Good day and welcome to the Entain PLC third quarter trading update 2021. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jette Nygaard Andersen. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, thank you for dialing in today. As always, I'm joined by our group CFO and Deputy CEO, Rob Wood, and our IR team. Before we get into the detail of the third quarter performance, I'd like to highlight that whilst there is a proposal from DraftKings in the market, today, we are not adding anything more to what we have previously announced. We won't be taking any questions relating to that. Today's call is just about our trading performance. Turning to our announcement, I am very pleased to say that this has been another quarter where Entain has demonstrated the strength of our business and our customer offer. Our online business delivered its 23rd consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with NGR up 10% in the third quarter in constant currency.
If we strip out Germany, as that continues to adjust to the new regulatory environment, online NGR was up 18% in constant currency. While we've had help from margins, our continued good performance is a credit to the hard work across all our people. Retail continues to recover. Volumes in the U.K. are a little over 90% of pre-COVID levels. In Europe, as reopenings were a little later, volumes are behind those in the U.K. Compared to Q3 last year, retail delivered modest like-for-like NGR growth in the third quarter of 1% in constant currency. Overall, group NGR for the third quarter was up 6% in constant currency. Our business in the U.S. continues to grow from strength to strength, gaining share in both iGaming and sports betting.
In the markets in which we are live, our market share is now 26% in the 3 months to August, which is up 2 percentage points from 24% in the second quarter. Just looking at the month of August in isolation, we can see that BetMGM is now number 1 in the markets in which we operate. We can see that we are clearly starting to challenge for the number 1 market position nationwide. We remain the preeminent iGaming operator across the U.S. with a 32% share. BetMGM has delivered another record performance with NGR in the third quarter expected to be over $200 million USD. This continued growth is driven by the Entain platform that encompasses our technology, digital marketing capabilities, scale, and flexibility.
Our rapidly growing range of exclusive and branded games developed by our in-house studios that over 70% of our customers enjoy playing is also a competitive advantage that is helping to drive our growth. We are only four weeks into the new NFL season, so it is still early days. However, we've got off to a great start, and we are really pleased with our trading performance so far. Actives are strong. Bonusing has been high as expected, but the early flurry has eased somewhat, letting the real money players emerge. We are also really pleased with the cross-sell from football into our broader product offerings. As the NFL season kicked off, we launched our first national advertisement campaign featuring Jamie Foxx, which has helped drive brand recognition across existing states where we operate, as well as helping to build our brand in future markets as more states legalize.
BetMGM has performed strongly when opening on day one of a new market launch. During the quarter, we went live on day one in 3 new states, all within a 9-day period, clearly demonstrating the flexibility and scalability of our platform. We are delighted to have added Arizona, South Dakota, and Wyoming, taking us to 16 markets, and we remain on track to be live in 20 jurisdictions by the end of Q1 2022. Ahead of their launches, we were particularly excited by both Arizona and Wyoming due to our fantastic partnerships and market presence. Although it is early days since we went live, we are thrilled with both states' performance so far. Globally, we lead the industry on responsibility, not just in our approach to protecting customers, but in how we are leveraging our technology to revolutionize player protection.
We are making great progress with our Advanced Responsibility and Care program or ARC. Trials are going well. We are now rolling out real-time testing for our U.K. brands. ARC promises to unlock the pathway to predictive prevention rather than the reactive protection provided by much of the industry today. We continue to make progress across our sustainability charter during the third quarter with many further actions and initiatives. Examples include the Entain Foundation's renewed commitment to both the Pitching In and SportsAid programs, whilst also partnering with the Technische Universität Berlin and Nexus Institute to encourage diversity in technology. In the U.S., the Entain Foundation is funding pioneering research with University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as well as launching a new app to support the American Gaming Association's Responsible Gaming Initiative.
We have also taken real action towards our carbon net zero target, launching our Big Turn Off campaign internally, encouraging each and every employee to play their part in reducing our carbon emissions. Before I hand over to Rob to go through trading in a bit more detail, I'd like to briefly recap on the key messages from our Investor Day on 12 August, when we outlined the fantastic opportunities ahead for Entain. Entain is a business that delivers secular growth. We have an incredible track record of both organic and non-organic growth, with a 3-year compound annual growth rate in online NGR of 14% at the end of Q3. Our addressable markets today have the scope to grow to over $160 billion, which will enable us to continue that growth and more than triple the size of our business, underpinning the secular growth of our business model.
As we drive customer centricity and expand the experience for our customers to meet their changing needs of more content, more media, and more social interaction, we increasingly leverage powerful flywheel effects, which broadens our customer funnel, improves loyalty, and reduces acquisition costs. In addition to those flywheel benefits, we also leverage all aspects of our scale and the Entain platform, our industry-leading technology, our world-class talent, and our focus on delivering a great experience for our customers. It is this platform that gives us competitive commercial advantages, which alongside leading market positions, drive scale advantages. All of which enable us to continue to grow ahead of our markets. Our strategy is clear: Focus on our customers, grow in our existing markets, lead in the U.S., expand into new regulated markets and interactive entertainment, and lean into these flywheel accelerators to drive significant value for shareholders.
With that, I'll hand over to Rob.
Thanks, Jette. Good morning, everyone. As Jette has said, we're a business that continues to grow. We're growing in both our core business outside the U.S. and within the U.S. as well. Jette mentioned BetMGM took over $200 million of revenue in Q3. That's over 5 times more than the prior year. Our core online business delivered another quarter of double-digit growth in constant currency, bringing the count now to 23 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Now, online growth was ahead of expectation at 10% in the quarter, but as you can see from the table, we benefited from a helping hand from sports margin. Our volume growth in Q3, so sports wagers and gaming revenue, that was low single digits, so a touch ahead of expectation, but essentially in line. However, sports margin was up 1.3 percentage points due to strong match results in the quarter.
Margin was 12.8%, well ahead of our expected margin range of 11%-12%. The upside was purely results driven rather than anything structural. Q3 upside versus our August guidance was a one-off, but it does compensate for temporary closure in the Netherlands, which is now going to impact Q4, and therefore our full year guidance remains unchanged across all measures. Aside from margin, there were really very few surprises with trading in Q3, but let me point out a few highlights. Firstly, actives growth and growth in FTDs both remained strong again in Q3 and well ahead of NGR growth in the quarter. We saw NGR growth in all our geographies except Germany. Now that COVID impacts are starting to wash out, it's pleasing to see that the two-year online NGR growth in Q3 is up around 40% in constant currency.
Online is clearly seeing permanent upside from the pandemic, particularly driven by accelerated channel shift from retail to online. Not surprisingly, Australia performed well in Q3, helped by retail closures during lockdowns, and Brazil revenue nearly doubled in Q3, helped by a strong Copa América and reinforcing Sportingbet as the market leader in that territory. Even in the U.K., where growth was slower at single digits versus last year, on a two-year basis, revenue was still up strongly. Actives growth continues to be very encouraging in the U.K. as we deliver on our aim of broadening the appeal of our brands to recreational audiences. Growth in Italy remains strong online, particularly given shops are now back open, and we continue to see that omni-channel brands are outperforming the pure online operators.
On the negative side, in Germany, our gaming revenues are stable, but they continue to be down very materially year-on-year due to the new regulatory regime. We look forward to more robust policing of the market in due course. We are at least approaching the anniversary of the tolerance policy now. We remain excited by the long-term prospects for the German market. In fact, at the beginning of September, we announced a sponsorship agreement for bwin with UEFA, which will help drive bwin's presence in Germany as well as many other territories around the world. Just on retail briefly, as yet to mention, volumes are within 10% of pre-COVID levels in the U.K., in particular thanks to gaming machines.
Whilst our European estates are further behind, we remain on track to hit our target of getting to 10% down versus pre-COVID levels by the end of this year. We estimate that that 10% broadly equates to around 3 years of accelerated migration to online. In summary from me, Q3 was another strong performance from the group. We're delighted to have delivered 1 last quarter of double-digit growth before we now inevitably hit pause on that run, because in Q4 we'll be lapping the incredible 41% growth that we posted last year. Despite losing the Netherlands for Q4, we remain on track to hit our full year guidance from the interim, thanks in particular to that margin upside in Q3, and hence our full year EBITDA guidance remains unchanged with a range of £850-£900 million.
With that, I'd like to hand over the call for Q&A on our trading performance today.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is the star or asterisk key, followed by the number one to pose a question. We will take our first question today from Ed Young of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. I've got three, please, two on the U.S. and one on trading. Your comments around August are obviously very exciting and encouraging, competing for the number one position in terms of market share that month. Flutter's guided for U.S. revenues of between $1.8 billion and $2 billion this year and BetMGM's targets for $1 billion next year. If you're already in the same ballpark on market share, doesn't that imply that the JV is going to beat that target pretty early? Maybe not quite this year, given the build you've said you've got for Q3, but pretty close. That seems encouraging on where you're annualizing. The second just on Arizona, you said that early indications there are encouraging, given it's kind of an interesting sort of clean state, if you like. It'd be interesting, just any further color you could give on that.
The final one, just about clearly margins came in, sounds like very strongly in September. Just wondering if you could give us a bit of a look forward to Q4. You said in the past you're absolutely not going to continue this 2023 streak into Q4 given the comps, but given you're doing what you said, 40% 2-year rate in Q3, you did 40%-ish in Q4 last year, but you are annualizing Germany. Is it possible you'll do positive growth in Q4? Is it undoubtedly going to be down year-on-year? Just how to think about the Q4 growth rate. Thanks.
Thanks, and good morning, Ed. Let me take the two first on U.S., and I'll hand you over to Rob for trading. Well, you nailed it. We are extremely pleased, of course, with the BetMGM performance, both when we look at the last three months to August and of course, looking at the August flash data is certainly very pleasing. That's really great to see. When it comes to the NGR and the NGR forecast, I mean, H1 we did $3.7 million and then Q3 just over $200 million. Listen, it's too early for us to start looking at a new forecast. We stick to the guidance we've given on 2022 of over $1 billion in NGR.
When it comes to Arizona, so we launched online sports betting on day 1, 9th September, and we even had the opportunity to start pre-register in the week before, so in time for NFL. We are very excited about that state. We have really encouraging early results. The proximity to Las Vegas, sporting culture, partnerships that we've done with the Cardinals and Gila River Hotels & Casinos, and then a good and live presence and as you know, no historic DFS presence there. That really sets us up well and it has started well, both when it comes to bet count and number of FTDs and actives have really been fantastic.
We also held our corner when it comes to bonusing and sign-up offers at decent markets. We continue to be really excited about Arizona, but listen also, Wyoming as new states, which we also launched on day one. There's a number of new states where we see standout performance, but that's a little bit of early color for Arizona. Rob, over to you on margins and trading.
Thank you. Morning, Ed. Yes, firstly, we said previously that now that we've had some structural benefits to our trading margin, I think we're now on an underlying basis in a range of 11%-12%. If you look back at 2019, it was just over 11%. I think we're now sort of 11%-12%, perhaps nearing 12%. Q3 was 12.8%, clearly ahead of where we expected to be. There's some really clear reasons for that. We started the quarter really well with the Euros final. That was a 30% match for us. Then whilst the domestic football season had a bad opening weekend, September football margins were very good, particularly in the U.K. and Italy, and racing was good throughout in Australia, actually. Good one-time benefit in Q3.
As we look ahead to Q4, I'd suggest we're back into that underlying range of 11%-12%. To your question, is there any possibility of growth in Q4? I mean, the answer is it would be very tough. Our guidance was around 10% down in Q4 that we gave in the summer, and now we've lost the Netherlands, so that 10% becomes more like 13%. Even if Q3 had a little bit of volume upside, we're still looking at double-digit down. Remember, it's not just the lockdown benefit in Q4 that drove the 41% growth that we saw in Q4 last year. We also had a record margin at 13.6% in that quarter. Very tough on a year-on-year basis, but the two-year CAGR will still look strong for Q4. I think we're comfortable that we can deliver the guidance that we've suggested.
It's also worth noting that if you take the run rates that we're seeing right now on an NGR per day basis and then extrapolate that through Q4, you still get to those declines as per the guidance. Whether you look on a 2-year basis or you look on a run rate basis, we will be hitting pause on the run of consecutive quarters of double-digit growth next quarter.
Very useful. Thank you both.
We will take our next question from Gavin Kelleher of Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. A few from me. On the U.S., Jette, you mentioned bonusing has come down more recently to more reasonable levels. Could you just give us a bit of color? Was bonusing more aggressive at the start of the NFL than you would have expected, and now it's kind of in line? That's my first question. My second question is on U.K. actives. Where you think you're getting your actives from, is it from online actives, or is it a bit of retail migration in there? Where are they coming from, U.K. actives? Finally on Holland, can you give us some color on how you think the licensing process may play out for you over the next, let's say, 6 to 12 months?
Sure. Good morning, Gavin, to you. Yeah, that's right. I said in the beginning that the initial flurry around bonusing for NFL seems to have leveled off a bit. I think when we look at the first weeks of NFL, there were some pretty hefty bonusing and promotions in the market. When we look across August, for example, Caesars were there with a risk-free of $5,000, and our other competitors also had some pretty aggressive bonusing and promotion. We are seeing it coming down a bit and remain confident that the promotional environment will normalize over time. As we always say on these calls, that really the ones with the best products will be winners. Yeah, the initial somewhat aggressive bonusing, we see that coming down a bit. Rob, hand over to you for U.K. actives and the Netherlands.
Sure, absolutely. If I could just add 1 more thought on bonusing in the U.S. It is, of course, when you're at the start of the NFL season, there's a massive amount of acquisition bonusing. Therefore, as the season progresses, that ratio changes towards retention bonusing, and therefore, as a % of GGR, it comes down. That's sort of another reason why we're down from the peak right at the beginning of September. Onto U.K., where are the actives coming from? Yes, retail and obviously we have an advantage by virtue of having the brand recognition, and indeed customers on 1,000s of high streets up and down the country. There's also an element of, you heard from Dominic Grounsell at our Capital Markets Day over the summer, that we're doing more and more to reposition our brands towards the mass market.
A real sort of focus on recreational customers and driving volumes there, and that's paying dividends with the actives growth that we're seeing. Onto the next. We expect to apply for our license later this year. We expect to get licensed, hopefully middle of next year. We'll have to wait and see what the timing is. We don't know precisely yet, and we'll have to wait and see what other operators get licensed and the timing of that before we can have a real feel for how 2022 may play out. I think the key message is we will be applying for our license by the end of this year and hope to be licensed by middle of next year.
That's perfect. Thanks million, Rob. Thanks million, Jette.
Our next question will come from Joe Thomas of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. 3 questions from me as well, if that's okay. Firstly, in the Q3 net revenue numbers, I'm just wondering if you could give us a bit more granularity, specifically, what's the contribution from M&A in there? I guess there is something in there. Secondly, you've sort of touched on this as well, the reopening of retail, is that what is driving the slowdown in the performance of the online gaming segment, or is there something else in there? Finally, a broader question on the U.S. I'm just wondering if there's any color you can give us on how your VIP split, however you might want to segment that or define it, looks for BetMGM versus perhaps the U.S. as a whole.
Yes. Good morning, Joe Thomas. Let me start by the last one. No, we don't give any splits on the different segments here. I think what I can overall say and what is important from our side, as we are really have a long-term focus here on the business is, of course, the lifetime value over time, and the average spend level. As you might recall, when we made the long-term prediction on where we saw the TAM going, we also had some assumptions in there in spend per adults, whether it was for online sports or iGaming. The numbers that we are seeing now in our business basically support those trends that we have in our TAM assumptions. Lifetime value look good. That's really the most important when we look to build a sustainable business going forward.
Rob, I'll hand over to you for Q3 revenues and what's in there from M&A and also reopening of retail and potential online impact, please.
Sure. Contribution from M&A in Q3 is actually nearer 5 points. We guided towards 4 points of online NGR growth benefit, but in Q3 actuals nearer 5. That's hopefully the answer to that question. In terms of online gaming impact of retail reopening, I think the first thing you need to do is look at 2-year growth to sort of take out the noise from last year. If you look at over a 2-year basis, our growth is very good, CAGR around 17%, and that growth is pretty equal between sports and gaming. We're not seeing a particularly different pattern between the two. The reason why you see a difference when you look year-on-year is more around what happened last year.
I think the answer is Q2 last year, you'll remember we had a big uplift in gaming as sports, live sport was postponed. Then we hung on to a lot of that upside through Q3 and into Q4 in gaming. Therefore the comps when you look year-over-year are just tougher in gaming. On an underlying basis, I don't think there's a particular difference between the two.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Does that help, Joe?
Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Rob. Yeah. Cheers.
Our next question will come from Kiranjot Grewal of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning, guys. 3 questions from me. Firstly, on Germany, could you just update us on your expectations? Do you expect many of the Länder will start to switch on online casino anytime soon? Secondly, on European retail, that's continuing to lag the U.K. retail piece. Is there any particular reason for this? Lastly, you mentioned a strong performance in Australia. Could you offer some more color around this? Is it driven by something in particular for Entain, or is it broader, a strength you're seeing in the market? Thank you.
Hey, and good morning to you, too. Listen, I'll hand you over to Rob for all three of them. Germany, EU retail, and also Australia trading.
Okay. Let me have a go at those. Germany, what we're hearing from the ground is that perhaps the states that represent around half of the country, the half of the population are looking at legislating some form of online gaming. That's sort of our target, if you like. Fair to say, though, within that, some of those Länder may allocate the license to state monopolies, for instance. I wouldn't suggest that half of the population will ultimately be available to us, but that's sort of the size of the prize. On retail, yes, true to say that the European estates are lagging the U.K. at the moment. There's a couple of reasons for that. 1 is that if I look at the U.K., the gaming part of the business is outperforming the sports part of the business, and we don't have gaming machines in European retail.
That's part of it, the mix. Another part is that if you look in European retail, there are still COVID restrictions impacting our trading. For instance, in Italy, they have a Green Pass where you have to prove vaccination and as I understand it, only around 70% of people have those. Clearly that's impacting football. I think in the Republic of Ireland, they still have the rule of six. There are some structural COVID-related reasons why European retail is behind, as well as opening later as well. We, having reviewed it very recently with the MDs of those businesses, we're still confident of the target of getting to within 10% of pre-COVID by year-end and paying particular attention to what happens to COVID restrictions. I think that's the answer to that question. In Australia, yep, a really good growth in Q3.
Clearly, lockdowns are a driver of that. We saw that last time around, and Australia now sort of easing out of lockdowns, so I'm sure there'll be some lessening of growth. Clearly, therefore, retail migration is a key part of that, as well as not having so many ways of spending discretionary income. Is it market growth? Yes, I think it is, albeit our market shares are increasing, particularly as Tabcorp is underperforming in the online environment at the moment. Very good market share growth and market growth, I think is the answer in Australia at the moment.
Perfect. Thanks so much.
We will take our next question from James Rowland Clark of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. I've got three questions, please. The first is on U.K. regulation. Would you mind perhaps updating us as to your expectations on the White Paper, given the change of personnel at DCMS and any early discussions you've had with them and your sort of sense of where the new chair and new head feel or what they feel about the industry at the moment. Secondly, on the outlook, I think consensus has in GBP 1.07 billion for 2022 EBITDA. Are you comfortable with this level just given the headwind that potentially Dutch licensing represents for next year? Finally, on U.K. retail, do you have any sense as to the level of capacity exits from the market post-COVID? Thank you.
Thanks. Good morning, James. Let me take the first 1. I think the 2 last 1 was in your bucket, Rob. I'll start off with the first 1, and then we'll get to the 2 other questions. Your first question was around U.K. regulatory and the White Paper. I think that the main update since we spoke last is probably that the White Paper has been delayed, and given the reshuffle at DCMS, it could be even later. I think what I said on the last call that we had, that it was delayed into autumn 2021, and it now looks like that it could even be delayed further and potentially into Q1 2022.
Our discussion so far has been that they are referring to the publication timing to be in due course, that kind of supports that are probably a delay coming from there, which basically means that any impact on legislation will be in 2022 and probably sometime into 2022. We remain, as I said a couple of times, cautiously optimistic around the approach being taken. As I understand, the work has been ongoing for some time, and it's quite advanced. We keep getting the same feedback that DCMS will take a holistic approach to the gambling reform and make sure that they deliver a coherent package. We continue to have discussions, and we have many discussions around our technology. We get good feedback around ARC.
We will continue to work also with the new ministers and keep them updated on the findings from the live trials that we're having in the U.K. I think that's the update I can give on the White Paper. Rob, can I hand over to you? The third question was around U.K. retail. Did you take a note on the second one?
Yeah.
Good
EBITDA expectations for 2022. Too early for us to be guiding on 2022, James. I think I can say that I was happy with where consensus was prior to the Netherlands announcement. Now we do need to understand what impact the Netherlands may have on next year. As I mentioned earlier on in this call, too early to say because we do need to see what time of year we'll get licensed, which competitors will get licensed, and when they get licensed to really understand what our sort of rebuild strategy will look like and therefore where we can exit the year at. I think to answer your question, we were happy prior to Netherlands, and we'll be guiding more fully on 2022 in March. The last question, I think was around capacity exits in retail post-COVID.
I think the thing to appreciate with retail is there's always a bit of a lag because very often whilst the shop might have tipped to being marginally unprofitable, you still have the lease and therefore it can be more beneficial to stay open at a small lease-- a small loss rather than close and pick up the cost of the lease. Not a huge amount of activity I would suggest yet, but that's not necessarily a surprise. We haven't seen any of the large independents or any of the major operators take any significant moves. The material moves really followed the implementation of the Triennial Review in 2019. That's a watching brief and undoubtedly there will be continued retail closures over the next couple of years in the U.K.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We will take our next question from Joseph Stauff of Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning. I had two questions, please. First one was, I wanted to see if you could share any commentary maybe on user growth that you saw in BetMGM in the third quarter and or September in particular. The second question I wanted to ask maybe is just me being in the U.S. to clarify maybe the U.K. takeover rules, is the deadline of October 19th, is that a decision that you have at Entain to be able to move that or not? Thank you.
Thanks. Good morning, Joe. I think you're up early. Thank you for dialing in. Listen, as I said in my introduction, we're really not going to talk about the DraftKings proposal. I don't really have anything to add to the announcements that we sent out on 21st of September following the leak. As we flagged, we the board and our advisors, we are now carefully considering the proposal. That includes a number of matters including structure and value. We'll come back to the markets as and when appropriate. Sorry for not being more informative on that, as I'm sure you can appreciate. When it comes to your questions around actives and user growth, well, it is very early days. You've heard me speak about Arizona, which we are very excited about.
Arizona was the state with the highest actives in September. Overall, our actives are up 5 times compared to last year. September also saw record high for iGaming. Very, very encouraging numbers coming from BetMGM when it comes to actives and user growth.
Thank you.
Thank you. It appears there are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the conference back to Jette Nygaard-Andersen. Apologies, we have just had a late joiner to the queue. Simon Davies from Deutsche Bank, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, morning. Apologies, I thought I was wired into the process. A couple from me, please. First, many congratulations on 23 consecutive quarters of growth. Unfortunate that the 24th quarter looks like an insurmountable hurdle. Do you think you can return to double-digit growth in the first quarter next year? Obviously by that stage, you will have lapped the impact of tightening in Germany, which should make the comps a bit easier. Secondly, you talked about the ramp-up in the level of marketing spend around the new NFL season. Has that been greater than you had anticipated and have you had to respond more than you would have expected in terms of marketing and bonusing spend there?
Good. Thank you and good morning to you also, Simon. I'll take the U.S. question and hand you over to Rob, but I'd start by saying about our Q3 results. I mean, we are, as you can understand, really pleased with them. For me it's really a testament of the strength of our platform. We see this strong result as exactly that, a testament on a sustainable and consistent diversified growth platform that we have. Very pleased with that. In a second I'll hand you over to Rob to talk about what we then think about Q1 in 2022. Now when it comes to the NFL season, I think it's as every time there's sports kickoff, we also saw it in March Madness. We have increased bonusing and promotion. We remain flexible. We put the spend where it makes most sense.
One thing I would maybe stress is that this was the first time that we started doing national advertisement. That has been a first for us, and we've said that we were not going to do that until we had a reach that basically made that a good way forward for us. We started that, had great success with our Jamie Foxx campaign. I think overall, we're quite happy with what we're seeing and the policing has leveled off. In that sense, I think it was more or less as expected, when you go into the first NFL season after the market has really come off with so many states now being online and for us 16 states that we're live in. Rob, over to you on the last question on 2022 Q1.
Thanks, Jette. Morning, Simon. Can we achieve double-digit growth in Q1 next year? Look, I mean, it's going to be very difficult. We have lapped Germany, that is true, and we've now lost Netherlands. I think the key point, though, is annualizing against lockdowns in Q1 in the prior year. You've heard me talk previously about analysis suggests that we keep something like a third of the upside that we get during lockdowns, but clearly that means two thirds does not stay with us because it goes back to retail or another forms of discretionary spend. When you're lapping lockdowns, I think to expect double-digit growth on top of that, it's just not going to happen.
The other thing to think about is when I look at the NGR per day that we achieved in the quarter that we're about to lap, Q4 last year, it was very similar in Q1. In other words, the very tough problem that we're about to face in Q4, and it's the same sort of numbers that we're going up against in Q1. I think it would be something of a stretch, Simon.
Well, stretch is good. Thanks for that.
Okay. As always, if you look at two-year growth, you'll see that we would still expect really quite strong numbers on a two-year basis. It is just we're going to have this period where we're annualizing against lockdowns and we need to look for that.
Yep. Understood. Thanks.
We will take our next question from Michael Mitchell of Davy. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one left from my side, if I could. If I can ask you to provide a bit more color on the U.K. online market post-lockdown. I appreciate you've touched on it through the last 45 minutes. First of all, have activity levels now settled, particularly with retail back to within 10% pre-COVID levels? Do we have a settled picture of what the U.K. online market looks like now post-lockdown? If so, Rob, I wonder if you could just kind of help us a little bit more with your comment about the 2-year growth rate being up strongly. What is the rough pace of growth in the U.K. online market on a 2-year basis that we should be thinking about over the coming period of time? Thank you.
Thanks. Hey, Michael. Rob, I think I'll let you answer that one.
Okay. 2-year growth rate. Firstly, the quarter just gone, we did around 35% 2-year growth, in real currency, and it was near a 40% in constant currency. If I look at the U.K. in isolation, it's more like 25%, so clearly a little lower, but nonetheless, 25% growth in the U.K. in a market that was ordinarily expected to do sort of high single digits is a strong performance for us. I think as we look forward, our real focus in the U.K. is expanding our appeal to more recreational audiences. Our hope is that all the terrific growth that we've seen in actives, and FTDs during the last 12 months or so, will therefore play through into continued NGR growth in 2022 as well. Obviously, we need to wait and see what, if any, impact comes out of the Gambling Act review.
We would still maintain that the prospects for growth in the U.K. are strong, not just for the market, but certainly for outperforming the market as well. Not least because we have the retail estate, which continues despite COVID, despite everything that's happened, to continue to drive traffic to our online platforms. I think the prognosis for the U.K. continues to be strong.
Great. Many thanks.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back to Jette Nygaard-Andersen for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you all for dialing in and listening in today. Entain continues to go from strength to strength. We have a fantastic industry-leading platform that continues to drive growth both in our core business and in the US through BetMGM, as you heard this morning. It also provides a very strong base to drive further growth as we deliver on the strategic agenda that we set out on the 12th of August. I also hope that you can join us for our ESG and sustainability event on 10th of November. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, do get in touch with David and the IR team. Thank you and goodbye