Welcome to the FDJ United first quarter 2026 revenue conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions- and- answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to Pascal Chaffard, CFO, Strategy and Performance Leader. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon or good evening, everyone. Before handing over to Pascal Chaffard, just to let you know that the English press release version will be disseminated soon. Nevertheless, the slide deck is available on our website. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Marc, and hello and good evening, or maybe good afternoon, according to your time zone, and welcome to this FDJ United Q1 2026 revenue presentation. You have recognized me. I'm Pascal Chaffard, the CFO for the moment, but very soon, full-time Chief Online Betting and Gaming Business Officer, and also Group Strategy and Operational Transformation Leader of the group. You may have seen that Dan Lévy will become soon our new CFO, starting mid-May. The press release has been disseminated some minutes ago or so.
He was previously, among his senior positions, the CFO of Ipsos Group, one of the world's leading market research and opinion polling firms. Q1 2026 will be my last financial position as the CFO of this company. This slide deck, as Marc has said, is available online in the investor section of our corporate website, so you can follow the presentation with me easily.
I guide you to the next slide. During the first quarter of 2026, the GGR rose by 1% to EUR 2,175 million, while revenue declined by 3% to EUR 895 million, reflecting EUR 24 million of calendar gaming tax increases. There is no news in that. Those increases were expected, were decided last year. There is no new increase that has not been anticipated. It's just the effects of them when we compare our figures to the figures of Q1 2025, just to be clear.
The year had started well, but the activity has been gradually weaker since the end of February, resulting from two main factors. Low sports betting margin or IPL, as you wish, not compensated by your higher stakes across the board, and also a lower activity in draw-based games in the French Lottery. I will come back to that.
For the French lottery and retail sports betting, the GGR remained broadly stable at EUR 1,740 million, while the revenues stood at EUR 627 million, down 2%. It's also the result of the gaming tax increase. Again, no news, just a gap when we compare to the situation of the Q1 last year. As you remember, maybe, the tax increase in France was put in place from July 1st of 2025, so we will lap them next July.
We will see on the following slide each business performance in more detail, but in a nutshell, for LSF. For the LSF one, the performance mainly reflects a continued strong momentum in instant games, but some shorter lottery cycles and a high comparison base for draw games, and also, as I said, more globally, IPL from sports betting.
Those headwinds in LSF should be temporary, one-off, and we still aim at growth on the full year. I will also come back to that in more detail. For online betting and gaming, OBG, the GGR was broadly flat, a 1% decline from EUR 342 million, but the revenue fell by almost 8% to EUR 213 million, reflecting there also EUR 9 million of gaming tax increase in France, Netherlands, and Romania.
Again, no news, no new elements that have been decided lately, but the impact of the decisions that have been taken in 2025. Excluding the Netherlands and the U.K., the GGR increased by 6%, and the revenue remained broadly stable, -1%. Clearly, the situation in the U.K. remains difficult. The one in the Netherlands also, at a smaller extent.
We have changed the management of the BU, already launched a number of actions to turn around the performance, beginning with the U.K. and Netherlands, but not limited to those jurisdictions. We will see an improvement in the performance over the year, and we aim to be back to growth in H2, first on the GGR, thanks to the ongoing action plan. I will come back to that in more detail in the next slide.
Globally, based on the Q1 performance for the old FDJ United, we expect, for the full year, a slight increase in GGR, but a slight decrease in revenue, and a recurring EBITDA between 23%-24%. I will come back also to this more in detail at the end of my presentation. If you move to the next slide, you will see a slide with on the left, the split of the GGR by business unit, and on the right, the split of the revenue by BU. Between the two, we have indicated the global impact, the EUR 24 million that I already talked about for the quarter, EUR 15 million on LSF and EUR 9 million on the OBG. I've quoted all these figures before.
Before we deep dive into the two main BUs, maybe a few words on international lottery, where revenue was EUR 41 million, up 7% on a Q1 2025 basis, reflecting non-recurring elements of PI, most notably an exceptional number of jackpots with draw game last year. Anyways, we are happy with this performance this year. Payments and services, the revenue has reached 14%.
It's down 7%, but it's as forecasted as the BU continues to streamline and focus its offering on the more profitable products. No problem and no impact on the EBITDA linked to that. If we move to the next slide, we will deep dive on the lottery and sports betting retail called LSF. As I said in my introduction, the GGR was stable. The revenue declined by 2% for reasons that now you have fully understood, I think.
For the lottery, if we look at only the lottery, not the sports betting retail at this moment, the GGR was up 0.4%, while the revenue declined by 1.8% to EUR 719 million, thanks to items for draw-based games and as the instant games continue to perform strongly. For draw games, the GGR was down 3.5% and the revenue down 6.2% to EUR 199 million. We had basically no rolling jackpot following the two Fridays and Saturdays of the draw in February and March, as the super jackpots were won at the first draw each time. Over the quarter, Loto recorded only three non-cycles versus 16 wins in Q1 2025. It makes a huge difference.
We had also a very high year-on-year comparison base, driven by last year in March, a record of EUR 250 million jackpot, reached for the first time in the history of this game. That has attracted a lot of new players, particularly online, and generated a significant additional stake, and we didn't have this element this year, so the basis of comparison is a little bit harsh.
When it comes now to instant games, we are very happy with the continued momentum. We have fueled the portfolio animation with new games and the results are good with the GGR +3.4% at EUR 880 million, and the revenue up 1.1% at EUR 420 million. This is in line with the record fourth quarter of 2025, where we also saw a strong performance of the scratch games.
This performance was driven by a number of launches. I can just give two examples. Ticket d'Or or gold, each time we use gold, it seems to work well. Ticket d'Or, a [inaudible] game in January, and a game called La Cible, a [inaudible] game in February. Online lottery, the revenue increased by 1% to EUR 81 million, thus a penetration rate of 15.5%. When you look at the numbers on stake, it's a little bit better percent. The growth was driven by increase in the number of players and also a strong performance of exclusive online games with a GGR up around 60%, [inaudible].
It should be noted that the online lottery players were up 14%, one-fourth, as did March 2026, although the comparison date was very high at the end of March 2025, when I explained that we had this exceptional year-over-year jackpot that has approached and reached the record level of EUR 250 million.
It has driven, among all of March, a super activity in online lottery. The performance of online lottery in the first quarter has to be looked at with the context of this exceptional draw in 2025. Again, just before this draw has occurred, at the values of comparison, we were up 14%, so nothing to be worried of. Over to retail sports betting now. The decline of GGR and revenue is mainly explained by less attractive sporting events and a high payout ratio of 76.8%. It's above the regulatory two-year cap.
Usually, what happens when you have high payouts like that, it comes with a high level of stake, but not in Q1, where the high payout has not been mitigated by high level of stake. Why that? Because the activity of the offer was less important. I think it's interesting to give an example and to explain a little bit this point.
Sports betting retail is very dependent on football. Football is two-thirds of the activity of sports betting retail. No in-play, only a pre-match offer. As we are very sports betting, football dependent, and European Championship dependent, when you have some of the events that are very ineffective, it leads to this situation. For example, we had some games like Club Brugge, Galatasaray, Juventus, or Bayer Leverkusen, with the first leg results 5-2 or 6-1 respectively.
If I may say, effectively, it has decided the outcome of the second game before the beginning of this game, so that's discouraging many countries from betting on the second leg. Just to explain why we have these elements of offer that was not great, and it will not be seen at the same level on the online sports betting either.
Football is less important, and also you have the capacity to play during the games, which also is another mitigation of that. Okay. On retail sports betting, we expect a good momentum, but not exactly now. It will come in three months now, during the main event of the year, i.e., the Football World Cup next June and the beginning of July, with more games than the previous World Cup, and thus more capacity to drive the high level of activity.
As I said, sports betting offline is very football-dependent, so it will be probably good during this event. To conclude on that effect, the activity was a bit weaker than expected in the second part of the Q1, in February and March. This situation is temporary, and we expect the rest of the year to be broadly in line with our initial expectations.
Again, I will come back to that when I explain the full year guidance. Now let's move to online betting and gaming on the next slide. At OBG, we have done lots of things since three months. We have implemented a new organizational structure. As you know, I am the new head, and I'll come back to that later. We have continued our marketing initiative, notably the finalization of our new license strategy in Sweden, which is very successful.
In one word, we used to have just one license in Sweden. We divided our licenses into five licenses, and it has driven an extra business with a double-digit growth in Q1. Very good. In France, at the end of the quarter, we have completed the unification of the online sports betting and online poker activities under the Unibet brand.
Now we have only Unibet brand to drive our activity in France for sports betting and poker, and we still have the brand ZEturf for the racing, the horse racing offers. All those offers in poker, sports betting, and horse racing is available via a single account shared across all gaming verticals and enabling synergies and cross-selling on a very high level.
What has also driven this merger of the brands is an improved clarity of the offering and also it supports digital growth and operational efficiency, as you may have understood. This was a very important achievement, a complex project, in our knowledge never done in this industry. Again, it's a technical and a commercial success.
We are now in line with our expectations following this merger and even above, in particular in horse racing and in poker. This is very good, and this was a very good achievement. Now, if we look at the activity of the full year, the OBG, the GGR, as I said some minutes ago, was probably flat year-over-year or a small decline of 1%, but the revenue fell by 7.7%, as I explained also, linked to the tax increase impact.
The tax increase impact to Nigeria, in France, I've already said that goes from July 2025. It's also the Netherlands with another layer of increase that has started January 1st, 2026, and Romania that has started August 1st, 2025. We will have U.K. tax impact seen. We see that in the Q2 because it has started April 1st, 2026. In the U.K., to be clear, the situation remains difficult, with revenue still down by more than 20%. Clearly, not at the level expected so far. We will come back to that with action plans underway to turn around as quickly as possible the situation.
This is our top priority. In the Netherlands, there has been a marked improvement with the decline reduced, but still a decline for the revenue in a shrunk legal market. The KSA has published lately the figures for the full year 2025, which is again more than 20% decrease of the market as a whole. We still had, in Q1, a year-on-year impact because we have the last measure of the regulation that has been taken mid Q1 2025.
Starting Q2, we will be in a more comparable situation to engage the comparison versus last year. We have already taken a number of actions that will have a positive impact starting Q2. Now, if we exclude the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the GGR grew by 6.3%, which is not bad, and revenue remained broadly unchanged. To be noted also on OBG, number of active players has increased on the quarter by 3% compared to the first quarter of 2025.
Our player acquisition is a pillar of the business, because we want to do this marketing and responsible gaming strategy. The question is more how we can drive also more revenue per player while being fully compliant with RG and AML. This is one of also my top priority, not as a CFO, but maybe also as a CFO, but as a Chief [inaudible] Officer.
If you move to the next slide, we have written down a number of elements that explain what are our top priority to streamline the organization, to replicate excellence, and also the number of areas of improvement that we have already worked on and the action plan that are already underway. The first element, the turnaround of the performance in U.K. and Netherlands in top priority through targeted task forces. It has already begun. Second, the shift to an ROI-led marketing and generosity.
We are not enough ROI-led to date, so we have to spend better in marketing and in general. We have identified what we have to do. Now it's a question of putting it live, and it will be done rapidly. Third, it's to unlock the player value through better player experience, taking into account the full picture. It means not only the commercial picture but also product picture, the responsible gaming, the AML picture.
Looking at this activity 360 degrees, we also have identified a number of improvements that are about to be put in place. We also, as I said previously, streamlined the organization and continue to streamline this organization. We have worked on the roadmap to secure our proprietary platform roadmaps, as it has been said two months ago when we talked about the full year 2025.
It will be done by end of 2027, and it's underway, and we are working hard on it. This was what I wanted to say on the elements of action plans on OBG. If now we come back to the last slide of this presentation, which is the full year 2026 guidance. What we now aim for 2026 is a slight increase in the GGR, a slight decrease in revenue, but based on LSS, despite the temporary impact of the Q1 revenue up and GGR up at a higher level, obviously.
On OBG, with the link that you can make with what I said on the action plan, we are aiming for an improvement in the annual performance of the BU compared to the Q1 with a return to growth in GGR at least in the second half of the year, driven by the implementation of the ongoing action plan, both that I mentioned and a number of others that I didn't mention here yet.
Globally, this will have an impact on our recurring EBITDA margin. We aim it to be in the range of 23%-24%. What is very important for you to have in mind is that we are working hard to generate growth. We don't want to damage this capacity to growth by creating costs. We will continue to drive a lot of performance. To be clear, our number one priority is to come back to growth, and we are fully focused on this objective. Thank you very much. Now I'm open to your question that I will answer along with Marc Willaume, the IR that is just next to me.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My first question is on LSS. Just for sort of clarity, are you suggesting that the performance is simply a matter of luck, there were tough comps and you were more unlucky than you expected to be this half of the quarter, or are there areas of mis-execution or anything operational that you need to turn around? That's my first question.
Okay. Thank you, and good evening, Ed. For LSS, it's very clear. It's a question of tough comps for the quarter and also lack of luck, if I may say, on our side, which translates into the fact that we don't think that we will compensate that throughout the rest of the year. No structural problem, as we still think that we are able to continue in at a pace that is the one that we have forecasted on Q2, Q3, Q4. No structural problem. The question is that we had some temporary one-off elements in Q1, but temporary. It means that we don't expect them to translate into other gaps in the other quarters.
Okay. Two follow-ups on [OBG], if that's okay. The first one's on the U.K. performance. It's, I think probably quite a weak number from where people would have expected. Is there a sense you've got for what the market did in Q1? Some of your peers have reported decent growth there. Yeah, just sort of color versus the market, I guess.
The bigger question is, you've got it towards the second half turnaround in OBG. I guess the question is, do you sort of know what it's going to take? You've outlined some action plans, but obviously you're moving into that role, Pascal. You said that it's a big priority, but you've also got to identify the problems. Are you sure you know what the diagnosis is?
I guess connected to that, does the 23%-24% margin assume that you're putting more cost into the business to turn it around? Or are you having to say more efficiencies? Because obviously OBG is providing a lot of the efficiencies through this year and next year for your sort of overall medium-term guidance. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you again, Ed. First, the question of why it is weaker than we expected in the U.K. and how we will ensure this turnaround. Of course, the first answer and the main answer is that I think that we have maybe underestimated the difficulty of fine-tuning the compliance rules to get to a situation where we are fully compliant, if we talk about RG and AML rules, but at the same time, efficient commercially.
What I've seen and what we are working on is that we have maybe worked too much in silos from different teams, and we need to work this element more in a 360-degree view across all the elements, because it's a question of fine-tuning. This fine-tuning has not been done enough correctly to date, and we are working very hard to find a way to turn it around.
I think it's clearly achievable. We have also some other elements that we are challenging. The way we are doing our marketing. Are we recruiting the good players? With that CRM system, we have a number of improvements on those elements also. We have also some elements to move in our casual product. I don't talk about the sports betting product, what it is, but it's 15% of the business in the U.K., so I cannot blame only the sports betting product. We have a number of elements.
I cannot say that I have understood 100% and it will be solved in two months, but we have done the job to get into the details and to get the number of actions that will have a positive effect. What is behind the 23%-24% is that what we didn't want to present to you today is something where we cut out all the marketing costs. We are achieving the right level of EBITDA. We are very happy in 2026, but not that happy afterwards.
What we wanted to do is to do things right. It doesn't say that we will not reduce some marketing costs, because at some point the question is the efficiency of those costs and here also to review all this question of efficiency of those costs. I said I'm here to do that because it relates much more on OBG, this question of efficiency of marketing costs.
I'm quite comfortable with what we are doing around the marketing costs on the Monopoly, on the French Monopoly. No problem here. I think this is not the point. The point of marketing costs and how we deliver them is more a question, not only in U.K., but more globally on OBG. The work has begun well before I take command of this business unit, but it has to be accelerated and done in the proper way globally.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Estelle Weingrod from JPM. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The first one, just following up on Ed's question, perhaps, on the U.K. With the implementation of the new tax for iGaming starting April, is there anything to flag in the market currently? Perhaps, I don't know, in terms of the competitive intensity, black market or anything. I know it's a bit early, but just in case you have something. The second question on the question of the Netherlands. You have now cycled most of the past regulation comp since mid-February. Can we get more color on the GGR momentum in March onwards? Which should have been on a cleaner base. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. First element, it's a little bit too early, three weeks after the beginning of the new taxation to see what are the behavior of the different actors. What we know is that what we fear among all the operators, [inaudible] but among all the operators, is development of the offshore offer. This is for sure one of our big concern. We have flagged that clearly to the UKGC and the Ministry of Budget. I can't remember exactly the name of this minister.
[inaudible] end of last year. They said that they have understood the point, and they will give more capacity to the UKGC to fight in that. We are not completely sure that it's fully done for now, but it is something that we will continue to work on because we cannot have more stringent regulatory rules and tax levels and not having a good fight, a matching fight against the illegal actors.
We have explained in detail to the UKGC and to [inaudible] that it is possible to fight against illegal actors. It's not because it's online that it's impossible. It is possible. There is ways to do that. Now we will push on that because we want fair play in this field. It's okay to have at the end of the day, more tax. It's okay to have more objectives of protecting the players.
It's not okay to not have a level playing field that is the same for everybody. Second, sorry. Second question was about the Netherlands. Yes, what we can see now is that we are coming from the situation where we were declining to a situation where we will be flattish. First, this is our first objective, to stabilize the situation, taking some actions on our side to be able to help this situation to get better. We are working on how we can bring some growth, but it will not be an enormous growth in this jurisdiction. First objective, to come from decreasing to flat, then come from flat to a certain level of growth, possible in the future.
Thank you, Pascal. Can I just ask a last question? I've seen articles on some suggestions for an EU tax for the industry. Do you have a view on this? How likely is it to happen or not?
EU tax, I didn't have that in mind, but clearly, as we are talking about activities that are regulated and taxed locally, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, I think it's unlikely that you could get an EU tax on the gaming industry. You have also to have in mind that the gaming industry is one of the most taxed industry. I think it's unlikely, but I didn't have that in mind. Don't listen or read or believe any articles. I don't think it's credible, probably. I will-
Okay.
...deep dive on it.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Sabrina Blanc from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, Pascal. Sabrina Blanc from Bernstein. I have two questions for my part. The first one is regarding the new guidance that you are providing for the full year. Just to understand where comes from the bulk of the decrease of the guidance. Is it the weakness of the lottery in Q1, or is it the weakness of the U.K.? The second question is regarding your action plan on the slide number seven. Can you provide some details regarding U.K. and the Netherlands Illegal Gambling Taskforce that you would like to put in place?
Hello, Sabrina. On your first question, it's very clear. On the lottery, we had an impact on the first quarter. Part of the guidance revised is linked to this impact in the first quarter. We don't see an impact that will also be in Q2- Q4. It's a one-off on Q1. We are below our expectations on Q1, and we don't think that we will compensate it on the rest of the year, but we will not either downgrade or continue to revise. It's more a one-off Q1 in the way we see it. In OBG, it's a little bit different.
We have a decrease in Q1, and we think it will continue in Q2, and to a certain extent in H2, but to a lesser extent, making it possible for us to come back to growth, at least on GGR level, on the second part of the year. What it means is that it's not magical when you change the management. You need to have some time to put in place really new things.
We cannot expect to see things magically change over one quarter. We cannot expect either to wait a long time to see things changing. What we are doing is that we are working very hard on the action plans, on the way we are managing this BU, the way we are getting into very detailed work to understand exactly what is going on and find a solution to everything.
That means that we will turn around this. We cannot promise that we will turn around this in the next quarter on 100%. This is what it means. To summarize, the impact on LSF is low and limited to Q1. The impact on OBG is higher when you look at the full guidance and is not limited to Q1. If you're looking in the raw volume, the adjustment in the guidance, for example, you may have seen in revenue from slight increase to slight decrease.
Let's assume that 2/3 of this is attributable to OBG, 1/3 to LSF. Basically, we've got the same split when it comes to the raw changes in the EBITDA guidance. Your second question is to understand a little bit more of what is behind what we call targeted task forces in U.K. and NL. The question is that what I saw is that we address the different difficulties that we have on those two jurisdictions more in silos.
It means that we had some marketing initiatives from the marketing, some product initiatives from the product, some RG requirements from the responsible gaming team, some AML requirements from the AML team, not working really around the same table to find the best way to implement all that and to make it globally efficient. It's a question of ways of working. It's a question also on how we dig in the different details with the data that is needed to really understand what are the right decisions to take and the right moves to make. What I've done is to take all the specialists and lock them in the same room.
I didn't lock them in the real world, but make them work in the same room and talk to each other, because it has a link. What is completely true is that all those elements are totally linked. For example, if you send a bonus to a player that is about to be blocked by the RG, and this player is playing and then blocked by the RG ten minutes after, this is pointless.
This is quite an extreme example just to make it very simple. It's far more complex and sophisticated, but it gives you a sense on if you try to solve the compliance problems that we had, because we had some fines, and it's not acceptable for us to have fines that relate to actions not of FDJ United, but the previous owner of Kindred. Anyway, we don't want it to happen again. If we take the actions line by line, it's not a good way to look at the problem. This changes quite a lot of the way we are looking at that. More facts, more figures, more also complete view of the situation.
I had a question regarding the U.K. Could you remind us your market share in the U.K.? Some key questions. You have mentioned that you don't expect right now a positive impact, but how long will you accept to wait a recovery of the U.K. situation? Does that mean that you would-
Yeah.
...be able to withdraw from the U.K.?
Our market share in the U.K. is in the region of low single digits, probably. The situation in the U.K. is that we are profitable in the U.K. It's clear that it's more painful, the implementation of the new tax from April 1st, but we are profitable, so we don't have any intention to withdraw from the U.K. Which is off the point. The point is that we have some problems to solve.
We have some ways to find to be at the same time compliant and have the capacity to grow. We have seen, frankly, that some of our competitors have been able to do that. We are not less smart than them. The question is to do things right. We don't think that it will take years to come to this situation, because in the end it's not a very structural, deep problem. It's more the way we are working, as I said, the way we are implementing our different measures. For me, there will be no question of getting out of the U.K. The top priority is to fix this program, and it's more a question of some quarters, if not one quarter, some quarters, than years to get there, I think.
Okay. Thank you very much Pascal .
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Andrew Tam from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please go ahead.
Good evening, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Just the first one. Can you give us a sense for how U.K. customer numbers have done? Have they declined more or less than the GGR revenue numbers? Just a question on how you're mitigating the U.K. tax hikes. Is there a risk that cutting back on marketing at this point will compound some of those player losses in terms of retention?
Yeah. I don't think I've really got your first question second very well, but your first question, if you may, I'm very sorry. If you may repeat your first question for me to be able to be sure that I get it well.
Yeah. I guess some of your peers put out to the market or publish average monthly players or monthly users and so forth. Can you give us a sense of your number of customers and how player growth has tracked relative to the GGR revenue numbers you put out for the U.K. tonight?
Okay. Thank you, and sorry I didn't get it because the line was not very good, but it was very clear. Yes, I think we can provide this kind of data, but I don't have it at the top of my mind here. I can say that we are looking at the evolution of the active players jurisdiction by jurisdiction because it's an important one.
We know that in total, obviously, Q1, we have grown the monthly players by 3% in total. I will come back maybe later or offline. We need to provide you with more details on what is the number in the U.K. I have some other jurisdictions in mind, but not the numbers of the U.K. What is clear in the U.K., just to give you some color, is that the main problem that we have is not in number of active.
It's clearly the drop in the average revenue per user. This is our really main problem. We have an acquisition in the U.K. that is quite good. Again, sorry, not to have the numbers top of mind, but the acquisition is quite good. The question that we have is that it doesn't translate at the right level into an average revenue that is good.
It means also that it's linked with this question of fine-tuning the compliance. It means that we are maybe not doing exactly what we should do to keep part of the player and to do the retention exactly as we should do it in the context of quite a complex RG groups. The question for me is more ARPU than a question of acquisition. I don't know if it answers.
Part of your question. On a quarter-over-quarter, we have a slight increase in the whole active player numbers. As Pascal Chaffard mentioned, it's much more than absolute-
Yeah. Thank you, Marc.
The number of actives, which is up, let's say, in the single-digit figures, but definitely up quarter by quarter. Either versus the last quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2025. It's both ways it's set up.
To confirm what I said, the question is that we are still quite okay recruiting players. The question is how we drive more value over those players, and it's clearly part of our priority and action plan. Again, it's not just a question of how we push on those clients, because if we push clients that are becoming at-risk customers, at-risk players, we don't get the value for the money that we spend. This is the core of the question. Working on it. We'll see in the coming weeks or quarters the results of that.
Just to follow up on that, it sounds like most of the revenue headwinds are from the compliance, the RG/AML initiatives that you put through, rather than an acquisition problem. Q2, where we're going to see the hikes in the RGD. Obviously, to mitigate that's going to require cuts to marketing. Now, is that cuts to marketing going to compound those issues? Are we going to see a deceleration or decline in player numbers as a result of that?
Yeah. No, if I well understood your question, as it comes to the mitigation that we are putting in place, what we have done to mitigate the U.K., we have a little bit reduced the marketing spend, but not at a high extent, because what we aim also is to be able to take a benefit of the situation of the smaller and weaker players that will be in much difficulty with the tax that is now higher than it was at a very high level. We don't expect to reduce dramatically the level of marketing spend. Again, for us, the question is primarily how we work on the retention and on the uplift of the active players that we have.
Got it. Just finally, are you able to provide us with any color on how the U.K. business has tracked sequentially into April, perhaps?
Okay. I'm sorry, we didn't catch the end of your question. How the U.K. business is evolving sequentially?
Yeah, versus Q1.
You mean the beginning of Q2 versus Q1?
Correct.
It's a little bit too early to have a view to be extrapolated over only two and a half weeks of Q2. It depends on how are the level of marginal property changes. We have some good weeks and bad weeks on that. It's not really a good way to see it, just two and a half weeks between now and the beginning of April. I think it will be better to talk about that end of Q2, when we will have a little bit more vision on what happens really on two weeks. I cannot provide, I think, a correct answer to your question.
Okay, understood. Thanks.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. I've got three, if I may.
Good afternoon.
Firstly, on the guidance revision, you said it's roughly 1/3 in lottery and sports betting France, two-thirds in OBG. Obviously, within lottery and sports betting France, there is sports betting France, which is also affected by player payouts and sports calendar, etc. I'm just keen to understand how much you think is the impact of strictly lottery, strictly long cycles. It seems like in total, your guidance is about EUR 60 million lower EBITDA. That's EUR 20 million lottery and sports betting France. Yeah, any more help on what part is just lottery, just long cycles please?
Okay. Yes, understood. Your question is among the one-third, what is the part of the pure gains and what is long cycle, and what is the part of the retail sports betting. Marc, have you got an insight on that?
No.
We will look at it during the discussion. As I said, the figures are top of mind. As Marc has already done a few minutes ago with another question, maybe we can get it. Globally, look at the weight of the two activities. I think I can say without any doubt that it's more long cycle than retail sports betting. Also it should make up this what translates a part of sports betting.
Thank you.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah. On sports betting, you've got two things. Basically, you've got overall competition which were less appealing. For example, some of the events were already, I would say, down in the first half of the competition. The match for two of them, sorry, the second leg was definitely less attractive for the people, and they don't even bet on the second leg part.
That's something. On the other point, even currently, we have a very high level of FTP. As Pascal mentioned, this level of FTP does not automatically translate into stakes currently in the weeks following. That's things like that. At the end of the day, I would say basically, the bulk of the impact is much more geared towards the lottery a little bit more than the sports betting.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Related to France, but this time-
Okay.
...the French betting markets.
Please, Jaafar.
Yeah.
Oh, sorry.
Thank you. No, just moving on to, yeah, in France, but on the competitive market this time. You said it's too early to have a view on Q2, but I'm sure specifically for the France rebranding, you must be paying a lot of attention to how it's doing. Because I think it was at the very end of the quarter. Just curious to get any extra color here. It's 6% up in GGR, but that's mostly before the migration. How is it doing post-migration?
Yeah. Very important. To be clear, we are following that day by day. First, we had a very smooth and good migration. It means that, we did it in the night of the March 23-24, with just two to three hours stopping the activity in the middle of the night. It had just an impact on the NBA matches, but not more. Going back fully live, morning of March 24th.
First thing, how it works on the migration of the accounts and the merger of the accounts of the players. We did it with an accuracy of something like 99.9%, so it worked very well. Second, what can we say about the activity on sports betting, poker, and offerings since then? On sports betting, we are a bit over our expectations.
We're taking into account the fact that we would have some impact, but we are over our expectations. In offerings, we are far over our expectations because the Unibet player gets the full access to the offer of the first, and not only the B2B-like access. We have a better cross-selling between the two and a better user experience.
On poker, this is really very good because we are far over our expectations. We have moved from the Playtech poker to the Relax poker, Relax being our subsidiary. We have done a lot of adaptation, modifications, developments on the Relax poker to get all what it had and Playtech had not, and what Playtech had and Relax had not. We have really the best of the two, and we are now currently something like 70% over our expectation on that.
Poker is not the biggest part, but it's quite interesting. Slightly over expectations on sports. Far behind on offerings and far behind on poker. Globally, we are very happy today. Still in the stabilizing zone, and we still look at it very precisely. We still have to make the players that are not returning players go back to the platform.
This is now the challenge that we have. We have focused our attention on the VIP, the more important players, and the upper level of the players. Now the question is to reactivate all the players that are not connecting every week or every month, also less regular players. They have less value for us, so it's less a problem. Still, it's important to have the full base of Unibet merged into the new platform.
Globally, as I said previously, technically it's a success, and commercially it's a success. The next step that we will have to look at how it works is when we will be launched. A new competitor in France, we understood that it would be in May, somewhere in May, before the World Cup. This is also why we had all this done work before to be really fully live and up and running for this moment. This new competitor is Bet365. A little bit more dangerous than the previous one that had tried and failed to enter the French markets. Still cautious, happy.
Thank you.
Just to confirm what you are saying, that for the temporary miss first quarter LSS is a little bit skewed, a little bit more attributable to lottery programs than to sports betting.
Confirmation. Okay. Thank you. On what you said about the rebranding in France, you seem happy against the expectations. Obviously, I don't know what your expectations were. I think in Q1 you're doing +16% GGR across France and Sweden. Are you still in growth or what's your expectation for a-
Yeah.
...meaningful impact from the migration and you're not growing, but you're happy.
No, no. Still in growth.
Super. Thank you. That's very clear.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you to you all who have attended this Q1 session for FDJ United. I say rendezvous, like we say in French and English, maybe. The day after tomorrow, Thursday, on our AGM. Also next step will be the dividend that will be paid in the coming days. Then I will not be there for the H1, but you will have the big pleasure to have Daniel and Stéphane Pallez presenting H1 results end of July. Goodbye to you all, and wish you all the best.