Feb 14: The billion-dollar ball game

Super Bowl betting, Gambling.com analyst update, 2021 OSB market shares, Startup focus - DoTrust, the shares week +More

Earnings+More

Feb 14, 2022

Good morning. On today’s agenda:

The betting picture for Super Bowl LVI.
Startup focus on gambling regtech newbie DoTrust.
Speculation over Kambi leads to a 22% share price rise.

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The billion-dollar ball game

The stats that matter: Macquarie assessed the potential betting picture thus…

The regulated betting audience: 120m adults.
10 more states than were regulated for last year's game.
Last year’s handle: $486m.
Prediction for this year’s game: $1bn+

Fact check: The analyst team at Macquarie politely pulled apart the $7.6bn figure put forward by the American Gaming Association (AGA) as its prediction for the amount that would be bet on last night’s game. Noting the wide definition of better - basically, anyone making any type of wager or fantasy bet, online, offline, offshore or with friends - and said this figure was “not comparable to the wagers from only commercially licensed operators as reported by the states”.

Tech check: Ahead of the game, Jefferies said “volume is a key issue”, especially for those that have recently migrated in-house. Dave Portnoy’s pre-game warning to bet early to avoid disappointment appears to have worked and the only big outage of the night was at Coinbase whose half-time ad crashed the app.

Datapoint: GeoComply reported that from Saturday up until halftime, there have been more than 68.2 million geolocation transactions or more than 2x the amount seen over the same period in 2021.

New record for Nevada? Super Bowl LII in 2018 was the high point to date in the amount wagered in Nevada at $158.6m. Last year’s matchup between the Bucs and the Chiefs saw handle in Nevada hit $136.1m.

Further reading:

Pulling out the stops: DraftKings makes a play in the promo wars.

Hollywood’s hometown Super Bowl.

You must remember this: Just how opposed to betting was the NFL? Very.

On social

The SOFI drone show.

NFL @NFL

This #SBLVI drone show over LA is incredible ✨

Joey Burrow @JoeyB

Sorry we couldn’t get it done. Proud of our team and our fans. Love these guys

**Sponsor's message: Spotlight Sports Group (owned by Exponent Private Equity) is a leading technology, content and media business specialising in sports betting. Its industry-leading Superfeed is used by the biggest betting brands in the world including bet365, Flutter and Entain. The content engine powers on-site engagement by delivering impartial expert betting insight for 20 sports in 70 languages.

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Gambling.com analyst update

Turn the music up: After meeting with management, the team at Jefferies suggest that Gambling.com’s focus for the next year will be on integrating recent acquisitions and on further U.S. rollouts. On that track, they noted the company was “positively surprised” by New York volumes.

The current focus of investors on profitability in online betting in the U.S. means they might look more kindly on affiliate marketers, the team added. With a 40% EBITDA margin target, the analysts suggest that although recent acquisitions will temporarily weigh on profits (by c.500-600bps), Gamblinmg.com is firmly on track to deliver profits and cash flow.

2021 OSB GGR market shares

Top of the apps: According to the EKG sports-betting Market Monitor, the leading contenders for national market share in 2021 lined up as below.

NOTE: The ‘others’ tab covers 43 brands.

Startup focus - DoTrust

Who, what, where, when: The UK-based Department of Trust (DoTrust) offers an affordability assessment solution for gambling operators based on open banking data. It was launched by industry veteran Charles Cohen, ex-founder of Probability Gaming, who started working on the project when he left IGT in 2020. He has brought on board Michael Byrne as COO and has Robin Chhabra and William Scott as board advisers.

Funding backgrounder: The company has largely been self-funded by Cohen but a pre-seed funding round was recently completed bringing in Daniel Burns and Sandford Loudon from Oakvale Capital.

So what's new? The company launched its apps, the DoTrust offering for operators and the consumer-facing free-to-access BetBudget service. Cohen said the company is working with a number of operators to incorporate BetBudget into their affordability and responsible gambling processes.

The longer pitch: Cohen says his aim with DoTrust is to “fundamentally change” the way the gambling sector talks to its customers about affordability, moving on from the ‘stop-and-search’ model and “normalizing the conversation” around RG.

Charles Cohen, CEO: “The answer is to create a trusted third party which players are comfortable using as a mechanism for sharing information about themselves and a robust analytical model which provides operators with sufficient data and auditability to carry out their tasks.”

Budget talks: Critically, this unlocks access to the “gold standard of affordability data” - bank statements - and removes reliance on predictive tools (like geo-affordability) and physical document analysis. BetBudget, meanwhile, is positioned as a personal finance/budgeting tool for people who gamble, helping them to keep track of their gambling spend. “It’s super easy to use and we are building a community around it of BetBudgeteers,” says Cohen.

The shares week

Kambi’s shares enjoyed a 22% rise last week (see below) following the news that the so-called ‘poison pill’ convertible bond held by former parent Kindred could soon be bought back by the sportsbook backend supplier. Names in the frame as potential acquirers include current Kambi client Rush Street interactive as well as departing Penn National and Sportradar.

PointsBet suffered another negative week down 5.6% on the week. This is despite the recent good news about its recent in-play successes and the news from its New York launch. The shares are down nearly 54% in the last six months.

What we’re reading: Adam Wolf/GBFM suggests Pointsbet is a perfect takeover target.

The week ahead

DraftKings reports on Friday BMO and what it says about its path to profitability will be closely watched. Q3 losses hit $545m and the 9m figure was $1.2bn. The implied revenue guidance for Q4 was $437m and between $1.7bn-$1.9bn for 2021. Wynn Resorts publishes its earnings AMC Tuesday when investors will be keen to hear on progress regarding the rumored sale of WynnBet. According to the latest, as reported by EKG late last week Wynn will only listen to offers further north of the $500m mentioned previously.

What they say

Jefferies: “In the case of DraftKings, the near case is whether it currently has the resources to fund growth and the trajectory to potential profitability. With Wynn, the focus is on whether it will pursue growth and in what form based on the recent indication of a conservative approach and cancellation of its digital SPAC.”

Earlier on Wednesday, GiG will update on its Sportnco acquisition while affiliate providers Raketech (Weds) and Acroud (Fri) also report later in the week.

Datalines

Indiana Jan22: GGR was up 13.4% YoY to $190.1m which also represented a 19.6% rise of Jan19. Sequentially, this was a 10.2% decline. Sports-betting GGR was up 21.3% YoY to $35.6m on handle that rose 43.6% to $500.1m, up 43.6% YoY and 8% sequentially. DB pointed out the LTM per adult figure was $65. DraftKings led the way with a 34.9% share of handle, FanDuel was second with 27.6% followed by Caesars is (12.1%) handle share and BetMGM is comfortably in 4th with an (11.6%) handle share.

Iowa Jan22: Casino GGR was $130/6m, up 2.1% YoY and 29% up on Jan19. Sports-betting handle came in at $303.3m, up 103% YoY and net receipts of $14.3m were up 25.8% YoY. Handle mix was 90.9% online and 9.1% retail. DB noted that the LTM per adult is tracking at ~$56.

Maryland Jan22: The first full month saw revenue hit $4.3m, up 37% on the partial debut month of Dec21. Handle rose 96% to $32.5m. FanDuel led by handle with 44%, followed by BetMgm (32%) but the position reversed in GGR terms with BetMGM in the lead on 38% and FanDuel on 32% with Caesars third on 19%.

Newslines

Scout network: European-focused fantasy sports provider Scout Gaming has added ATG, the Swedish horse racing totalizer board, to its network, offering its customers access to a range of fantasy sports tournaments with prize pools.