans to go on a Chicago hiring spree, Fubo Gaming has apparently decided it doesn’t need the space after all.
The sports wagering division of television streaming company FuboTV has listed its nearly 30,000-square-foot office at 1 N. Dearborn St. on the sublease market, according to a marketing flyer from brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle. Fubo Gaming subleased the space on the building’s seventh floor itself early last year from artificial intelligence company Narrative Science.
It’s unclear what prompted Fubo Gaming’s effort to offload the office so soon after subleasing it. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment on the listing but said in an email that Fubo Gaming «continues to be committed to locating its headquarters in Chicago.»
The listing highlights the challenge that some companies continue to grapple with when it comes to their workspace needs as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions wane and more workers feel comfortable returning to offices. Tenants trying to find a new balance of remote and in-person work has wreaked havoc on their ability to determine how much office space they need, in many cases pushing many companies to try to shed some of their workspace on the sublease market.
Surging new sublease inventory slowed its growth late last year, but big downtown tenants, including Motorola Solutions, Schiff Hardin and Peoples Gas, in recent months have added to the mix, signaling of a new wave of space-cutting by companies that are finally getting a better handle on their future office needs. While new leasing activity has picked up downtown in recent months, space cutbacks have largely offset the growth and kept the downtown office vacancy rate hovering near a record high.
Fubo Gaming now adds to that sublease inventory, and the remaining 10,000 square feet on the floor that still belongs to Narrative Science—which was recently acquired by tech giant Salesforce—is also available for sublease, according to the JLL flyer. The floor includes 126 workstations and is available to lease through either August 2025 or August 2029, the flyer said, meaning there is likely an option to terminate the deal before the lease’s full term.
There were 5.9 million square feet of offices available for sublease in the central business district as of late last month, or almost 83% more than there was when the pandemic began, according to data from brokerage CBRE.
Sublease listings have been popular among those with conviction in their future office needs, with many companies prioritizing move-in ready space they can lease at a bargain price. Fubo Gaming Chief Operating Officer Sam Rattner told Crain’s last year the cost savings for recently built-out space in the Narrative Science office was a big draw after Fubo underwent a wide-ranging search for downtown offices.
In another recent deal, marketing software company Braze subleased 50,000 square feet at 1 N. State St. from another software firm, Showpad. And publicly traded cannabis company Verano Holdings is in talks to sublease roughly 24,000 square feet at 515 N. State St. in River North.
Fubo Gaming was formed in early 2021 by FuboTV’s acquisition of Vigtory, an interactive gaming company founded by Rattner. The company had about 40 employees in Chicago last spring, and Rattner said last year that Fubo Gaming aimed to hire another 100 by the end of 2021. It is unclear how many employees the company has in Chicago today.
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