Operator News

Excellent year for FanDuel drives 25 per cent increase for Flutter

By Phil - 27 March 2024

With its US business rapidly increasing with revenue up 40 per cent, Flutter Entertainment drove its revenue up by 24.6 per cent year on year in 2023.

FanDuel had another excellent year as we consolidated our position as America’s number one online sportsbook, with NGR market share of 53.4 per cent (GGR share 43.2 per cent) for Q4 20235, while its iGaming strategy is delivering substantial market share gains, achieving 25.7 per cent share in Q4 2023.
FanDuel acquired over 3.7m new sports betting and iGaming players in 2023, 19 per cent more than the prior year. FanDuel launched compelling new product features during the recent NFL season which increased player engagement. The Parlay Hub drove over 1.5m pre-packaged Same Game Parlays (SGP) on Super Bowl 2024 alone. The Pulse improved the live betting experience, and contributed to a near threefold year on year increase in the proportion of live SGP bets during Super Bowl 2024.
In iGaming, the company launched 82 per cent more gaming titles than the prior year, and also secured periods of exclusive access to some of the sector’s most famous games.

Performance in the UK and Ireland was strong during 2023, taking share across both retail and online channels, with our estimated 2023 online UK market share growing by two percentage points to 30 per cent. It enhanced its higher-margin Bet Builder and Build-A-Bet parlay products and added exclusive new betting markets, and launched well-received new products like ‘Acca Freeze’ on Sky Bet which drove increased penetration of these high-margin products. We also rolled out new iGaming features with
improved cross-sell journeys for sportsbook customers to iGaming products and expanded content, particularly for Live casino. These changes drove
iGaming AMP growth of 11.8% and record multi-product player rates with Paddy Power reaching 53% of sports customers playing iGaming in Q4.

In Australia, Sportsbet grew AMPs by 1.9 per cent to 1.1 million, driven by high levels of retention. Average spend per player has however reduced back to pre-Covid levels.

The company stated: “We have also seen a softness in the racing market across the second half of 2023, which we expect to persist through 2024. We expect the challenging market, along with increased regulatory and compliance costs, to reduce Australian profitability further in 2024. However, we believe
Sportsbet’s scale, 45 per cent market share, and leadership in brand and product, position us well for the future.

In Italy, Sisal remained the #1 online brand across the combined sports, iGaming and lottery market9 and helped deliver 10.3 per cent pro forma revenue growth. Flutter also grew market share in Georgia and
Armenia, continued to leverage key local partnerships in Brazil where it also improved its customer registration journey, delivered good growth in Spain with a refreshed product proposition, and drove strong online adoption in Turkey. It said it was well-placed for continued expansion in India
having successfully maintained its high levels of customer engagement following the change in tax regime in Q4. The acquisition of Maxbet was completed in January 2024 and the plans to integrate the business are progressing well.

Peter Jackson CEO commented: “Flutter delivered a strong 2023 performance as we continued to deliver on our strategy. This was underpinned by a localized approach to technology and product coupled with the unique scale advantages of the Flutter Edge. As anticipated, our number one position in the US has transformed the group’s earnings profile during 2023 as FanDuel delivered a positive US full year Adjusted EBITDA for the first time. Outside of the US we made excellent progress integrating Sisal into our International business, a business which is a great example of our “local hero” strategy at work, and took market share in UKI. We also made further progress on our sustainability strategy with an increase in Play Well safer gambling tool usage, investment of over $100m in our global safer gambling initiatives including key marketing campaigns in the US with our FanDuel ambassadors to promote responsible play during the year.

I was proud to see Flutter shares trading for the first time on the NYSE on January 29, 2024 and we have been encouraged by the increased focus from new US investors as a result of our US listing. We are working towards a shareholder vote on May 1, 2024 to approve our primary listing move to NYSE.
The year has started well with very good momentum continuing into Q1. Record Super Bowl engagement contributed to US revenue growth of 55.6 per cent for the period from January 1, 2024 to March 17, 2024. We also launched in North Carolina where we have been really pleased with performance to date.

Outside of the US, revenue grew 6.3 per cent as the market driven decline in Australia was more than of set by the growth of our UKI and other International businesses. We believe that our strategy and competitive advantages position us well to continue to grow the business through both organic and inorganic opportunities.”