Good morning, and welcome to Entain's Q3 trading update and analyst and investor call. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand over to your host, Jette Nygaard-Andersen, Chief Executive Officer, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for dialing in today. As always, I'm joined by Rob Wood as well as the IR team. It's great to be speaking to you all again. As usual, I'll start with a brief overview of our progress, delivering on our strategic objectives and ambitions, and then Rob will take you through our Q3 trading in greater detail, and then we'll open to Q&A. I'm pleased to say that we've delivered a robust performance across the group, with NGR up 12% for the year to date. Online NGR in Q3 was broadly in line with expectations, 2% lower on a constant currency basis, which largely reflects of the headwinds included in the prior year comparators. What is fantastic to see is that more and more customers are choosing to play with us.
Q3 delivered another record numbers of access. We aren't just creating a great experience online. Our digitalized offerings in our shops is the best on the high street, with retail delivering another strong quarter of growth, up 10% year-on-year. As a result, our underlying momentum is good. In the first half, we outperformed our main competitors in key markets, and we expect that to continue. It is this underlying momentum that demonstrates the strength and resilience of our business as our customer focus continues to drive a broader and more recreational player base. We continue to take great strides in delivering an even better offer. In sports, our new fan zone for both Coral and Ladbrokes brands is proving very popular, delivering an exclusive matchday experience to customers in the UK.
In gaming, three of our top five games this year are new in-house releases, while five of BetMGM's top 10 games are Entain in-house creations. In retail, our industry-leading gaming machines and betting terminals in the U.K are driving revenue growth and a broader demographic of customers. It's the entire cabinet experience, the menu journey, as well as the greatest content range, much of it exclusive, that is providing customers with what they want in a format they enjoy. The insights that our data and analytics provide is a powerful tool for both marketing and player protection. With over 160 million profiles, we have an exceptional understanding of our customers. It's a significant differentiator, and it enables us to lead our industry in digital marketing and, of course, player protection. We are constantly improving the way we engage with our customers, evolving alongside them.
There is still much more we can do, and we are developing new performance marketing skills and centers of excellence to ensure all of our brands benefit from our customer insights. Our focus on brand marketing continues, and I hope you have all seen our iconic Rocky campaign with Ladbrokes and bwin's fan-led creative. Both were launched recently and have been hugely successful. Over in Australia, the Ladbrokes Cox Plate will take center stage of the Spring Carnival. As we announced last week, we are taking the Ladbrokes brand into retail through our partnership with TAB. It's not just sports. partypoker launched its first Ontario Poker Series, as well as an exciting new tournament leaning on our partnership with McLaren Racing. Moving to BetMGM, we continue to power ahead in the U.S.
We're the clear number two in our markets with a share of 25%, excluding New York. We remain the leader in iGaming with 31% share with gains in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In sports betting, we focus on those markets where we see strong returns. This strength is most evident where we were live on day one of a state regulation. Most recently, we launched in Kansas, and we are delighted with the customer activity and engagement levels we've seen so far. BetMGM's Q3 NGR was just over $400 million, up approximately 90% versus last year as the market continues to open up. On a same state basis, Q3 NGR was up around 50% year-on-year.
While July and August are seasonally quiet, BetMGM's strong financial performance over those months reiterates the long-term profitability of our business model, which is seasonally on the marketing front. As we continue to build scale and momentum, this reinforces our confidence in reaching sustainable profitability during 2023. During Q3, BetMGM started rolling out its refreshed sports book app. This has a reimagined design, improved navigation, and enhanced personalization to optimize discovery and the end-to-end betting journey. The app re-ramp has landed really well, and we'll be launching single app, single wallet before the end of the year. The NFL season has started strongly. Volumes have been fantastic, with strong performance across all metrics. Actives, handle, bet count, reactivations, margins, all really positive. Of course, the start of the fall season, sports kicked off with its usual flurry of promotional and bonusing incentives.
However, so far, the market has been relatively rational and in line with our expectations. Time for the NFL build-up. BetMGM launched its latest star-studded advertising campaign with Jamie Foxx and Vanessa Hudgens, joined by a number of sports stars. Alongside the US, we continue to see growth across our other strategic pillars. Our core online markets are expected to grow at around 7%-8% CAGR over the next five years, with some of our newer markets growing at double-digit rates. We have announced 9 transactions in the last 18 months, five this year, taking us into new markets, as well as deepening our presence in growing markets. In new opportunities, Unikrn is getting ready to launch our skill-based wagering product, opening up an exciting and potentially significant new opportunity.
Looking across our business, we estimate that the markets we are in are worth around $70 billion today, and we aim to drive meaningful and profitable market share as the opportunity continues to expand. Critically, across the group, we continue to set the pace for sustainability and player safety for our industry. ARC is leading the way, and we couldn't be more pleased with how it's demonstrating groundbreaking levels of player protection, and we look forward to sharing more with you at our Entain Sustain event next week. This isn't just across core U.K. and international markets. As you know, the ARC program has been rolled out internationally and in the U.S. Entain and BetMGM led our operator peers to create the industry's 12 principles of responsible online gaming. Let me finish by saying, as we look forward, we remain mindful of the shifting macro environment.
Entain has a healthy underlying momentum and is making great strides in broadening our customer appeal. Our diversification across geography, products, and broader customer base underpins our group's sustainable high-quality earnings. Therefore, we remain confident and are well-positioned to deliver on our strategic pillars of growth and sustainability over the medium term. With that, I'll hand you over to Rob.
Thanks, Jette, and good morning, everyone. As Jette has already outlined, our underlying performance remains healthy with good positive momentum. Group NGR was up 2% year-over-year in Q3, broadly in line with expectations, and year-to-date NGR is up 12% year-over-year. In online, NGR was up 1%, helped a little by FX, as on a constant currency basis, NGR was down 2% versus last year. The enforced temporary closure of the Netherlands while we wait for licensing took three percentage points off growth, so stripping that out, online NGR was up 1% in constant currency. Q3 last year also saw the benefit of the end of the Euros tournament as well as lockdowns in Australia. If we adjust for those two, NGR would have been up mid-single digits in Q3 this year. That's our underlying run rate.
Additionally, with further growth in our actives base, which is up 65% on 2019 and up 6% year-on-year, and with ongoing momentum delivering market share gains, you can see why we are confident in the underlying performance of the business. Our strategic focus to broaden our recreational base, coupled with the ongoing implementation of RG measures in the UK, does mean that spend per head continues to track lower year-on-year. However, importantly, we have not seen any further deterioration due to macro conditions than we highlighted in Q2. Looking at some of our key online geographies, in the UK, year-on-year trends improved significantly versus H1, despite the ongoing affordability measures being implemented by leading operators.
In Australia, we continue to go from strength to strength, but as anticipated, it was down in Q3 as the lockdowns lapsed in the major states and a 30% growth performance last year. Brazil delivered further growth, with Sportingbet leading the market. However, this growth is more moderate versus our expectations due to market overcrowding ahead of its regulation. Over in Italy, we bounced back to strong growth as lockdowns wash out of the prior year numbers and omni-channel operators continue to outperform. In Germany, trading remains challenging as we still await robust policing and the issuance of gaming licenses. A quick note on win margin. Online continues to benefit from strong sports margins with Q3 this year at 12.9%, a fraction ahead of last year. In retail, we continue to see encouraging performance across our shops with NGR 8% ahead of 2019 levels.
In the UK, this has been led by the strength of our digital offering with both the gaming machines and Betstation cabinets doing very well. While in Italy, volumes have also recovered to ahead of pre-COVID levels, and the growth trajectory that we enjoyed pre-COVID has now resumed. BetMGM in the US continues to grow rapidly, as Jette has discussed. The NGR of just over $400 million for the quarter sees NGR year to date up to $1 billion, meaning we are well on track for our NGR target of over $1.3 billion for the year. It's also good to see that while we remain the outright market leader in iGaming with 31% market share, our online sports betting offer continues to perform well.
In particular, when you look at states where we were live on the first day that the state opened, our market share is around 25%, which is a good reflection of our capabilities, and it points to future online sports betting share gains as more states open up. Before I wrap up, let me share some color as to how we're thinking about online growth next year. Recognizing the increasingly challenging economic environments around the world, I think it's prudent to model a range of revenue growth assumptions for the year ahead, and our range of growth scenarios are aligned with analyst thinking and consensus for 2023. Importantly, let me also remind people of the excellent resilience and flexibility that we have in our business model. Most importantly, around 80% of our cost base in online is variable.
Variable either because it's formulaic as a percentage of revenue, like gaming duties or content royalties, or variable because it's uncommitted and can be flexibly controlled as appropriate. For example, our marketing spend. Almost all of that variable cost sits above contribution margin, and that is why you hear me say that we can manage our business to contribution margin, which for us is approximately 40% without affecting the medium to long-term growth of the business. The circa 20% of our cost base, which is less variable, typically sits between our contribution margin and our EBITDA margin of mid-20s% to high 20s%. That control and flexibility above contribution provides both comfort and sufficient visibility on profitability for us to plan with confidence and continue investing in the future. Whilst we remain vigilant and disciplined, our growth strategy continues.
Coming back to the present and in summary for Q3, the performance was broadly in line with expectations and excluding the Netherlands, we exited the period with a return to growth in online. Retail continues to trade well and BetMGM is going from strength to strength and firmly on track to deliver guidance. Looking to Q4, we anticipate strong growth in online as we annualize both the temporary loss of Netherlands and the last remaining lockdowns in Australia from late October, and we also look forward to benefiting from an exciting World Cup. Therefore, we reiterate our full-year EBITDA guidance of GBP 925 million-GBP 975 million. With that, I'll hand the call over to our operator, who will open up the lines for Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one. To withdraw your question, please press star two. The first question comes from the line of Ed Young of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jette. Good morning, Rob. My first question is on the online growth expectations. Rob, you talked about scenario planning. You said it was aligned with analyst thinking as well. I wondered if you could just dig into that a little bit more to help us frame the debate. Your three-year CAGR at the moment is 11% in online. Jette, you also mentioned market growth expectations of maybe 7%-8%, but there was also some talk about market share gains in there. Perhaps could you talk a little bit about how you see the scenarios for online growth going forward?
Yeah. Hey, good morning, Ed. Yes, absolutely. Let me just kick off, and I'll hand over to Rob also for further comments. Let me just start off by saying that when we look at Q3, we're very pleased with what we're seeing and especially the underlying growth and the underlying momentum going into Q4. There's a lot here that's really great for the business, and we continue to grow our monthly actives, which is really what it's all about. Now, looking ahead, we of course are mindful of the environment in which we operate in, and we remain vigilant. That's really why when we look ahead, we think it's prudent to, instead of modeling out one growth scenario, we're modeling out several growth scenarios.
That's what Rob talked about in the introduction here. However, I wanna stress that as our business is not the bellwether of discretionary spend here, and we have this diversity around geography and products, that's why we keep on executing our strategy. That leads me to the comment that I made in my introductory remarks was that if we look longer term, so outside of rest of year and 2023, we're expecting that our core markets will grow at 7%-8%, whereas the newer markets, so some of the emerging markets will grow double-digit. That's why when we look ahead, we expect us to go back to potentially double-digit growth across the territories here.
There is the rest of year, and there is how we look at 2023, and we're not here to predict how the macro or the economic environment develops, which is why we're looking at scenarios. Then we look longer term where we believe our markets is going and how we expect us to perform in those markets. That was a little bit the overriding comments here. Rob, do you wanna talk a little bit more about 2023 and the scenarios?
Yeah, happy to do that. As I said in my opening comments, Q3 run rate feels like mid-single digits% on an underlying basis for online. Q4, we anticipate higher than that, high single digits%. Why? Primarily because of the World Cup. That, therefore, doesn't carry through into 2023, so back to mid-single digits% as an underlying run rate. That's, you know, best view as we see it today. When it comes to scenario planning, Jette has alluded to, clearly we have to be mindful of the environment. We study the numbers every week. It feels like a low single digit-high single digit range is appropriate for scenario planning. The good news with our business, as I outlined earlier on, is that when you apply a 40% contribution margin to that, the range of outcomes from an EBITDA perspective is tight.
Therefore, you know, we can manage the business accordingly and continue to invest in growth whilst, of course, remaining vigilant all the time. I should say that none of those numbers include SuperSport or BetCity. That's all incremental growth on top of those scenarios that I've mentioned.
Very useful. Thank you. My second one was, there's a line in the statement about greater confidence in sustainable EBITDA in the U.S. for next year, which is a slightly different formulation on the existing guidance. Is that just a strong revenue progression for BetMGM that you can see that NGR progression coming through so you can sort of look forward to next year, or are you seeing signs of operational gearing and improved profitability within the quarter as well?
Yeah, let me take that. First of all, when it comes to the NGR, you're right that with year to date now we're around $1 billion. Q4 was $400 million, that's up 90%. As I recall, H1 was up 65%. That just shows that we continue to build both the customer base. Very pleased with how we retain customers, and how we are managing marketing as well as the remaining things. That goes into the operational. Our models just become stronger and stronger on marketing and our cohorts as they develop. There is, of course, an inbuilt multiplier here. Now, when it comes to July and August, we're very pleased also with the strong financial metrics that we saw during those months.
that then gives us confidence that the model is basically making great progress in delivering the sustainable positive EBITDA during 2023, which we've talked about before, and the longer term profitability of the business, which we've said all along is why we're here. We're building a sustainable business for the future. both traction on the top line, but certainly also what we saw through July and August, which I should say are more quiet months seasonally when it comes to marketing, but it still is a proof point for how our model works.
Thank you. My final one is just the interest rate environment has changed a lot this year. Does that change your attitude towards M&A and use of balance sheet at all? You know, there were some recent reports that the company was a bidder for the Western Australian tab, for instance. Any thoughts about yeah interest costs and the sort of trade-off on leverage there? Thanks.
Yeah. Let me start off, and Rob, please, jump in afterwards. As we said a couple of times, we of course remain vigilant and very prudent when we plan our business given the different uncertainty. The health of the business is good, so we continue to deliver. We still have a strong pipeline on M&A. We continue to also look at those opportunities which we can because of the strength of the business and our strong balance sheet. You know, while interest rates are not helpful, it doesn't prohibit us to continued M&A here. In the current environment, it's, I would say it might even open up new doors for us or new opportunities where we are looking at things where others are pulling back.
Really our M&A strategy is unchanged here. We start with strategic fit, the importance to the business, look at the business on its own merits, and then of course, we look at the financing in the current environment. Rob, do you wanna comment on leverage and interest rates further?
Yeah, I mean, I'll add a little bit more, but I think you hit the key points there, Jette. I think the important point with M&A is to remember that the returns that we generate through M&A are so compelling typically because synergies are such a large portion of existing EBITDA that we're buying. What that means is that while rising interest rates are unhelpful to the model, they don't. They just mean that the returns are slightly lower than they would otherwise be. For the right deal, the right terms, it's still a compelling growth opportunity for us. Of course, we remain disciplined, and we have that factored into our models as we're assessing deals. As Jette said, the other important context here is our balance sheet is healthy.
We're still forecasting to end this year a little under 3 times levered despite 5 acquisitions this year or 9 over the last year and a half. You know, we feel good that for the right deals, the right terms, then there is capacity and desire to carry on with M&A.
Thank you both.
The next question comes from James Rowland Clark of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on BetMGM. Again, as you said, you stated that you're even more confident about delivering sustainable EBITDA at some point in 2023. You said in Q2 that once you'd broken even in the U.S., that would trigger an appraisal of how you might crystallize value in the JV. Could you talk a little bit about the different scenarios under consideration to achieve that?
Sure, good morning to you, James. Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure what I said was that the main focus now is to make sure that we build a fantastic business for today and for the future, and that we're confident in becoming profitable during 2023, probably to the latter part of the year. That's really the first milestone for us. You know, there is no real hurry for us or our partners to do further to crystallize the value here. Then when we reach that point, that could open up further opportunities for us. Whether it's through dividends or whether we at some point could look at an IPO. I just wanna reinforce again that right now our focus is on building the best businesses supporting BetMGM.
We do that 24/7 every single day. The team's doing a fantastic job, whether it's in the U.S. or whether it's all the Entain people across the world. That's really what we're focusing on and I think we're very happy to see that it's paying off. You shouldn't expect us to have a plan for the minute that we hit profitability next year, but it's certainly a main milestone for us.
Thank you. That's great. My second question is just following up on M&A and, you know, the reasonably high levels of leverage today in the rising interest rate environment. You stated that the returns on deals you're looking at remain incredibly compelling. Are they still more compelling than buying back your own shares at this share price?
Let me start on the overall M&A picture and Rob, if you wanna comment on the share buyback. Listen, you know, prices are where they are. We've certainly seen that the publicly traded companies have come down quite a bit, and that could open up some attractive opportunities. I think privately held companies, they still have expectations of being paid a fair value for the price. I do think there are opportunities for us though, if I look at this strategically, because others might be holding back, where, as we just discussed, for the right company, for the right terms and for the right price, we're still confident in executing on our strategy around growth, in particular, but certainly also around M&A.
As Rob has just said, it's just in our industry, M&A is just such a compelling opportunity for us to grow the business. But again, in this environment, keep repeating myself, you know, we are looking at the companies on a standalone basis, on its own merits, and it needs to be the right company, the right brand, the right team, and at the right price and terms. Then we of course look at financing and also compare to how else could we deploy our capital, which is obviously something that Rob and I are very focused on. Rob, do you wanna comment further and around share buyback?
Yes, happy to. I can add a little more color. Actually SuperSport is a very real example of that exact consideration. Should we be executing on SuperSport as we did in August or looking at a share buyback alternative? As you'd expect, we studied both very carefully and discussed it as a board. What it comes down to, two main considerations really. What's best for the business strategically and what's best for the business economically. When you study the numbers, we found that on an economic basis, SuperSport and M&A still came out on top relative to the largest share buyback that we could realistically do, so M&A was still more compelling.
Obviously from a strategic perspective, you know, there's no doubt that investing into Central and Eastern Europe and creating a platform for further growth through that region was preferable from a strategic perspective. I think the simple answer to your question, James, is we will look at a share buyback alternative every time we pull the trigger on another piece of M&A. Even in the current environment, as was still the case in August, if you remember, the M&A opportunity came out on top.
Brilliant. Thank you. That's really helpful. Sorry, my final one is just could you help us with the UK year-on-year growth rate? It was down 15% in H1, but you said it improved in Q3. I know the comps are easier, so just wondering whether that got nearer flat in Q3.
Sure. Rob, do you wanna take that one?
Yeah, happy to. It did get much nearer flat. It was still negative, but only marginally so. Really pleased with that progression, as you say, minus 15 in H1, which was easily the strongest performance across the market, much closer to flat in Q3. The difference, of course, is moving away from lapping lockdowns in the prior year. The question then is, well, it's still marginally negative in Q3. What's the underlying story there, given ordinarily you'd expect, you know, at least mid-single digit growth out of the U.K. market? Really it's two things. One, it's the ongoing implementation of measures, particularly around affordability. Then secondly, in our view, as we talked about in Q2, there is some impact on the consumer from the macro environment.
Still remain confident that the UK will return to growth and particularly pleased to see such a step change from H1 into Q3 as expected.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Next is Michael Mitchell of Davy. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning to you. Morning, Rob, thanks for taking my questions. Three, if I could. Firstly on the U.S, clearly a strong quarter. Rob, I think you used the term well on track to get to the guidance. I think if you look at the H2, Q3 and Q4 cadence of revenue last year, it suggests that you could be comfortably ahead of that, you know, $1.3 billion plus. I just wonder if you could comment really on the upside risk to that guidance and whether you gave any consideration to raising the guidance formally at this stage.
Question one. Question two, in terms of online win margins, you referenced 12.9% for the quarter. I just wonder, could you comment on how much sports results benefit to have. Just get a sense of what the underlying expected margin has reached at this point. Thirdly, back to balance sheet again, and I appreciate you're in the market raising debt in relation to SuperSport at present, but I wonder could you help us in terms of thinking about interest charge for 2023. Thank you.
Thank you and good morning, Michael. Let me take the first one and then I'll hand you over to Rob for online win margins on sports and balance sheet and interest rates. Listen, very pleased with how the business is performing in the U.S, and as we said, Q3 up 90%, $400 million, which means that year to date we're around $1 billion. But we're not at this point changing our outlook. As we have said, we've said more than $1.3 billion for the year, so that still stands. Rob, online win margins on sports and balance sheet interest rates please.
Sure. Morning, Michael. Yeah, another solid quarter for win margin, 12.9%. You know, I still feel that that's a good margin for us. I think I said on the last call that it feels like we start with a 12 now in terms of what we would expect, so to hit 12.9 is a good quarter for us. No massive call-outs from a geographical perspective. If anything, probably worth mentioning that Australia had a tough margin quarter, whereas Italy, in contrast, had a very good margin quarter and UK broadly in line. No particular stories from a territory perspective, other than those three.
From a debt perspective and interest rates, in this year we gave guidance in March, 3.6%, give or take £80 million. From a cash perspective, that still feels about right for this year, but inevitably there will be increases next year, particularly as we look to refinance the March 2024 term loan maturity at some point during the year. What does that mean? Look, it's too early to say really. It'll be interesting to see how the SuperSport financing prices. We'll know more on that next week. But we have to anticipate interest going up from where it is this year. You know, somewhere between 5%-7% is probably a good estimate for the gross debt across the year. In cash terms, inevitably that will see a more than doubling once you layer in the SuperSport new facility as well. In cash terms, nearer GBP 200 million, as opposed to GBP 80 million this year would be my steer at this stage, but we'll know more next week.
Got it. That's great. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Joseph McNamara of Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi there, Joseph McNamara from Citi. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll ask them one at a time, if that's okay. Excluding the U.S., are there any geographies that you can call out that are particularly weak or strong? In particular, it'd be great if you could touch on Australian trading, given the rather difficult comps there and phasing into Q4, as well as an update on Brazil, namely competition which you touched on briefly before. Thank you.
Sure thing. Good morning, Joe. Why don't I just kick off with Brazil and give a little bit of flavor what we're seeing on the ground? Rob, if you wanna talk about the trading on Australia, Brazil, and any other geographies you wanna call out after that. On Brazil, you're absolutely right. I mean, we're still delivering strong growth in Brazil. Year to date, 21%, although Q3 eased off a bit from H2. We are seeing increasingly competitive pressures there ahead of regulation. Growth is healthy, but the competition is really gearing up ahead of the expectation that hopefully after the presidential election, the president will sign off the regulation, and then we'll be able to get licensed into 2023.
We're also still seeing strong revenue monthly in Brazil where that takes up 15% year-on-year in Q3. When it comes to competition, I think I touched upon it last time. I mean, we see more than 200 operator sites that are live at the moment, but they're all small, local, low quality. We don't expect that to proceed once the market becomes regulated, and we get into a licensed regime. Rob, should I hand over to you with some color on trading, please?
Yeah, let me touch on some of the other territories for you. I mentioned in the opening comments, Italy had a very strong quarter but margin-led. Nonetheless, helpful for growth. Germany, still something of a struggle. Really hoping the gaming licenses are issued soon, that is the expectation. That means as a reminder that we can start marketing again, we can start bonusing, we can start cross-selling from sports customers and so on. Really it should mark the start of a growth period in Germany, but not yet. That's still sort of limping along until those licenses come through. Australia is an interesting call-out in Q3. You'll know our H1 growth was excellent, market leading up around 20%. Then in Q3, swung to negative. Why negative?
Because it's annualizing against lockdowns in Australia in the prior year. Both Sydney and Melbourne, if you remember, fell into lockdowns from sort of June, July through to October. And really interesting, if you look at the performance of the states which are not lapping a lockdown in the prior year, the H1 growth rate continued through Q3. For those states that did lap a lockdown, they were down quite significantly as you'd expect, and because of the weighting, it pulled the average down as well. Once we get past late October, I think it was twenty-first of October when Melbourne came out of lockdown, then we expect Australia to return to those similar growth trajectories as to where it was. I think those are the main call-outs really from a geography perspective.
Excellent. No, it's very helpful. Thank you very much. My last one, I think could you give us a sense of how much growth in the fourth quarter you might expect from recent M&A to kind of contribute above and beyond the high single-digit underlying growth that you've pointed out?
The BetCity and SuperSport, we expect them to close during Q4, but that will be towards the end of the year. Rob, I don't know if you wanna say something more about that, but it's not gonna be substantial for this year.
No, that's right. I wouldn't assume a material contribution to the current calendar year. Once they do arrive from a revenue perspective between them, they should be adding high single digits to our online growth for the following 12 months. It will be a material contributor for us when they complete, but as Jette has said, you know, safe to assume they complete later on in Q4, and therefore not a material contributor to the calendar year.
Excellent. Quite clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Monique Pollard of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Jette and Rob. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got three questions. I think, just going back to the bonds maturity, you had a smaller 100 million that matured, just recently. I presume you used cash and balance sheet towards that. Just wanted to check what's your, broader strategy, for the 2020, for the maturity next year.
Do you intend to stay in the bond market or are you looking at a loan, as well other than the term loan, towards the SuperSport acquisition? My second question is on the white paper. If you could provide us an update now that we've had the new, PM elected, are you hearing of anything in terms of timeline, or, in terms of, maybe reconsideration of the priorities there? Just finally, on Germany, you mentioned the sort of licensing risk. Apologies, I'm maybe not up to date on that one. If you could give us some extra color on that one, that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Good morning. Why don't I start out with the white paper and then Rob, I'll hand over to you around the bonds and the German market. On the white paper, aside from the recent turmoil around the new government, I think they have a lot of pressing issues facing them, and they're just back from the annual party conference. Now we do expect to hear more in the coming weeks as they lay out the legislative agenda. That said, we are cognizant that it might be slipping down the list of priorities.
Of course, we would want to get the white paper out and get it into publication, so we do expect to hear something soon. Now, when it comes to what we are hearing, I think it overall, in general terms, the new government's approach and comments have very much been pro-industry, so advocates of freedom of choice and talking about not having nanny state regulation in place. From our perspective, that's all sensible soundings so far, and hopefully that will lead to a balance and proportionate type of regulation when it comes out in the white paper.
The only other thing I would say around timing is that when it comes out, and even with some minor amendments to it would require what is called a write-round, and that will typically take around three weeks' time. I'm conscious that I'm not saying anything very precise here, but in short, we do hope to hear more from the government in the coming weeks. We hope that we'll get the white paper out soon. Whether it will slip, we don't know. We really hope that we can get it out soon, and the soundings that we are hearing are sensible. Then we will see later this year or whether it slips even further. Hope that's a little bit helpful, at least. Rob, bonds and German license.
Sure. Good morning, Gemma. From a debt perspective, as you say, we took out the GBP 100 million bond maturity this year in cash. We can do the same for the GBP 400 million that's maturing next year in September as well. Really our next major maturity is March 2024 with a term loan. The answer to your question is we'll continue to look at a mix of bonds and term loans. We'll get the SuperSport financing done first, and then we'll assess the market and we'll keep monitoring it, and when it feels like the right time, we'll move forward with likely a mix of bonds and term loans in the future. We have flexibility there.
From Germany and the licensing situation, we can absolutely follow up with more detail for you. The big picture here is going back two years now, there was some major regulatory reform in Germany, which has seen our German revenues come off quite significantly, and those revenues effectively have gone to operators who are not complying with the new regime.
If you like, all the rebasing is already in the numbers, so it's only now upside from here. The big catalyst for change is having gaming licenses issued, which then means that you can distinguish between the licensed operators and the unlicensed operators. We expect to see a clampdown on non-compliant operators and hence start to win back the business that we've lost over the last two years. The key point for Germany is that it should be upside only from here. The pain is already in the run rates.
Thank you. That's helpful. Just going back to the bond question, is it safe to assume that you still plan on being in the bond market, but you're probably just looking at the right combination or mix of loans and bonds? Is that a fair assessment?
I think that's the most likely outcome, yes.
Got it. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Kiranjot Grewal of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning. Morning, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly on macro. I think you mentioned there was no incremental impact from Q2 to Q3 that you've seen on the macro front. Can you maybe talk about where you're seeing an impact so far? Then on California, it feels like it might not go through. Would a potential pullback in marketing here be helpful for your, you know, U.S losses expectation for the year? Could we just touch on the UK, please? Realize that H1 was a tough period due to the comps, and it's improving now, but you're rolling out the affordability measures. What are you seeing in terms of market share development? Thank you.
Hey, good morning, Kiranjot. Why don't I start with U.S and talk a little bit about California and then I'll hand over to Rob for the macro Q2 to Q3 and UK. On the US and California, I mean, it's still on for the ballot on the eighth of November. You're right that the recent polling suggests that neither Proposition 27 or 26 will get sufficient votes to pass. While that is, you know, disappointing in itself, we still have another go at it potentially in two years' time. Just on the wider outlook before I talk about marketing and impact there, I mean, over time, we do expect legislation in sports betting in California to happen. I just can't imagine otherwise.
I think it's difficult to imagine that a state like California with more than 21 major professional sports franchises and a population that loves their teams will not at some point legislate around sports betting. If it doesn't happen on November this year, then we remain excited about it, and we'll look at it again next year. I think you shouldn't expect any impact in terms of particular marketing savings here. Of course, when it comes to what we would otherwise have invested next year had California comes online, while that is of course disappointing that will not go online, that will of course be a positive overall for EBITDA and on our journey for profitabilities, as otherwise if California had come online, we and everyone else would have invested significantly into growing that market. I'm not sure if that answered your question before I hand you over to Rob.
That's perfect. Thank you.
Okay, thanks. Rob, macro Q2 to Q3 and UK, please.
Absolutely. Morning, Kiranjot. As we said in Q2 when we were discussing the macro impacts that we were seeing, it really is a mixed bag, and by geography. Some territories absolutely reporting an impact. Other territories, quite the opposite, saying that they're not seeing it at all. I suspect that's why you're seeing a range of views from operators in the industry, because we've all got slightly geographical mixes. For example, for ourselves, where we're number one in the Baltics, inflation now at over 20%. We have seen a double-digit drop-off in spend per head. And that's a good data point to suggest that there is a macro impact because nothing else had happened in the business. Crucially though, active numbers are still great in the Baltics.
We know it's cyclical. We will come out of it at some point. I think the answer to your question, Kiranjot, is, it really is a mixed bag. Baltics are the most extreme with a double-digit impact, others with no impact. Then what's really important, and encouraging, is that when you study the numbers as we do week by week, no real change in trajectory in any of our territories. You know, there's always noise and you always have to keep an eye on it and sort of smooth out the noise. But we don't see a deterioration. Don't see an improvement either, but we don't see a deterioration. Really, we assume an ongoing sort of low to mid-single digit impact of macro in our numbers.
That really explains why we're mid-single digits at the moment, or at least it's a key driver, why we're mid-single digits at the moment, as opposed to the double digits that we'd like to be and expect to be as we look further forward. To the UK and market shares, absolutely, we believe we took share in the first half of the year. We reported -15%, the next closest competitor was -19%. And the next two after that were well into the twenties negative. Do we expect that to continue? Yes, I think we do. There's no doubt that the measures that we're all taking at the direction of the Gambling Commission are having a material impact.
We believe everybody's doing it, or at least the leading operators are doing it. You know, I don't think that there's likely to be much disparity between operators as a result of that. You know, we look forward to continued market share gains and credit the team out in Gibraltar for the great work that they're doing. Hope you've seen the Rocky ads. We like them. They seem to be resonating well for the Ladbrokes brand. Look, our expectation is continued market outperformance in the UK just as we did in the first half of the year.
Super. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Next question comes from David Brohan of Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just three questions from me. Firstly, in the Netherlands, any update on the licensing for the Entain brands there? And secondly in the U.S., how do you view the legislative environment for iGaming? It looks like Illinois might be next to go. New York's also a possibility. What do you see as the catalyst for the next wave of iGaming legislation in the U.S.? Then just finally, I think in the past you'd mentioned that, you know, a major soccer tournament adds a couple of points to online growth. You know, how do you see that playing out this year, given both the macro environment but also the fact that you're comparing a Q4 rather than a Q2 sporting calendar? Thanks.
Yeah. Hey, good morning, David. Let me take the first two. Then Rob, you could take the last one. On Netherlands and you asked about the license there's no change on the approval. We do expect it to complete hopefully sooner rather than later, but during Q4. We remain on track there to receive the license, and that's for the Entain brands, so bwin and partypoker brands. Of course BetCity is always licensed there. On completion with that deal, also in Q4, that provides Social Media's access to the market, which is really important as the market continues to develop and grow post the regulatory changes there.
BetCity is doing really well, which we're really pleased with. Of course, when it comes to the Entain brands, the sooner we get licensed, we will start to rebuild from there. We have at prior calls talked about a six-month rebuild from there. That's now likely into 2023. When it comes to iGaming, I mean, there's no real news here if your question was around new states regulating iGaming.
I mean, the last states we just launched in was Kansas, which is doing great. Really pleased with the conversions from pre-registration into registered players. Then next up are states like Maryland, which suddenly seems to have accelerated their potential launch. We're already there on retail sports betting, but for the online sports betting. Now hopefully it can come online later this year. It was announced, I think, a week ago or beginning of this week, that they've accelerated that process.
Then further to that, we have Ohio coming around beginning of January, which is an exciting state for us. MGM has a property there. We just this week announced a partnership with the Cincinnati Reds, and we'll also have a sports book at the stadium there, when licensed next year. Then of course, we're waiting for Massachusetts. I think the latest news I heard yesterday, it's a little bit back and forth on the process, but that should hopefully also be online beginning of next year.
Those states are then all sports states. When we look ahead, as you say, it's really New York was discussing potentially progressing on legislation around iGaming. We'll have to see what happens there. Then we have the Indiana we've talked about and Illinois. Hopefully they will have it and discuss legislation during 2023. We know also that Iowa is considering, that's probably a little further ahead. I come back to the three Is and then New York. The immediate states that we know about that would be online sports betting. Rob, the last one for you, please.
Sure. The World Cup.
Yeah.
I love talking about the World Cup. Look, we are really excited about it. To your comment around two percentage points, you know, that's typically across a full year. If you're just thinking about Q4, and of course unusually the whole tournament falls within one quarter this year, you know, I think you'll get to a bigger number for the expected impact on Q4. You know, yes, time of year-wise, it's not going to be as fully incremental as an ordinary tournament, but there's lots of reasons why we are pretty positive on it despite that. In places like Brazil, for instance, it is incremental to what the calendar would otherwise be. We like the fact that there will be less Europeans on holiday and more people at home during a winter tournament.
Worth remembering that lower leagues do carry on, so you know, it's only the top flight leagues that pause during the tournament, so there'll still be packed football fixture lists across Europe, even during the tournament. The time of day is pretty favorable. You know, some past World Cups have been unhelpful from that perspective. This time around we've got a more congested fixture list either side of the tournament as well. You know, typically there's quite a lag between the World Cup final and then the start of the new season. It always feels like you lose a little bit of momentum. You've built up this new active space, you've signed up a load of customers, you've reactivated a load of customers, and then there's a gap before the top flight football resumes. That's not the case this time around. Long way of saying that we are excited about the prospects from the World Cup and can't wait for it to start.
Perfect. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate the color.
Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Richard Stuber of Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Yes, hi. Morning, Rob. Just two quick ones from me, please. First of all, thank you very much for quantifying the U.K. online performance in Q3. But I was wondering, could you sort of quantify the split between sort of gaming and betting? Simply because one is perceived as slightly more sort of macro-sensitive than the other. And the second question on the U.S. Given what's happening in California, do you think that that may have any repercussions on any other sort of large state openings? You know, i.e., are the sort of other tribes perceived to be sort of stronger now than they were before? Thank you.
Thank you, and good morning to you, Richard. Let me continue with California, and then Rob, if you wanna continue more color on the U.K. We're not seeing any of the implications on, you know, where the tribes are now with California. I mean, we did see the tribes coming out when it came around Florida. That was an example where the tribes also, of course, have a prominent position, but we're not seeing it in any other states. As I said, you know, let's see where it goes in November. If not, we have another shot to put it back on the ballot in two years' time. I think that states like California with sports will legislate at some point. It's not something we're seeing, no. Rob, U.K, Q3.
Yeah, morning, Richard. No particular story to share from a product perspective. I mean, remember the big shift from H1 into Q3 was annualizing lockdowns in the prior year. Lockdowns were a benefit to both sides, given sport continued throughout and people were at home with less activity to spend money on. You know, pretty consistent performance across product, I would say.
That's great. Thank you very much.
The last question comes from the line of Simon Davies of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Morning. Just a couple from me. Just to return to the white paper and affordability checks. You talked about the incremental costs that you've absorbed over the period. Do you think it's realistic to think now that the recommendations that come out in the white paper will have little incremental additional cost for you? Secondly, you know, you mentioned the success of your in-house games in iGaming. Does that in any way encourage you to look at the possibility of launching your own in-house live casino, given that that's the real growth opportunity in iGaming or the biggest growth opportunity in iGaming?
Sure. Hey, good morning, Simon. On the white paper, listen, we will basically have to see what comes out. With the last almost 2 years now, beginning of 2021, and I've spoken about this before, the GC, so the Gambling Commission, have become much more clearer on their guidance. We and probably everyone among the bigger operators in the industry have put in place a number of changes, not least around affordability, through the year of 2021 and into 2022, and that is sort of ongoing. What comes out with the white paper, we'll have to see. I don't think we wanna speculate if there's anything more there. Listen, we're confident in where we are, and we are prepared for the white paper coming out. Now I forgot your second question. What was that? Sorry.
On live casino.
Live casino. Exactly.
whether you consider launching your own in-house one.
Yes. Exactly. Sorry about that, Simon. Yeah, I talked about this I think on the first half call. Especially we've seen great success around one of the latest games categories that we've launched, which we call live game show. Here we're very focused on developing exclusive or bespoke content. As I've said before, we want to have the best content and the best games, so we will always look at how do we make sure that we provide this for our customers. If there is an opportunity where we see that there is a niche that we should go into around the live game shows, that's something that we'll consider. For right now, we're really satisfied with the first couple of games that we've come up with, that we've got out there, and we have a couple more coming up. We're learning as we go. As always, we're looking at opportunities here and very pleased with the performance of the game shows.
Great. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions. I'll hand back to you, Jette, to conclude today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Operator, and thank you all for dialing in and listening today. Entain continues not only to deliver ongoing positive momentum, but also our performance demonstrate the underlying strength of the business. As you also heard on this call today, very pleased with the strong performance in the U.S, not least in the last quarter. Our customer focus coupled with our diversified and industry-leading platform sees us well positioned to drive further growth and deliver on our strategic opportunities, not only for this year, but for many years to come. I hope you can all join us for this year's Entain Sustain event, and that takes place next week on the nineteenth of October. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, please do get in touch with David and the IR team. Thank you and goodbye.
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