May is that period of the year when we discover companies’ results, this Notice comes back on Catena’s, Bet365 difficulties but also GiG good results. It’s interesting to see the recent move to Revenue Share in the Affiliates landscape.
TGC Writing Team.
iGaming Operators News
SPORTS BETTING OPERATORS
- Altenar expands in Greece with a 7-year license, allowing the sportsbook provider to benefit from the booming online betting market. (it’s expected for Greece to get more than 540.000M€ in tax revenues)
- Betano enters UK Market with BVGroup and Kaizen Gaming partnership.
- BET365 reported a loss of £72.6M in January, constrasting with the two decades of growth, mainly due to changes in regulations. It raises questions on the company’s future (even though they’re not at risk !) when the market’ll mature.
- Codere: Q1 2024 saw revenues decline by 14%, affected by restrictions in Mexico and the challenging environment in Argentina. Excluding those two BU, the revenues were up 4%
- Betway exits Polish Market after troubled tenure. It comes after a temporary suspension, just after a year its entry in the market. Too many technical issues led to this decision and they couldn’t refine their product.
- Fanatics Sportsbook launch in Wyoming, its 21st operating state. They’re joining Draftking and BetMGM, the two leaders in Wyoming.
CASINOS OPERATORS
- Softswiss get licensed in Bulgarian market. According to Statista, iGaming sector in Bulgary is projected to reach 134.60M€ in revenues. Softswiss enter the market with a partnership with Topwin.bg.
LOTTERY, BINGO & SLOTS
- Jackpot.com enters New-Jersey, its 6th state ! Players can now access lottery via their mobile.
Suppliers News
- WorldMatch launches its certified games in Philippines.
iGaming Affiliates News
Company Results
- The nightmare continues for Catena Media, with a 49% decline in their revenues in Q1 2024. (16M$). This is due to the revenues slowing down in the US, market they largely focused when selling their european assets. In terms of FTDs, Catena lost 41% of player acquisition (44.000 FTDs). Sports betting declined by 68% and casino by 20%…
- GiG Media achieved great results in Q1 (28M€ +52% YoY) for an EBITDA at 13.5M€ (+69%) and 125 100 FTDs, helped a lot by the increase of player acquisition from AskGamblers (+51%). the growth outside its top 5 brands grew by 21%, meaning they’re diversifying their portfolio successfuly (so far)
- Raketech misses its Q1 Targets, despite the revenues grew up to 19M€ (+20%), driven by sub-affiliation (+150%, to 9M€) where affiliation failed to reach 9M (8,8M€). The CEO explained those results by Google’s update. In terms of verticals, Casino count for more than 81% in their revenues. Concerning player’s acquisition, Raketech noted an increase of 8.8% (59 657 FTDs)
- Gambling.com published strong results for Q1 2024, with more than 29M€ in revenues and over 107.000 FTDs.(+22%). They also secured 50M$ credit facility. As confident in the future (and to secure shares price), they announce an additionnal 10M$ repurchase of shares (after a first one of almost 3M$)
- B90 Holdings reported its 2023 final results, and they’re up to 3M€ (+42,8%). Net losses increased also, from 4.3M to 5.5M€. They’re focusing in 2024 in cost reductions.
- Better Collective published its Q1 2024 results, with an 8% increase (from 88M to 95M€). They moved fast on revenue share, with more than 50M€, but it looks like they’re facing reluctance in the US, since it declines by 8%. They also completed the integration of Playmaker (acquired for 176M€) and it’s likely to have contributed up to 7M€ in Q1. They counted 450.000 FTDs in Q1.
- XLMedia published it’s FY 2023 revenues (finally ! ). They reached 50M$ (-29% from 2022) and the US market moves impacted strongly their results; since they registered a loss of 47% in their revenues in the US (mainly due to regulations, competitions and decrease in CPA deals)
General News
- TrafficLab CEO Sebastian Agerskov stepped down as CEO and will be replaced by Peter Gunni. He mentionned that this decision comes from an importance placed on work-life balance
- Raketech names co-founder as new CEO, after the departure of Oskar Muhlbach in January. Johan Svensson will have lots to deal with, since it missed Q1 targets.
- FairPlay Media launches its flagship brand in Brasil. Oddschecker will now have a dedicated repertory for the brasilian market, aiming to take a bite on this very profitable geo.
- Alfaleads Network strengthen its Growth Team, focusing on iGaming Affiliates in order to help them through their partnerships. This follows the huge trends we see in Affiliates reports, with the incredible results of sub-affiliation.
Interviews
- Sam Segal, CEO of MediaTroopers (PPC affiliates) discuss the struggles to get successful in the US. MediaTroopers bet on the US early 2018 even thought the entry barrier are “higher in the US”. The company focused on PPC because “we’re not a SEO company”, so they focused on what they mastered to get results.
- IncomeAccess published an interview of **Ribacka Media’s head of PR.** He gave his tips to enter the US market and their increase in revenues with sweepstakes in the US..
Market Moves
NEWS FEED
- Lithuania’s gambling market revenue rises by 3% in Q1 2024 (up to 71M€) mainly due to online slots (+11% – 26M€) and Lottery (+7% – 15.2M€). Online betting is slowing down a bit (-9%) and table games jumped by 21% (only 3.5M€). As a reminder, ‣ only counts 2.3M€ of adults, making it a very small market but as you can see, GGR is quite interesting !
- Do you know what sports got most of bets in Montana ? Sports betting grew by 5% in April (to 5.5M$), mainly helped by Basketball (what a surprise), Baseball and… Icehockey ! Those 3 sports represented 80% of the gross win.
- RGAA launches new membership program for affiliates to benefit from their united representation within the industry. It also opened memberships for US affiliates.
- PAGCOR (Philippines Amusement and Gaming Corp) issued 40 new licenses for offshore gaming operators, meaning there is potential for player acquisition.
- Swedish gambling revenues grows in Q1 2024, up to SEK 6.7Billion (572M€). This growth is mainly driven by online gambling, that rose by 2%
- Vixio’s latest research estimates that online gambling will exceed $30bn by 2027.
- West Virginia online casinos generated 19.6M$ in April. That’s -5% from March but… +34% from April 2023… Leading operators are Mountaineer (3,1M$); Mardi Gras and its partners Wynnbet and Betly (736K$) & Hollywood Casino at Charles Town with DraftKings Casino, PointsBet and Barstool $7.8m and The Greenbrier with BetMGM, FanDuel and Golden Nugget $7.8m.
- A new survey explains that ban on online gambling in the Netherlands would lead to a rise of use of illegal operators. This follows a proposal from the government to rise the taxes up to 37.5%.
M&A Moves
- FSB Technology (sportsbook backend technology PAM) is put on sale by its majority of stakeholders. Oakvale Capital is on duty for this deal.
- BetterCollective acquires AceOdds for 42M€ to strengthen its presence on the UK Market. Following this deal, they ajusted their projections to 395-425M in revenues (instead of 390-420)
- Sword Media and Apps4Web Media announced a merger to create GameTime Digital. Sword Media was previously focused on paid media. The merger will allow them to be fully focused on the US, and it’s projected to bring 10M€ in revenues and 20.000 new FTDs.
- GiG purchased Casinomeister for 3M€. It looks like they’re not going to keep the founder of the website, and move on with their own team.
SEO/SEA/PPC
- BritishGambler.co.uk : from leading the casino affiliation in UK to a fall. Since Google’s update in september, the website lost its SEO power…Even though with links from The Guardian, the affiliates did not recover; they lost 95% of their traffic (from 57000 monthly visitors to 2500)
Regulatory Updates
🇺🇸
USA
The Senator of New York introduced a bill in order to legalize online poker in the State. In the proposal, operators would be 10 to be licensed to operate in the state, for a 10-year license (cost of 10M$)
🇳🇱
Netherlands
A motion put forward by socialists propose to ban online gambling advertising but also online game of chance (such as slot and online casino) putting at risk one of the major business vertical in the country
🇪🇸
Spain
Spain proposes stricter regulations on gambling ads and social media influencers, following the Royal Decree of 2020, clamping down on gambling advertising. What it means for operators and influencers :
- reimposing restrictions on gambling ads (limitations of content and timing)
- Social Media influencers use should be registered with the State Registry of Audiovisual Providers in order to ensure compliance.
- The bill also proposes an increase of the fines, from 10.000€ to 150.000€..