Good day, and welcome to the 2025 BetMGM Business Update. Joining from the company today are Adam Greenblatt, Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Deutsch, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Adam Greenblatt. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. It's a pleasure to be here with you as we reflect on 2024, our year of investment, which laid the foundation for strong growth in 2025 and a compelling, profitable future for BetMGM. We went into 2024 focused on rebuilding momentum in the business. We labeled it an investment year focused on accelerating our revenue growth. We succeeded on that front. You will see the impact of our efforts when we discuss our exit rates on key metrics in Q4, a period that encapsulates BetMGM's 2024 story. BetMGM is, today, a stronger business in virtually every respect. A stronger, and now, scaled business of over $2.1 billion in annual net revenue means we are well-positioned to be a leader in our growing market for years to come.
In iGaming in 2024, we reasserted ourselves with increased investment, expanded content, and player engagement tools, and we posted almost $1.5 billion of revenue and $424 million of contribution. And our KPIs were really strong, with excellent growth in active players and upward trends in retention, average active player days, and bets per active. Our 13% full-year revenue growth, which was 17% in the fourth quarter, was achieved with no new market launches since 2022. Alongside our success and leadership in iGaming and clear resonance of the MGM brand with iGaming players, our progress and opportunity in online sports betting should not be underestimated. In online sports, our product experience is now smoother, faster, richer, and more featured, following critical deliveries by Entain prior to the football season, including expanded market offerings and pricing capabilities.
These changes have contributed to exciting improvements in engagement and activity KPIs, which we will cover later. 2024 was perhaps the year that we made most strategic progress in online sports, refining our approach to marketing investment, changing promotional strategy, building on our next-generation segmentation and predictive value framework, and changing how we measure and allocate capital between channels and markets. As a result, in the second half of the year, we achieved much greater efficiency, and our expected long-term returns on player investments went up dramatically. If we look through the challenging Q4 NFL results, we see an encouraging underlying P&L. On a normalized basis, our fourth quarter was trending towards break-even EBITDA, which underpins our confidence in our EBITDA expectations for 2025. It's obviously still early in 2025, but we are very encouraged by trading results in January.
It was our best month on record in both sports and gaming. So now, on to this exciting new year, 2025. There are three prongs to our 2025 strategy, which is really a continuation of what we have already been doing through Q4 2024. In iGaming, we will continue to execute our powerful go-to-market strategy, headlined by the best brand in the business and widest range of games. We bring unique BetMGM-only content as well as fan favorites, including our expansive set of live dealer experiences and the most exciting jackpots in the U.S. iGaming market. iGaming contribution will grow larger as we continue to execute on our successful strategic formula and penetrate more deeply into existing iGaming states. We're excited that Alberta is expected to come online later this year, and a growing number of other states making moves towards legislation is also positive.
In online sports, while our comprehensive offering very much meets the needs of all players, our sports brand is moving to its rightful place as the home for premium, higher-value players. Premium mass is a term that will be familiar to many who follow MGM Resorts. You will see this manifest even more clearly in the coming months in our acquisition marketing, our promotions, and elite experiences both in the product and in the rewards and enhanced real-life experiences we offer our valuable players. Of course, our partnership with MGM Resorts extends our ability to engage with higher-value players and to deliver them phenomenal, real-life experiences. The third strategic prong is continuing to unlock our advantage in omnichannel. It's about superpowering the superpower with MGM Resorts. What this means is more direct player acquisition, more omnichannel crossover products and experiences, more loyalty and rewards tie-ins.
I'm so pleased at the current level of collaboration between the significant teams at both BetMGM and MGM Resorts who are passionately dedicated to this mission. As we continue to grow revenue sustainably in these areas of the business, we will drive significant operating efficiencies all through this year and beyond. If we use online sports as an example, we have deployed our refined capital allocation approach, meaning areas such as acquisition and CRM will continue to bias towards player value and player quality more than quantity. As I alluded to earlier, our Q4 success has created the blueprint for continued, focused, higher-return online sports investment in 2025. We expect strong progress against each of these strategic areas, which underpin our 2025 guidance of continued top-line growth, with net revenue expected in the range of $2.4-$2.5 and positive EBITDA.
This is a year-on-year revenue improvement of around $350 million and EBITDA growth of $250 million. More on this later in the presentation. I'll now take a look back at some financial and performance metrics for 2024. As we discuss 2024, keep in mind these three things as the backdrop for interpreting our full-year financial performance. Our objective: to rebuild top-line momentum. The strategic shifts made in the second half of 2024 that have improved spend efficiency and player engagement, and the unusually low online sports margin in the fourth quarter. In 2024, we delivered roughly $2.1 billion of net revenue, representing 7% annual growth. Adjusting for unfavorable sports outcomes in December, that rate nearly doubles to over 13%. The EBITDA outcome was about as expected at - $244 million.
While this is slightly better than guidance, the real story for 2024 lies in the P&L and KPI exit rates in Q4, which serve as the basis for confidence in our 2025 guidance. As the table shows, we exited 2024 a materially different business from the start. Revenue growth from 3%- 20%. In our gaming, which is two-thirds of our business, NGR growth accelerated from 13%- 25% from Q1- Q4 year-on-year. And online handle in sports jumped from 1% growth to 38%. The improvement and momentum over the course of the year is clear, and it's also evidenced by our position in the market. Our financial performance translated to 14% GGR market share as of the latest state-reported results and 15% NGR market share as of the third quarter of 2024, as measured by NGR from operators who report earnings publicly.
Importantly, we have stabilized our market share, and our NGR share even ticked up in the most recent quarter. In iGaming, we stood firmly alongside the leaders with 22% GGR share, and on an aggregate basis, we are nearly double the fourth-ranked operator. BetMGM products are now available in 29 markets and 31 retail sports books with launches of online sports betting in North Carolina and expanded player access throughout Washington, D.C., seen in 2024. The next new market launches are likely to be online sports betting in Missouri, and we expect both online sports and iGaming in Alberta, which we are ambitious for given our strength in Ontario and multi-product states. We remain bullish on long-term TAM and agree with the analyst community and our peers that the market will be larger than initially anticipated.
I'll spend the next few minutes touching on progress in iGaming, sports, and one of our differentiators, omnichannel. Starting with iGaming, BetMGM's product and content experience reached new heights in 2024 and delivered meaningful impact to our business. Not only did we invest behind our iGaming strength, we also refined our marketing attribution, CRM, and segmentation models. This drove a stronger performance in the latter part of the year. Particularly pleasing is that since the start of the football season, we have improved cross-sell by 11.5 percentage points. So that's the percentage uptick of online sports players at iGaming states who were also active in iGaming during the period. As you see on the slide, quarterly year-on-year growth in monthly actives was impressive, reaching an exciting 55% in the fourth quarter, and this is without any new states.
Players also played with us more frequently, with a similar upswing in our bet count growth, or in layman's terms, more spins for those playing slots and more hands for those playing table games, and simply put, we have more players playing more often. Our players are enjoying BetMGM more than ever, and this will continue to be our strategy, the destination for all iGaming players. As with iGaming, online sports also experienced acceleration throughout the year, especially in the back half of 2024, across key metrics that correlate with revenue and player engagement. Critical to this improvement were numerous upgrades to our product experience, including market range and availability, SGP and parlay offering, unique markets, speed and discovery, back-end functionality, and innovative promotions. Particularly during football season, the impact of all these improvements became more apparent.
A strong increase in handle of 26% in the third quarter and 38% in Q4. This is consistent with our player quality bias. Our smoother, faster, richer experience is evidenced by the similar acceleration in bet count growth towards the end of the year, reaching 38% in Q4 year-on-year. The green arrows for the KPIs below the chart further illustrate our step-change improvement versus last year. So, our average player is now making more bets, each of which is slightly higher value on average, with greater frequency and time spent on our app. We expect these trends to continue as we continue to establish ourselves as the home of the premium mass player. We do not expect to acquire players at the same rate as we have in the past, but we do expect the average value of each of our players to be of a higher quality than before.
I'm incredibly pleased with the momentum we are carrying into 2025. As expected, 2024 was the year that the potential of Nevada, MGM's home turf, was unlocked. This is important as omnichannel, with MGM in Vegas at the heart, represents one of BetMGM's valuable differentiators. Super Bowl LVIII cemented Las Vegas as the premier sports destination in the country, and the town was painted BetMGM. On the product side, Nevada players now enjoy our fantastic sports app and a single-wallet experience. Sign up once, and your account will follow you. Put these together, and results have been pleasing. We've seen 61% growth in Nevada acquired first-time depositors this football season, and the percent of those depositors who continue to play with us in their home state was twofold. This continued sticky relationship with our players is a key benefit and indicator of the potential of our omnichannel opportunity.
Lastly, we've harnessed the power of retail to digital and vice versa in continuing to launch hybrid game titles and hosting exclusive live events for BetMGM players, often at MGM properties. As we've noted in the past, the ROI on omni players is significantly higher than digital-only players, so these are important value-adding developments. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Gary for our financial performance and forward guidance.
Thanks, Adam. As usual, I need to start with a comment on GAAP. Consistent with prior presentations, I will be talking about net revenue and profit from operations, or EBITDA, with these figures based on how management analyzes performance of the business. These are not figures prepared in accordance with GAAP.
A description of these non-GAAP measures and how we would calculate net revenue under GAAP can be found in the disclaimer of this presentation that's been provided on the web. Note that the 2024 figures are also pre-audit. Second, I want to make clear our definition of contribution, which we use when talking about our profitability. The costs that go into the contribution calculation are essentially all of the direct costs, excluding people costs, that would be considered cost of revenue under a GAAP presentation of gross profit, plus all non-people-related marketing costs. Contribution also does not include any depreciation or amortization. More simply stated, contribution is the profit dollars we make from net revenue that contribute to covering the central fixed cost base of the company, with all of our people costs considered as part of the central base. Okay.
Looking at the slide here, you see that we are now providing segment-level revenue detail for 2024 and 2023. You see the raw headline figures, as well as the adjusted numbers, which normalize for bonus reward points adjustments in Q4 2023 and the impact of the well-documented sports results in December 2024. This slide clearly shows the inherent momentum and acceleration in the business, with first half 2024 total adjusted year-over-year net revenue growth of 6%, which then expanded to 19% in the second half. The sheer magnitude of full-year 2024 iGaming NGR, at close to $1.5 billion, was delivered through strong growth across all the quarters of the year. As growth accelerated into Q4, we regularly broke weekly NGR and engagement records. Our exit velocity from 2024 propelled us to a strong start to 2025. In OSB, the second-half adjusted year-over-year NGR growth figure of 29% is exciting.
Our 33% growth in second-half OSB handle and the continuation of the late-year handle trend into 2025 is also exciting. These second-half metrics highlight the evolution of our digital sports business as it exited 2024. We ended the year as a stronger, higher-growth business compared to the start of the year. By the end of the year, we were succeeding with two significant player management initiatives. Number one, we drew clearer lines around our most valuable existing players. This ensures that we are focusing incentives on the best players, which increases their engagement and drives higher per-player values. Number two, we honed our acquisition efforts to better attract those high-value players. Heading into 2025, this is enabling us to fuel our revenue growth with a lower marketing spend. Additionally, revenue is less weighed down for promotions that are granted to new players who will ultimately be a long-term BetMGM customer.
There are two other data points I want to discuss on this slide. First, you'll see that we are providing our total unique average monthly digital active figure. Within this metric, I want to explain that the storylines are different for iGaming and OSB. With iGaming, as you've heard, our acquisition of players accelerated across 2024, and we continue to expect strong active growth in 2025. In OSB, our focus on player value over player quantity means we expect to recruit fewer new OSB-only players in 2025. Year-over-year, we expect average OSB active will be broadly flat, and we're happy with that. Also, don't forget, our sports players are typically higher staking and slightly lower margin than the more recreational player bases of some of our competitors. Lastly, you'll see on the slide that retail-related NGR has shrunk.
A significant reason is the movement of former retail players into digital, particularly in Nevada, where we upgraded both our app and our single-wallet capabilities in 2024. This next slide provides a view of our full P&L through contribution and EBITDA down to net income. In line with guidance, 2024 EBITDA came in at - $244 million, reflecting our planned year of investment and the impact from the December sports results. Of the total 2024 contribution of $118 million, within that, iGaming delivered a big $424 million. Our new iGaming player hauls exceeded our internal targets for the year, resulting in an exit rate for weekly active that has set us up well for 2025 revenue growth. In Q4, we consistently set new records for that weekly active KPI, and the records have continued into this year.
Our 2025 iGaming revenue growth from the new players acquired in 2024, as well as from the stepped-up player engagement we saw through the turn of the year, will drive healthy iGaming contribution growth this year. OSB contribution, unsurprisingly, was materially negative in 2024, a result of the investment year and the challenge sports results. Of course, we believe the go-forward opportunity in OSB is represented by the acceleration of the Q4 and second-half engagement metrics we discussed earlier. Our successes with player acquisition and management last year mean we can spend less on OSB marketing in 2025 without hampering our revenue opportunity. This combination of strong revenue growth and more efficient marketing has positioned us for a big moment in 2025. Positive contribution from OSB.
Quickly, know that our retail business has long been contribution positive, but it's best to think of our retail operations more as a key element of our player acquisition and omnichannel flywheel rather than as a profit engine in its own right. Final point on this slide: our cash position. Total equity for maintaining MGM since inception is $1.26 billion. In Q4, we secured a $150 million revolving credit facility, which is currently undrawn. Barring the emergence of significant new investment opportunities in the coming few years, we expect this facility will provide us with more than enough capital to ensure that we do not require further equity from our JV parents. This slide, in addition to reiterating our guidance for NGR, OSB contribution, and EBITDA, frames the pathway from 2024's - $244 million of EBITDA to positive EBITDA in 2025.
As the bridge on this slide shows, the movement of our EBITDA above the break-even line in 2025 is driven by three positive forces. First, the assumed normalization of sports results to theoretical levels. Second, the nature of revenue growth in our cohort-based business model. The majority of our incremental revenue in 2025 will come from players already in the BetMGM tent, including those recruited in 2024. We expect a flow-through to gross profit percentage in the high 40s approximately on this revenue. Third, as discussed, the business model now requires less marketing spend.
Perhaps an even simpler way to think about the path to both positive and growing EBITDA in the years ahead is to tick off what's already under the hood: our Q4 performance indicators, the fact that most 2025 revenue growth will come from existing players, and our more efficient OSB operating model that passed road testing during this past NFL season. I want to end by calling out a couple of key points regarding our forecasting assumptions and our business model that underpin the longer-term $500 million annual EBITDA expectation highlighted on this slide. First, know that we've been managing the business to maximize our long-term profitable growth based on the assumption that we have the iGaming markets that we have plus Alberta. So, any additional iGaming markets that do launch represent high potential for additional value creation, particularly given our fundamental competitive strength in iGaming.
Second, we can celebrate that we have now reached the very significant scale needed to generate significant long-term profit in this industry. We are now at the point where we can forecast operating leverage and economies of scale across our player acquisition and retention activities, as well as across our other operating cost buckets. We firmly believe that there are very few operators who will find their way to joining us on this favorable side of the competitive mode. Over to Adam to wrap things up.
Thank you, Gary. To close, I'd like to frame my belief in the value of BetMGM, confidence in 2025 guidance, and the quality of 2025 earnings that are the foundation for revenue and profit expansion in 2026 and beyond. We delivered on our 2024 investment year objectives, exiting with renewed momentum and reaching a scale sufficient to deliver sustainable, profitable growth.
Our iGaming business is a scaled juggernaut, growing strongly even without the benefit of new states. Alongside this, our online sports business has reached an inflection point and is expected to deliver positive full-year contribution in 2025. Exiting 2024, we trended towards break-even EBITDA and saw strong growth across online sports and iGaming, having already delivered revenues well in excess of $2 billion. You've seen the impact on core KPIs underpinning top-line momentum. There's no step-change assumptions to operational KPIs in our 2025 plan. We are on the right path already. Therefore, in 2025, we expect to achieve revenue growth in excess of $350 million, with EBITDA growth around $250 million. We are clear on what's needed to drive shareholder value, and it starts with these step-change improvements. As you can probably hear, we're excited about this and believe we have a line of sight to it.
Beyond 2025, we should see continued benefits of operating leverage as we grow revenues sustainably as the third-largest player in the largest regulated gaming market. Our path to $500 million of EBITDA and beyond should not take much convincing. Market-level NGR growth in revenues, combined with operational leverage that is already coming through, will do it. To sum up, we firmly believe BetMGM will be a very profitable, long-term winner facing into the biggest TAM opportunity in the sector of our generation. But as we often say within BetMGM, it takes a village, and will only happen with the support and drive of our incredibly talented BetMGMers and the tireless work of our colleagues at Entain and MGM Resorts. I thank you all. With that, I'd like to hand over the call to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our first question is from Brant Montour at Barclays.
Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I want to drill down into the premium mass commentary and the shift in strategy in OSB more toward that higher-value player, which was pretty clear, but I just want to understand a little bit better. When you think about premium mass, as you've coined it, how much of your current activity is that customer? I noticed you didn't call it VIP. Can you just describe that customer a little bit better, and how drastic of a shift is this strategy toward that customer in 2025?
Morning, Brant.
Thanks for the question. It's Adam. I wouldn't call it a drastic shift. It's been an evolution. Our refinement of focus has been an evolution over the course of 2024, and what it's impacting really is where we put our money and how we invest, how we invest between channels, and how we prioritize between markets and between states. What that means in practical terms is that we're really fishing in the deepest waters, and we're investing behind success, and so we took a lot of learnings through the course of 2024. It was actually helped by our broader strategy in the first part of 2024, and so what we're doing, our North Star, frankly, our North Star is payback period and ROI, and so we're focusing our spend really on where we are seeing and achieving ROI that's within the threshold level.
And what that means is we're seeing actually a small increase in CPAs, but a drastic and exciting reduction in PGP, so predicted gross profit ROI. And that's how we're going about it. What it means for 2025 is that we will see a reduction in practical terms again. We will be spending less in states where, frankly, the brand either has less penetration or we were later in the market, really where we're foregoing or we're leaving behind situations where our predicted gross profit is longer than our target. So, for example, at five-year payback, we're not really investing behind anymore. Does that help?
Okay, great. That does help. And maybe if you could just add a layer into that discussion about what's unique to your offering, i.e., with MGM Rewards and maybe Bonvoy. I don't know if that's been activated and integrated.
You could talk about sort of how impactful those two integrations have been and how much you think you need to leverage it to hit those promo reduction targets in your 2025 guide.
Yes. So it's all part of our ecosystem, actually. BetMGM is a brand that treats our players right. And part of being treated right is to enjoy real-life experiences with MGM Resorts for our premium players, for your tier status and your status more generally to be recognized regardless of whether you're playing with BetMGM online or whether you arrive to enjoy, I don't know, March Madness with your friends. And so the reciprocity of our loyalty framework is an important part. Equally, the fact that you can earn points, loyalty points, plays into that, supports that loyalty objective.
The specific question about our time with Marriott, really, that's about offering more flexibility in how you enjoy the fruits of your loyalty. And we've seen many tens of thousands of our BetMGM players link their accounts with Marriott. So we're pleased about how that relationship has started.
Great. Thanks, everyone.
We'll move next to Adrien de Saint-Hilaire at Bank of America.
Yes. Good afternoon or good morning to you. A couple of questions, please. So first of all, in that $2.4 billion-$2.5 billion, and I'll call it 17% growth versus 2024, can you decompose a bit between sports betting and iGaming? And then the second question, there are a number of states which are currently discussing legalizing iGaming. I was just wondering if you think any state is actually likely to legalize this year or go through potentially a ballot.
Yes, some of your expectations there. Thank you.
Thanks, Adrian. Gary, I'll hand the sports question to you after I've addressed the iGaming question. First thing to say, just to manage expectations, we don't expect there to be new iGaming states in 2025. Having said that, there has been, as you know, there have been nine states that have introduced some form of enabling legislation this year. And of course, this will be known to you. The likelihood of any individual state being successful depends on a myriad of factors that really operate at a local level. So what is the local opposition? What does the political landscape look like? Who are the champions and what are the opposition factors? I mean, as is always the case with this kind of legislation. Step back.
The broad point here is nine states are taking active steps towards favorable legislation, towards legislation of iGaming. Our perspective is it is just a matter of time before we see a lot more states adopt some form of iGaming legislation. For BetMGM, this is an exciting future. What I will say is that the guidance we've given today does not include any new iGaming states outside of Alberta. For us, as I think was included in Gary's prepared remarks, that represents upside to our BetMGM strategic future. The three states that we're watching closely, of course, Maryland, Illinois, and New York. But as I say, none is expected to be available in 2025. Gary?
Yeah. Hello.
On the split between OSB growth and gaming growth, the gaming machine has been churning and picking up speed throughout the end of the year and into this year. It is a steadier beast kind of going forward at its consistent growth rates, double digits, moving nicely. No real big whiplash effect this year from Alberta as it comes later in the year. Strong, steady growth, consistent with where we've been, maybe a little bit up on gaming. On sports, we actually see a bigger growth this year compared to last year significantly as we have the player optimization efforts that we talked about, and we've built a bunch of players under the tent in 2024 that'll spread their wings in 2025. We also have the benefit to growth rates of having the suppression from subpar sports results in 2024, which will help the 2025 growth rate.
Bigger jump in sports, consistent growth in gaming for next year.
Thank you both.
We'll move next to Dan Politzer at Wells Fargo.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. First, I guess I wanted to get a better sense of how you're thinking about sports versus iGaming. Certainly, your share shifted around a bit over the last few years, and at this point, your sports product has improved a lot. Do you feel like it's pedaled down, get that share back in sports, or is it really more of a kind of goal to be profitable and reduce those promotions as you head to 2025?
Okay. Going back to our journey, I think, is an important context to respond to your question. The objective coming into 2024 was stabilize market share, which we've done successfully.
In sports, our business now is two-thirds, one-third iGaming sports. But really, as we've talked about, our inflection from here is in the area of sports. As you rightly recognize, we have made material improvements through the course of 2024 in our sports product and our sports experience. Our app is faster. Our players are really engaging with it in a much deeper way. And so we're excited about the potential of our sports app. Now, clearly, we are, as I said, an iGaming juggernaut. And our strength, very much so, is in iGaming. So we will continue to be pedal to the metal in iGaming and look forward to more states. But we are certainly not giving up on sports. Frankly, the opposite. We think we found our niche. We have a very clear identity.
In terms of what we are aiming to achieve as we look to the future, it's profitable growth. It's profitable growth. It's not growth at all costs. It is profitable, sustainable growth. The one thing I do want to underscore, there is no profit future, a scaled profit future without a healthy and growing and sustainable top line. This may be obvious to everybody on the call, but it certainly is worth saying, which is why we are continuing to invest in our sports business, but we are forsaking five-year paybacks for much more exciting paybacks with players with whom the BetMGM brand resonates much more strongly. That's been our growth and learning and refinement of our strategy in 2024.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
I guess just to follow on that topic in terms of really focusing on sports, I mean, my math indicated something like structural hold in the low 9% range for 2024. Any incremental color or details on how you think about growing that over the next few years, just given it seems like the parlay product has really started to gain some traction?
Yes. Okay. The structural hold percentage depends on two things. One is obviously pricing, but the biggest single factor driving hold percentage is bet mix. And the biggest single thing driving bet mix is the nature of customers. Not all customers are the same. BetMGM over-indexes, as our premium mass would suggest, over-indexes on a relative basis on higher value, so larger bet size single players. Now, these players are very valuable players to BetMGM.
So cash margin is solid and high and attractive, but GGR percentage margin is lower. So when you step back and look at the overall basket, our GGR margin is weighted, I think, relatively more at BetMGM towards those higher bet size, lower margin players within the basket of players that look like that. And of course, our parlay players who are loving our SGP and are loving parlay products more generally. So you are right. Over time, we expect there to be greater penetration of Same Game Parlay and parlay product as our product continues to improve. But alongside that, we also have the contribution and the impact of those lower margin single players.
Got it. That all makes sense. Thank you so much.
Okay.
And next, we'll go to Ben Shelley at UBS.
Hiya.
Just like on iGaming, I would love to get your equivalent thoughts on the tax bills also emerging this year in the U.S. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That's quite a question. Well, we always have our eye on the tax bills, and we have an industry interest, a shared interest in ensuring that we are taxed fairly and in a way which allows our regulated industry to flourish instead of the illegal markets. So if we step back, what are our objectives? The objectives from a state perspective should be, in my mind, to generate tax revenues, facilitate an entertainment product for consumers in state, protect the vulnerable, and that includes ensuring that all play is legal onshore play. And the risk, of course, with some of these tax bills is that that last objective becomes challenged.
The more expensive you make it to participate, you make the cost of participation onshore. What you're doing effectively is making it more difficult for, frankly, smaller players to compete with the larger players. You're also making it less attractive for onshore players to offer value that can compete with the offshore market. We are working very hard. We are working very hard through our industry group to educate lawmakers on the potential risks of punitive tax measures. We're also seeking to educate on a better alternative. This is linked with the earlier question. What is the better alternative? If the objective is to raise tax dollars for a state or for a jurisdiction, then by far and away, the best option is to legislate and regulate iGaming.
The tax dollars are versus increasing tax on sports betting, the tax dollar opportunity in iGaming is far, far more significant, as we can see in multi-state, sorry, multi-product states, so that's really the combination of considerations and initiatives that are underway.
Thank you very much, and just by way of follow-up, do you feel like lawmakers are listening to those arguments? What kind of feedback are you getting?
Some, yes. Some, no. It really depends on the individual states. Some states, leading lawmakers are more receptive. The topic can be polarizing, and so to the extent that you have lawmakers who have an entrenched position, that can be more challenging, but that doesn't mean we give up. We're a tenacious bunch.
Thanks very much, guys. I really appreciate it.
Sure.
We'll go next to Barry Jonas at Truist.
Hey, guys.
I wanted to get your thoughts on these new predictive betting markets. To what degree do you see this as a competitive threat to BetMGM? And at the same time, is it an area you would explore? Thanks.
Thanks for the question. It's certainly enjoying lots of headlines in recent days and weeks, but the reality is in sports betting, take the other way, full markets, financial markets, one of the key underpins is the consistency and fungibility of market in order for there to be an ongoing trading environment, and that really isn't the case with sports betting. Our markets live for a handful of days at most, and so really, in order for the more financial market-type approach to sports betting to thrive, that needs to be overcome, and frankly, nowhere else in the world has that been overcome.
The other thing I'd say is that we do, BetMGM, offer election betting. We offer election betting in Ontario, where it is allowed. I think for us, it's a wait and see. We certainly have the skills to offer an equivalent and, frankly, more dynamic in our minds product, and so to the extent it represents an opportunity, we will certainly participate in that. But the underpinning observation would be there needs to be a level playing field, and that's really the argument that we're making. There needs to be a level playing field, so something that is allowed under a different set of rules should also be allowed for us, if you see what I mean. So the basis of opposition should be consistently applied, or the basis of enablement should be consistently applied, and that's what we're arguing for, but we do step back.
We do see this as a potential opportunity. It's very popular elsewhere in the world. The Entain Group is one of the leaders in election betting. Obviously, it's allowed in Europe. And so we have the skills and capabilities. So we'll wait and see what's allowed.
Great. And just as a follow-up question, clearly, we had an unfavorable hold stretch in Q4, but I'm curious if you've seen specific players roll their winnings back through at a higher rate, either OSB or maybe even iGaming. Curious to what degree you think that's contributed to the strong January. Thanks.
Yeah. Very interesting. There is an emotional response, and there's a practical response. The practical response is very few bettors and gamers leave any meaningful amount of money in their gaming accounts for any length of time.
That, plainly, when players win, generally speaking, unless they continue to play in the short period thereafter or roll their funds as part of a session or a weekend, generally speaking, players will withdraw a lot of their funds, if not all their funds, and so the practical answer is, well, then as a result of that, their funds are not really available for cross-product play. The emotional question, the emotional response, however, is that when you've made money at BetMGM because all your bets came in, you feel good about going back and playing more and maybe trying something else, and so really, what we've seen is a bit more of the emotional play we believe.
What we've seen in our very, very strong January in both sports and gaming is somewhat, if what you were suggesting was right, we would have seen the incredible strong and out-of-pattern strong December. And while we had a record-breaking December, we've seen an even further record-breaking January where sports results are high. So I think while there is some kind of emotional correlation, I don't think it is particularly very, very strong.
Really helpful. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Our next question comes from Joe Stauff at Susquehanna.
Thanks. Good morning, Adam and Gary. Is there any way to describe, say, the opportunity or where you're at in terms of collaboration with MGM at this point, in terms of both BetMGM and MGM Resorts?
Certainly, it seems on this call and the outlook you're suggesting, this is really how you can drive, say, a higher quality of premium mass in your OSB mix this year. Is there any way to describe that?
Without question, the practical, the functional relationship with MGM Resorts has, and probably we've said this before, but has never been stronger. That is our reality. Look, we've BetMGM has done a lot of the plumbing over 2024. So we have our leading sports betting app now in Nevada. We have pulled Nevada into our single-account, single-wallet framework. We have activation agents on the ground in MGM properties. And this is really helping to drive player acquisition into BetMGM. And we've spoken in the past about what does ideal future look like.
It's using the fantastic properties in Nevada as really a hub for player acquisition and, frankly, a destination for players to enjoy MGM properties as one of the tools for retention. And that's happening. And we're seeing you saw some of the data earlier in the conversation. We've seen a 61% increase in Nevada-based FTDs, and excitingly, almost double, in fact, around double of the players that start there continue their BetMGM journey when they get home. And that, when we get home play, is starting to become a meaningful contributor to the BetMGM digital business. And we're excited about that. We track that every week. I meet with some of the senior executives at MGM and go through the trends we're seeing. We're starting to get even more refined now. For example, what is the impact?
What is our expected impact of a Raiders home game depending on who they're playing? So now we're starting to develop plans and new, even more refined initiatives to capitalize on those moments. You're absolutely right. Does that assist and support our premium mass objective? Certainly. It definitely does. Having said that, that is only one of our resources for acquiring those companies. It was mentioned earlier, but the new segmentation models, a new version, I don't know what we're on to now, but version 2025 segmentation framework has allowed us to really be thoughtful about where we apply our promotional dollars. We've got a new attribution modeling framework which allows us to really understand the impact of the next dollar of spend on the efficiency of that dollar, as well as all the dollars alongside it.
We're becoming really; we have become, I believe, much more sophisticated in our approach to acquiring, retaining, monetizing premium mass players. And that's having a very, very positive impact on our payback periods.
Understood. And with my follow-up, you have a higher frequency of play. I think you had sort of measured 27% in the second half for iCasino. What is that attributable to? Obviously, it's a number of things, but maybe the main drivers for that number in terms of frequency of play.
I wish there was one thing I could tell you because then, well, do it the other way. If there was one thing, it would be easy. But frankly, to create a business and an experience where on a weekly basis, I'm going to give you a crazy statistic now.
On average, during the football season, our iGaming business, which you can see the numbers, our iGaming business, on average, players came to play with BetMGM more than four times a week. You asked me a question, "Well, what's that about?" It's about everything. It's about from the very, very top clarity on our brand identity to really the bottom, which is how we manage the priority of our customer care queue. And who gets answered first and how long it takes, all of that plays into why players are coming back again and again. Now, that takes nothing away from the fact that we have the broadest range of games in the business in North America. It takes nothing away from the fact that our recommendation engine, which is itself onto its second or third iteration of refinement, is very, very effective, our games recommendation engine.
The speed of our app on the way in, on the way out, our payment methods, all of that plays into the overall experience that our players have on BetMGM. And frankly, just tying it into one of the questions earlier, that we have hundreds of thousands of players using their reward points and cashing in their reward points. And that's another reason why we have such a high level of engagement. Our reward points are valuable to our players, and they're using them. And so you put it all together, and the ecosystem is working better now than before.
Thanks a lot, Adam.
Okay.
We'll go next to Chad Beynon at Macquarie.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Adam, you've previously talked about a 30% long-term EBITDA margin, and I know there's a lot of variables that go into this with scale, flow-through, taxes, et cetera.
But given the slight shift towards the premium mass model on OSB at this point, does anything change in terms of where you can get that long-term margin to?
Yeah. Chad, we're not going to update guidance on long-term margin. What I will say is that 30% requires significant scale for all the reasons you already acknowledged in your question. Right now, we are focused on profitable revenue growth and dollar margin. And so we are going to improve EBITDA to $250 million from 2024- 2025. And then really, the maturation of our cohorts and the effectiveness of our acquisition, retention, monetization strategy of new cohorts and the reduced ROI is going to be generating meaningful cash margin in 2025, 2026, and beyond. Where that takes us, how far that takes us, depends on a lot of factors.
Really, our focus now is making sure we execute effectively in 2025, setting us up on that path to $500 million of EBITDA.
Okay. Thank you, Adam. Then lastly, just in terms of live dealer, you talked about really good cross-sell from your sports betting players over to iGaming, which should be positive for certain types of iCasino games. What do you think it's going to take for just customer education or appreciation of live dealer to start to see live dealer percentage of overall iCasino revs move more towards what we see in other markets like the U.K.? Thank you.
Yes. I think it's a question of time, actually. I think one sample. Live dealers is a specific feeling. It's a specific experience. And the players who enjoy it love it and are very loyal to the product.
And frankly, BetMGM has under-indexed in live dealer relative to the markets over the last 12 months. And we see that as an exciting opportunity for us. We're investing in new branded studios. We're investing in more capacity. We're adding new content, new types of live experiences. And so we think that there's a great opportunity for BetMGM just to assert ourselves to just to our market share, frankly, in live dealer. But to your point about player adoption, I think it will happen organically. It's a mat ter of time.
Thank you very much, guys.
Cool.
And we will take our last question from John DeCree at CBRE.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Adam, I wanted to circle back to one of the KPIs you mentioned earlier in the presentation about OSB players active in iGaming grew 11.5 points, I think.
I think 2024 was the period. Curious if you could give us a little bit more color on that. I guess from a customer acquisition perspective, what % of new customers are coming in via iGaming first versus OSB? And how has that kind of changed this year versus prior years? It seems like more players are playing iGaming, but curious where your kind of primary acquisition channels are.
Yes. We're not going to give the split of the positives between sports and iGaming. But to the first part of your question, I'm sure if it was in the prepared materials, but we give you one data point that we are excited about, which speaks to the importance of having both products. During the football season, we saw the percentage of sports players also playing some kind of iGaming game north of 70%.
So north of 70% of our players enjoyed a game experience during that period. And so we think this is very exciting, which is frankly one of the reasons why we are excited about this moment for our sports business. Because we've managed to stabilize and even increase our share in gaming with a smaller sports book in a period of transition. And as we look to a future where we have the wind in our sails in sports, we think that's only a good thing for our iGaming business. That's it.
Thanks, Adam. That was all for me. I appreciate it. Thank you.
With that, I will conclude the Q&A session. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.