Good morning and welcome to Entain's Q4 Trading Update Analyst and Investor Call. I'll now pass to CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen to open today's call.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for dialing in today. As always, I'm joined by Rob Wood and the IR team. I'll kick off this morning with a brief summary of our performance and progress delivering our strategic objectives and ambitions. Rob will take you through Q4 trading in greater detail. Then we will open for Q&A. I'm pleased to say that we continue to make excellent progress on our strategy as a global leader in betting, gaming, and interactive entertainment. Through our growth and sustainability strategy, we're delivering sustainable growth while operating in a global industry with attractive dynamics. We are focusing on the customer, delivering great products and engaging experiences to an ever-increasingly recreational audience. We have clear evidence that our strategy is bearing fruit, as evidenced in today's announcement. Q4 was another record quarter for online actives, up 14%.
Online NGR hit a new record in Q4 of 8%. In fact, our group NGR was a record high, too. Our retail operations are going from strength to strength as we further improve the appeal of our shops for customers. M&A remains a core strategic growth driver for us, with 5 acquisitions delivered since the start of 2022, including SuperSport via our newly created Entain CEE, as well as BetCity, which completed last month. These are businesses with leading positions in attractive, fast-growing, and regulated markets with strong brands and local management expertise. They also clearly demonstrate the excellent M&A opportunities open to us and how well-placed we are to deliver on them as we pursue regulated market growth opportunities across the globe. It is not just geographic expansion.
I'm really excited we have now taken our first steps into the attractive adjacent markets of esports and skill-based wagering with Unikrn launching towards the end of the quarter. It's still early days, but we're happy with progress to date and are planning further launches over the coming months. Our Q4 online NGR was in line with expectations, reflecting a number of moving parts across our global business during the quarter. As I've already mentioned, Q4 saw us deliver yet another record number of online actives and business growing. Customer engagement is visible across our group, with retail also continuing to exceed expectations. Q4 NGR for retail was +9% constant currency as our industry-leading offering on our betting and gaming terminals in the U.K. drives increased footfall and broaden our audience.
As a result, I'm delighted to see that volumes in U.K. and Italy retail are ahead of pre-COVID levels. We continue to outperform the market. We saw fantastic customer engagement during the World Cup, with many customer initiatives across our brands all resonating well. The World Cup captures the essence of a recreational sports lover enjoying the thrill of an amazing global sporting event. Our focus on the recreational player has benefited from our data analytics, our personalization algorithms, as well as our brand campaigns such as Ladbrokes Rocky and bwin fan-led campaigns launched in October. In fact, the Rocky campaign has been brilliant, driving Ladbrokes web traffic with existing customers up 30% and plus 75% for new customers. Moving on to BetMGM in the U.S. As you heard from the team in the business update last week, BetMGM continues to go from strength to strength.
2022 revenues were ahead of expectations and we are on track to deliver positive EBITDA in the second half of 2023. We retain our leadership position in iGaming and have cemented our position as a top three operator of sports betting and iGaming across the U.S. with a 19% share. While this GGR share is slightly down on previous periods, our NGR share, which of course has a greater correlation with profitability, continues to be our focus as we concentrate on bonus optimization. While the U.S. market is still in relatively early stages of growth, we are pleased with our position today and all key metrics are trending as we had hoped. As announced last week, with the most recent $150 million US dollar investment from the joint venture partners, we are extremely well positioned to continue to drive growth and profitability from our U.S. operations.
Assuming no major changes to our environment and target markets, we expect financial support for BetMGM to come to an end as we move into profitability in the U.S. Our ongoing operational support from technology to product, data analytics, CRM, and people remains vital to BetMGM's ongoing success. Our commitment to sustainability is of course core to our strategy. As announced last month, our pathway to 100% of our revenue coming from regulated markets has been accelerated. As of the end of January, we have exited those unregulated markets with no clear route to regulation. I'm therefore proud to say that we are the only major global operator to exclusively operate in domestically regulated or regulated markets, a brand new benchmark for our industry. In October, Entain Sustain showcased our ESG initiatives and achievements so far.
The international rollout of our ARC program has now reached 22 markets. We also launched our initiative alongside McLaren Racing to empower women for careers in tech, as well as our ongoing support of grassroots sports, which truly enables meaningful change. We continue to set the pace for sustainability and player safety for our industry across the group and across the ESG landscape. In summary from me, we are continuing to make excellent progress, both executing and delivering against our strategic ambitions. The underlying strong momentum is visible across our markets, brands and products with the unique Entain platform capabilities driving growing market shares. SuperSport and BetCity are the most recent joiners to our long list of compelling M&A transactions, both further expand our presence into highly attractive, regulated and fast-growing markets.
We have continued to innovate and invest in new opportunities, and with Unikrn's launch, we embrace the exciting opportunity within esports and skill-based wagering. We delivered record actives growth, record online NGR, as well as outperformance from retail in Q4. The final quarter rounded off a year where we not only delivered progress on our strategy, but further growth with NGR across the group, including our share of BetMGM up double digits at 15%. All this sees us delivering EBITDA of between GBP 985 million to GBP 995 million for the full year 2022, approximately 12% up on last year and ahead of expectations. Overall, it's been a very successful year. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all our teams across the globe for all their efforts.
Their excellence and dedication to delivering the best experience for our customers are a core part of Entain's achievements and delivered another year of great progress. On that note, I will pass to Rob for more details on trading during the quarter.
Thanks, Jette. Good morning, everyone. As Jette has already outlined, I'm delighted that our business continues to perform well, delivering strong numbers in both Q4 and across 2022. In Q4, we posted all-time record revenue for both our online business and the wider group. Group NGR was up 7% year-over-year in Q4, and for the full year it was up 10%. Those numbers were both in constant currency, which I'll use throughout. Starting with online, Q4 NGR growth of +8% was in line with expectations and reflects the underlying growth in our online business, plus an anticipated boost from the FIFA World Cup and a softer margin comparative from the prior year. As Jette said, we enjoyed a successful FIFA World Cup with fantastic player engagement across our business.
FTDs and actives both increased during the tournament by approximately 10% versus run rates, stakes and NGR on the tournament were as strong as we expected, up over 30% on the Euros in 2021, albeit helped by more matches. Despite losing top-tier football during the tournament, much of which shifts into this year, our best estimate is that the World Cup was still incremental, adding approximately 2 percentage points to online NGR growth for the quarter. The benefit to online NGR growth from the World Cup and from a soft- margin- comparative was expected in Q4 guidance, there were a few ups and downs that were not expected, but which net out over the quarter.
On the plus side, our SuperSport acquisition completed prior to year-end, adding 2 percentage points, but that was fully offset by delayed licensing in the Netherlands and extreme weather disruptions to racing calendars due to freezing conditions in the UK and floods in Australia. Overall, online NGR was in line with expectation. Looking more closely at online sports, margin for Q4 was strong at 12.9%, in line with both H1 and Q3, supported by our increasing recreational mix. By geography, there were no surprises during the quarter. In the UK, the business was flat year-on-year, marginally better than Q3, as underlying growth was offset by ongoing absorption of affordability measures. Pleasingly, we continued to take market share in the UK whilst growing our actives base throughout the year.
Australia returned to growth in Q4 after lapping lockdowns in Q3 as the team continues to lead the charge, providing customers with a fresh and engaging offering. Italy and Brazil continued to grow while the Baltic showed ongoing resilience despite the economic challenges in the region. In Germany, trading remained challenging with a lack of regulatory enforcement. Importantly, however, we received our gaming licenses in late November. We're hopeful that much-needed robust enforcement action will now be more evident in 2023. In the Netherlands, we completed the acquisition of BetCity after the period end. We are at an advanced stage with licensing our bwin and Party brands. We still hope to be licensed in Q1, if not Q2 this year. In Croatia, SuperSport is performing strongly in the exciting CE region with double-digit pro forma NGR growth in Q4.
As you've often heard us say, Entain is the most geographically diversified and globally regulated operator in our industry. We also outgrow our markets year in, year out. Our strategy to focus on the customer is broadening our customer base to more recreational audiences, and we now exclusively operate in regulated or regulating markets. This all gives us the most sustainable and highest quality of earnings. Our growth is also actives-led. As Jette mentioned, our online business delivered another record for active players in Q4, with Q4 monthly actives up 14% year-on-year and up 10% versus Q3, of course, helped by the World Cup. Whilst the greater recreational shift has led to lower spend per head year-on-year, the run rate on spend per head has remained flat since Q2.
On to retail. As you've heard throughout the year, our retail business continues to exceed expectations. Q4 was no different with NGR up 9% year-over-year. In the U.K., we have the best gaming and betting terminal offering on the high street. It is this in-store digital offering that is driving customer engagement, footfall, volumes, and an evolving younger customer demographic. Like-for-like volumes have settled ahead of pre-COVID levels. Our market share in the U.K. has grown from 40% a few years ago to 45%. Given U.K. retail remains a GBP 2.2 billion revenue marketplace. Every 1 percentage point is therefore worth over GBP 20 million. We continue to focus on driving further share gains, which ultimately benefits both our retail and online P&Ls.
In Italy, retail revenue is also ahead of pre-COVID levels, while our smaller estates in Belgium and ROI remain behind. Before I turn to BetMGM, let me comment on full year 2022 EBITDA, which we now expect to be just shy of GBP 1 billion in the range of GBP 985 million to GBP 995 million. At the midpoint, EBITDA will therefore be up 12% year-on-year and 4% ahead of previous guidance. Looking by segment, online EBITDA finished in line with expectation. Pleasingly, we ended the year with contribution margin in line with our original target at a little over 40%, which demonstrates the flexibility and the resilience of our business that I talked about on our Q3 call. The EBITDA outperformance versus guidance was therefore not driven by online, but by three different areas.
Firstly, retail and the revenue outperformance that I mentioned earlier. I'm not expecting analysts to increase retail EBITDA for 2023, given revenue outperformance will cover the inflation headwinds previously flagged from absorbing higher wage and energy costs in the UK. Secondly, lower investment into our new opportunity segment as approximately GBP 17 million of the guided GBP 50 million investment has shifted from 2022 into 2023, primarily because Unikrn launches have been soft launches so far. Thirdly, our previous guidance excluded the SuperSport acquisition, which added GBP 8 million of EBITDA to Q4 before year-end. Now on to BetMGM and a quick word on profitability. After growing it to a near $1.5 billion revenue business in just four years, we are now close to delivering profitability.
As you heard last week, through a combination of bonus optimization and strong same state revenue growth, which was up 51% in 2022, and lowering CPAs, which were down 21%, we expect to be EBITDA positive in H2 this year. While this represents an important and satisfying milestone, the focus for BetMGM remains on delivering our longer term objectives of a 20% to 25% market share and a 30% to 35% EBITDA margin. With that, I'll hand the call over to our operator who will open up the lines for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you.
We'll now take our first question from Ed Young at Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thank you for taking my questions. I've got three, if that's okay. The first one's on your favorite subject, Jette, the U.K. white paper and regulation. I, it's, I guess it's perhaps more of a question for Rob. Could you perhaps quantify what the impact on your business has been over the course of 2022? You know, mindful this has been going on a long time in the background, as you say, you mentioned in your comments that you've been absorbing the affordability impact within the sort of existing growth rate, if you like. Are you still talking to the mid to high- single-digit percentage impact group, people that are, that you've sometimes talked to, given what you've already done or is any update there?
The, the second, you both mentioned Unikrn and the soft launch that's happened, and I appreciate there's been the cost phasing into 2023. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more broadly around how we should think about success in that business as it starts to ramp this year, and if you may perhaps give a framework over what you're expecting in terms of revenue contribution or what kind of milestones you're looking for for that business as you think about whether you want to invest more or less into your sort of outer year period. Then finally, Jette, you spoke of excellent M&A opportunities. I just wondered if either of you could comment on the pipeline and how you see public and private valuations of potential targets at the current moment. Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Ed. Thank you very much for your questions. Why don't I start with Unikrn and M&A, then for once, it will be Rob's task to answer your question around the white paper. I'm sure we'll come back to that later on the call, anyway. Listen, let me start off with Unikrn. You're right, we soft launched by the end of Q4. We're now in two markets, Brazil and Canada outside of Ontario. I think it's important for me to just say that we're playing the long game here. It's really important for us that we build almost a market around our business, and we are going about this the right way. In 2023, we are looking to expand into further markets.
I'm not going to line them all up here. We are looking at markets as, for example, Australia and New Zealand, that has really firm regulation and a great esports audience, and probably around a further 10 markets here. As of course we learn as we go along and upgrade our products. I think we should stress that we're playing the long game here. We're really flexible on marketing. We want to make sure that, you know, we can follow our KPIs and they come out as we expect before we throw a lot of marketing investments into it. It's all looking good. We had a good start and we're really looking forward to the next couple of quarters where you have more and more tournaments also coming on.
You know, when we launched, there hasn't been any tournaments and obviously we had the World Cup. We're following our KPIs. We wanna build a market here, but the first year as such, you know, it won't be expecting to see a lot of revenue and EBITDA will be in the outer year. That was on Unikrn, and then let me just turn to M&A before I hand over to Rob. Listen, we are as active as ever when it comes to our pipeline. As we've said many times, the things that we look at is really strategic fit, and then of course, the team and the products, and the business in itself. Mainly we're looking at M&A in order to support our growth plan.
Whether it's entering new markets as we saw with Entain Labs or deepening our presence in existing and core markets or expanding into new areas such as we did with Unikrn. I do think that in the current environment, that could open up opportunities for us as we have a really strong balance sheet, with our strong cash generation and also a successful model for doing this. Now, in terms of valuation, I mean, we are clearly not an operator that are buying distressed assets here, we are buying really strong businesses. Surely we've seen public valuations come down somewhat, but these are strong businesses. I say private valuations are still holding up.
But I still think that there are opportunities for us, with our strong balance sheet and with the model that we have, that it can open up opportunities for us. We're being as active as ever. Rob, for once, I will hand the white paper question to you.
Okay. Thank you, Jette. Ed, we've always been cautious on quantifying impacts because it's really quite hard to do, and particularly when you've got things like COVID rebound noise in the numbers. But if you look at the second half of 2022 in the U.K., we were almost flat, just a fraction under. Whereas ordinarily, you know, we would expect the market in the U.K. to be sort of mid to high- single- digits, then we expect to outperform the market, as we have done throughout 2022 again in the U.K. Therefore, logically, there could be 10 percentage points of drag from absorbing these measures, which I'm sure the larger operators are carrying as well as customers ultimately get diverted to the black market and unlicensed operators.
If it's 10 percentage points in the U.K. on a weighted basis for Entain, that would equate to about 3 percentage points. And if you think we've been carrying that for some time, to answer part of your question, you can easily add up to already having taken a large part of the estimated GGR impact that we gave 2 or 3 years ago. It does feel like we've absorbed the lion's share. As we look forward to 2023, you know, there is an ongoing impact through the first half of the year, and then we'll need to see what comes out in the white papers. You know, we're cautious on outlook for the U.K. for 2023 until we have that clarity. Hopefully that gives you some flavor of how we're thinking about the U.K.
Yeah, very useful. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Joseph McNamara at Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two, if that's all right. For 2023 on growth, it would be great to understand the puts and takes to growth. Kind of how much should we expect from Germany and the Netherlands, obviously BetCity is a large part of the Netherlands, given you're currently unlicensed with the bwin and . Is there kind of any material detractors you'd like to flag, perhaps Belgium? Also, should we expect Germany and Netherlands to be broadly breakeven for 2023? I'll ask my second question afterwards, if that's all right.
Okay. Good morning, Joseph, and thank you for your question. We're not gonna give any detailed guidance on this call, but I'll hand you over to Rob for any indications on how to think about growth in the different markets for 2023.
Yeah. Let me share a few thoughts. If you start by looking at Q4, we delivered +8% as we've announced this morning. You do need to back out 2 points for World Cup, plus maybe a little bit more for annualizing soft- margin- comparatives to get to an underlying view. Let's say you're sort of low to mid-single digits underlying. I say underlying, but that is carrying the U.K. affordability impact that we've just mentioned, and there are still one or two territories, such as the Baltics, where the economic conditions are causing a drag as well. If you assume that continues through next year, then underlying is probably low to mid, and then obviously acquisitions would and market launches would be on top.
To touch on the countries that you called out, actually, Belgium is trading really well. You know, despite the recent changes in spend limits, pleased with pushing out double-digit growth there in Q4. Germany has been a challenge, that's for sure, as we're waiting for enforcement action. Does feel like there's real momentum gathering now. We hope that 2023 will be the year where Germany returns to growth. Some nice green shoots in Germany actually. Even though NGR was still down a little bit in Q4, actives and FTDs were up strongly. Hopefully Germany is just starting to turn the corner now. In terms of profitability though, you're right, there will be an increased investment, particularly around German gaming now that we're permitted to do so.
In the Netherlands, that inevitably will be a drag on contribution margin as well with new taxes and launch period. I've said previously around profitability for the Netherlands that first sort of 6, 9 months is probably break even before you then get into profitability. Depending on exactly when we go live in 2022, that will answer your question as to whether we expect to make money from Bwin and Party in the Netherlands in 2023 or not.
Excellent. Thank you very much. That's very clear. Then on the second one I had was on online wagering growth in Q4. Online sports during the quarter seems to have kind of, I guess, a bit like, versus our numbers at least, remained negative year-on-year constant currency despite the World Cup and Australia comps. Could you help me understand what the main contributors were? Was it, I guess, the U.K. and Australia racing that you pointed out? Did, I guess, a strong win margin expansion have an impact on recycling year-on-year? Thank you.
Sure. Rob, do you wanna continue?
Yes. Yes, of course. So yes, the last point you mentioned is always valid. You always have to consider a recycling impact when there's margin movement year- on- year, so that's part of it. You also mentioned racing cancellations. I mentioned earlier that was about a 1% impact on total NGR for the quarter. If you're just looking at sports, it's more like 2 percentage points, so that's an impact. It's also worth saying that with the World Cup, remember, World Cup is more recreational activity. It's higher margin activity. We made, I think it was around 18% GGR margin on the tournament. What that means is from a, the relationship between stakes and NGR, it's effectively lower stake per head, higher NGR.
And that's, of course, cannibalizing top-tier football that would otherwise have happened. There's a few reasons there why, as you point out, stakes was slightly negative even though sports NGR was, what was it, +7% for the quarter.
Excellent. All right. Thank you very much for your time.
Okay.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Gavin Kelleher at Goodbody. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just have two. Firstly on Brazil. Obviously a bit of a regulatory setback there in December. Wondering if you could give a kind of an update on the outlook for regulation in that market now. Just also on BetCity, any color or commentary you can give around performance in 2022, and maybe how the market share has been trending over recent quarters. Thank you.
Sure. Good morning, Gavin. Let me start off with Brazil. Yeah, you're right. We had expected that the sports betting legislation would come through and that Bolsonaro would sign that during his transition period. Now Lula has won and he's setting up his government. But despite this delay, we still expect regulation of sports betting in Brazil during 2023 with the new administration. That means legislation probably towards the end of 2023, and then hopefully will be regulated well into the end or into 2024. But we are kind of waiting for the new administration to pick up the matter, and we expect to have an update and more detailed timelines probably through Q1 2023. That's on sports betting.
Of course, iGaming Bill, we will also be waiting to see what happens with that should also be on the agenda later on. All in all, sports betting might be regulated through 2023, might slip into 2024, and then on the online casino, probably also beginning of 2024. That doesn't change, let's say, our excitement about the Brazilian market and underlying trends there are strong. Certainly something that we are and we're looking forward to that happening. On BetCity, listen, they are trading well, in line with expectations. Both came out of last year well and started the year well, and we're comfortable with the expectations that they have going into 2023.
As you know, they have a strong market share of around 20%. Really excited to have completed that acquisition last month, January.
Perfect. Yeah, that's great to hear. Thank you.
Thanks, Gavin.
Thank you. I'll take our next question from Kiranjot Grewal at Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey. Morning, guys. Just two from me. I think the current consensus for online suggests some margin pressures once you account for the announced acquisitions. What's behind this? Is it further cost inflation that we're anticipating here? Secondly, I think in the past you mentioned a macro impact from Eastern Europe. Are you seeing any impact in other regions? Just curious as Q4 was a high cost period for customers with the holiday costs and energy costs. Thank you.
Thanks. Rob, do you wanna take both of them?
Yes, happy to. Morning, Kiranjot. Yes, we managed to achieve our contribution margin target in 2022, which we're pleased with. 2023, there is a little bit more downward pressure on that number for a few reasons. The increases in Australian Point of Consumption Tax, you'll be aware of those. There's also a little bit of pressure, I've already touched on it earlier on this call, around market launches. For example, the Netherlands, German gaming could have an impact, one or two other territories that we're looking to launch in. Whilst we'll still be shooting for a contribution margin somewhere close to 40% as we do year in, year out, there is a little bit of downward pressure on it in 2023.
From a cost inflation perspective, you know, really just in line with run rates and from what we've seen previously, nothing to call out there, obviously acquisitions getting layered in on top. Your question around macro. The key answer is we haven't seen any change in spend per head since Q2, which is encouraging. Even when you drill into the areas where there have been challenges, for example, we've talked about the Baltics, again, no change through Q3 and into Q4. You know, hopefully, as we progress through 2023, we'll annualize against some of that impact and indeed start to recover from it.
Just a last question. I mean, which market should be your biggest contributors for online growth in 2023? I mean, alternatively, which ones are you most excited about for the year ahead?
Yeah, I can start. Listen, I think all our core markets, we are quite excited about the prospect of them in 2023. Obviously, we have regulation happening in the U.K. Germany, hopefully there will be enforcement from the regulator there and the body they've set up, we will start to see some good contribution. Netherlands is an interesting one for us. Brazil, we're waiting for regulation, we're still really excited about that market. Of course, Central Eastern Europe, very excited of bringing SuperSport on board. Really across the globe, we're quite excited about the markets that we have there. Haven't mentioned Australia and Italy. I could do that as well. Rob, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Yeah, Croatia. You know, we're hoping for strong growth from Croatia. I think the important answer to your question, Kiranjot, is probably other than the U.K., you know, we'll be shooting for growth in all our major territories.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you find that your question has been unanswered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. We'll now move on to our next question from Simon Davies at Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning. Just two from me, please. Firstly, just on retail, very strong performance there, and you said driven primarily by gaming and betting machines. Can you just update us in terms of where you got in terms of the rollout of your latest generation machines? Do you expect growth to flatten out in 2023? Secondly, on the competitive situation in Australia, obviously Betr have been coming out with fairly aggressive promotions. You talked previously about Tabcorp raising its game. Are you seeing any shift in the competitive landscape in Australia? Do you expect that to impact 2023 performance?
Hey, good morning, Simon. Let me start with Australia. I will hand you over to Rob on the retail side. Australian business are doing really well. They had a good Q4 with high- single- digits in GEO growth. They have been, over the last year, really improving their market share. It is ticking upwards. We continue to outperform the bigger competitors there, at least what we've seen in the prior quarters. We're waiting for their new numbers, of course. Really strong momentum in the Australian business after they've lapped the COVID lockdowns from the quarters last year.
We saw the print yesterday from PointsBet, which you, which we'll lead to. They reported a strong Q4, despite the different markets rumors of them losing share to Betr, another or a new competitor within the market. Yes, good performance from PointsBet. Our Australian business is doing really well and super pleased as they continue to innovate down under. Happy for the Australian performance and looking forward to 2023 for them. Rob, retail and the rollouts.
Thank you. Morning, Simon. Across all of the digital touchpoints in our shops in the UK, we're continuing to enhance them. Whether you're looking at the gaming machine terminals, at the moment around half of our shops have the most advanced machines. We are consistently progressing through the rollout of those. Our bet stations and the self-service betting terminals, there's a lot more rollouts coming through 2023 as well. Also gantries is an area that we're focusing on in 2023, racing terminals as well. One thing that we've noticed is that whilst I mentioned earlier, we've gained 5 points of market share in the UK, which we're really pleased with, and the average is 45% across all products. Actually, our market share of racing is sort of high thirties.
There's opportunity there and we'll be focusing on that in particular during the course of 2023. Really touch points like gantries and racing terminals are the way to tap into those opportunities. In short, it's a continued rollout of best in class technology across all the digital touch points. That's really our focus for 2023.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Andrew Tam at Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to see if there was any update in terms of your estimates around the net interest expense line. I think at the Q3, you mentioned certainly for 2023, that the line should be north of GBP 200 million. Now that you've done a lot of your debt ref financings in December, do you still see that being the case particularly with high base rates?
I guess that's one for me.
Andrew, your line was. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Your line was slightly unclear, but I get that. We'll hand it to Rob.
Yes. Good morning. GBP 200, maybe just over for the cash interest cost is as good a guide as any at this stage. Yes, no change to expectation, on a P&L basis that we expect somewhere between 6.5% to 7% interest charge. Remember that the majority of our debt is fixed for the next period of time, so limited exposure to moving interest rates through the year as well.
Got it. Thanks for that. Thanks for the update.
Thank you, Andrew.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Ivor Jones. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. Maybe just as a follow-up to the previous question. Obviously the recent debt refi as well was towards M&A. Just looking at your 2023 maturity, bond maturity, just wanted to get an update. I think on the last call you mentioned that you'll be still looking at the bond market and potentially a combination of loan as well. Any update to that one? My second question as a follow-up to your M&A questions, there's been renewed headlines about some of the US peers probably looking to bid for the business again. Understand that you probably wouldn't be able to comment on that, but just your general view on potential bids in the future.
Finally, my last question, obviously one of your peers yesterday had big headlines or the day before around KYC and an internal investigation. Without getting into the details of that one, but can you remind us where you stand on your own KYC policies and whether you have VIP accounts, which I presume would be a yes, but whether you have VIP accounts in some of your jurisdictions. Thank you.
Thanks. I'll take the M&A and the comments that you made on the announcement out yesterday in the market, and then I'll hand you back to Rob for the bond question. As, as you can probably imagine, I'm not gonna comment on any speculations around MGM or Betclic, and there's really no change to our previous comments here. I mean, when it comes to our U.S. business, both parents are focused on maximizing the success of BetMGM. We work really well together, and I hope the results that we showed last week proves that point. I would also say that neither parent would do anything to create disruption or distraction that jeopardizes BetMGM's success.
Our commitment and focus is really clear on Entain's own ambitions and incredible opportunities here, of course, to continue to help them, BetMGM forwards, through their success. That was on your question on the bid, let me just touch briefly on your other question relating to the announcement in the market yesterday. Let me make a couple of points here. First and foremost, as you've heard us talk about, and we had an announcement out a couple of weeks ago, we operate in regulated markets. From end of January, we are 100% in markets that are regulated or are soon to be regulating, such as, for example, Brazil.
We're not operating in any of the markets that were mentioned in the announcement yesterday. We don't run VIP schemes. We, in Entain, we don't have VIP customers. We've talked a lot about our strategy being focused on building our recreational base. You've seen that we put out numbers as well in terms of how we are growing that base. I think we showed at the interim that in the UK, 90% of our customers are lower recreational spent customers in the UK. That's a key strategic focus for us. When it comes to what we are doing in terms of protecting the business, obviously ARC is a key part of that, and it provides cutting-edge technology solutions when it comes to player protection.
As part of everything we do here in our responsibility strategy, we've reviewed and overhauled all our processes, including customer checks and AML processes. That's something that is a top priority for us. We have dedicated AML teams, of course, KYC checks, and those AML teams have grown year- on- year because this is a key priority for us. We have all the dedicated policies and procedures and oversights in place. Everything we are doing is focused on protecting our customers. I do think we are setting the standards in terms of operating only in regulated markets as we go forward. Sorry for that slightly long answer. With that, I will hand you over to Rob for the question around the bond.
Thank you, Jette. Just to set the context for a moment for everybody's benefit, the refinancing activity that we did in Q4 saw us push out the nearer term maturities. We now have no major maturities until 2026, just with the exception of the GBP 400 million Ladbrokes Coral bond, which you referred to in your question. As we're thinking about that bond, which matures in September this year, we could redeem it in cash. We continue to look at refinancing options, though, both bonds and loans. No real update for you. But it is something that we'll certainly be looking at in the first half of this year.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Richard Stuber at Numis. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Jette. Good morning, Rob. Just two quick questions from me, please. The first one, could you just remind us again what % of your online revenue is from markets which are currently unregulated but with a near-term path to regulation? Presumably, the lion's share of that will be Brazil, but if there's any other markets you could point out, that'd be great. The second, I was wondering if you could give more color around the current trading in the year. If you can quantify any sort of numbers there and particularly around the customers you acquired during the World Cup and how sticky have they been? Thank you.
Thanks. Good morning, Richard. Yeah, as you say, we are now from end of January, as we accelerate the closure of some of the markets, the smaller markets, that be it, that where we didn't see any path to regulation anytime soon. We are 100% now in regulating or regulated markets. I would say it's approximately around 93% of the revenues that are from markets that are fully regulated, where we have domestically licenses. Then there is a handful of sole markets that we're busy with regulating shortly, and the bigger one of those are, as you say, Brazil. Rob, over to you for the other question.
Sure. I mean, a little bit early to be talking about current trading in the year. As you say, we did see an uplift in activity in Q4. I mentioned it in the opening remarks that compared to run rates, we saw actives lift about 10% during the tournament. That really has maintained as we headed, exited last year and into this year. We're pleased with our start to the year. Obviously, though, a long way to go.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Joe Thomas at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jette, good morning, Rob. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a couple of small ones, please. The first one is on the contribution margin. I don't think that there is any change on the outlook for this year from what you've said previously. Since Q3, we've had Brazil not go forward with regulation, which would have meant a tax headwind. I just wonder why perhaps the outlook isn't incrementally improving and why it is unchanged. Any help there would be useful. Then, secondly, just on Germany, I think you've now lapped the introduction of the regime there. I just wonder what underlying trading looks like.
Is it sort of deteriorating or is it Are you growing again in Germany? Thank you.
Hi. Good morning, Joe. I think both of them are for Rob. Rob, do you wanna take them both?
Yes, I can have a go. In Germany, the most recent change was a change to the way that spend limits are implemented from 1st of July. There is still an ongoing impact. The key aspect there, though, we've talked about it a lot, is this requirement for enforcement because there's still a complete difference in offering for those that are compliant versus those that are not. I think I touched on it earlier in this call, there are some green shoots in terms of our numbers. Whilst NGR was down a little bit in Q4, actives and FTDs in particular were up very strongly.
If we get the enforcement that sort of long, you know, been expected during 2023, we do expect, we've said it before, we do expect 2023 to be the year that we return to growth in Germany. For context, it's worth saying when, I think it was October 2020, when the new regime was announced, we gave our guidance at the time for the impacts. We're only just below that guidance today. The difference is we would have expected to have been on the path to recovery by now, and we're not. Hopefully 2023 will be the start, as I say. In terms of contribution margin guidance, you know, we haven't factored in anything around Brazil. We'll wait to see exactly what that looks like and when.
One would hope that it isn't too much of an impact, given whilst new taxes will be introduced, there are benefits around things like payment supply fees and other parts of the cost of sales equation. It's not necessarily going to be a material drag to contribution margin as and when it regulates. In any event, if you can get an acceleration of NGR, you know, that's the best way to improve your contribution margin as well.
Got you. Thanks. Could I just perhaps just pick up on Brazil a bit also? You were highlighted in the past competition there. Is there any further update on that as well?
I can take that briefly. There is a lot of noise in the market, no doubt about that. It's really coming from small operators. You know, we don't expect that to have a longer term impact in the market. There will probably continue to be some noise in the market until we get regulation through.
Got you. Thanks very much, both of you.
Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from James Rowland Clark at Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions as well. You just sort of alluded to earlier that the 2023 contribution margin would be just below 40% as you see it. Could you help us as to whether that's the right sort of contribution margin to be thinking about longer term, or can you get back to the 40% to 42% you used to operate at? Secondly, on the white paper, obviously the gambling minister's been out there talking about the white paper coming in the next few weeks, but then Downing Street kind of stepping in potentially, who knows, really? What's your expectation around the timing, and I suppose also what's your expectation around implementation of any new measures on slots and affordability?
My final question is on the online NGR growth trends. You were saying that underlying is low to mid-single digit online NGR growth. If you back out the World Cup and the soft margins, the soft comps from the margins, and that potentially this is where expectations are for 2023 X acquisitions. I'm just wondering why that's the right run rate, given the shift of football fixtures out of Q4 for the World Cup and into 2023, and because you're now comping the measures you've done in the U.K. and you've got German licenses.
BetCity to come. I'm just wondering why that is the right expectation for 2023. Thank you.
Thank you, James. Good morning to you, and thank you for asking about the white paper. I'll take that one, and then I will hand you over to Rob for contribution margin question and the 2023 run rate. Listen, I would say like this. I think what we've heard the last couple of weeks is from the government and also from the new minister is an approach and at least comments that are, you know, somewhat pro-industry and advocating for freedom of choice. They also want to talk about frictionless checks instead of affordability checks and what comes with that, which I think is all positive.
The recent comments that we all heard is that they indicated intent to have the paper out in the coming weeks, which I assume would point to in February, but at least sometime during Q1. Hopeful for Q1. However, I think we should expect that this might slip into Q2. We hope that it will be out during Q1. When it comes to the measures being implemented. I think for a number of these measures, especially when we talk about the frictionless checks, you know, it's pretty unproven, right? It will not only require consultation, but also a period with tests and trials and implementation.
We'll see what comes out and how much time we will need to test these things when it comes to the different consumer checks. That doesn't change the fact that just having the white paper out for us and for the industry will provide some clarity in terms of what is actually the expectations here. We can work with both DCMS and the GC on the implementation. I think also helpful that DCMS and the minister have been quite clear that he wants the GC to have more accountability, and therefore, also that there needs to be some oversight and consistency in terms of the implementation of the Gambling Act review and the white paper.
In short, you know, hopefully Q1, whether it slips into Q2, that might be the case. Rob, over to you on contribution margin and run rate 2023.
Thank you. Morning, James. Yeah, let's start with contribution margin. 40% has been the sort of long-term number for this business. You mentioned 41, 42, but really that was during the COVID period, where NGR took an exceptional lift, and we didn't increase marketing spend proportionately, and therefore that played through to contribution benefit. In 2022, of course, we've now unwound that as the first half of the year, as you know, was negative, lapping lockdowns. 41, 42 is not really the right benchmark. I'd suggest 40 is the long-term number. Can we get there in 2023? I've talked earlier in the call the pressures against that, but it's not to say we won't try.
When we look forward to 2024 and beyond, as I touched on one of the earlier questions, really NGR growth is the best way that we shouldn't need to grow our marketing investment at the same rate as we grow our NGR. Therefore, you should get some positive forces behind your contribution margin, but you always need to allow for the possibility of a tax rate increase in a certain territory and so on. That's a long way of saying that 40% has historically been the number. I think it's still the number going forward, just flagging a little bit of incremental pressure in 2023. We've spoken around things like the launches of bwin back into the Netherlands as a reason for that.
Your question around online NGR, what the run rate going into 2023 is. Inevitably, there are always moving parts in this business. We're so globally diversified, as you know. You mentioned a few potential ups and downs. Let me just comment on each of those. You mentioned football fixtures. You know, I would agree that there should be some benefit in 2023. Ordinarily, rule of thumb, tournaments add about 2 percentage points of benefit to a full year. We've already effectively had half a point of benefit. I mentioned 2 points incremental to the quarter. That's therefore 0.5%. Logically, there's still a percentage point or so to come in 2023, bearing in mind 2022 had some fixture benefit as well.
Yeah, maybe there's a point or so for the rescheduled football fixtures. Your comment around UK, you know, yes, the second half should be stronger than the first half if nothing else changes. As we've seen in the UK from recent years, you can expect that something might happen, and obviously we're waiting to see the outcome of the white papers, as Jette has touched on. You know, we're trying to be conservative with our outlook for the UK. In Germany, we've touched on that in this call as well.
You know, yes, there is some positive momentum around things like an improving slots product, ability to advertise. We haven't yet lapped the change in spend limits from 1st of July. There's some sort of opposing dynamics there that the big watch-out, as we've talked about or the big catalyst will be enforcement. Netherlands, you mentioned, you know, that's not in the run rate. That would be an incremental positive. Another one to watch out for is markets like the Baltics, where we saw a drop in spend per head in Q2. You know, as the run rates are trending, we should annualize against that and potentially recover from it as well. That could be an upward catalyst to the run rates.
Long way of saying there's always a lot of noise in the numbers. It feels like we're sort of low to mid-single digit territory pre-acquisitions at the moment. We'll monitor that closely as we progress through 2023.
Thank you. That's really helpful color on the underlying business. Could I just double-check the rough percentage point online NGR growth impact from acquisitions you'd be expecting?
Yeah. Look, it could be as much as 10 percentage points, that sort of thing.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thanks, James.
Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Jette for closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all for listening today. As Q4 results demonstrate, Entain's ongoing momentum is underpinned by the underlying strength of our business. The final quarter rounds off 2022 as another year of strong performance across the group. Having just passed my 2 years anniversary, as CEO, it's great to see that our tremendous achievements that we've achieved and delivered over this short time. There are still exciting times ahead of us as we continue to grow and embrace opportunities to deliver our strategic ambitions. Our relentless focus on the customer, our increasingly diversified reach, and our powerful Entain platform sees us well positioned for many years to come. I look forward to speaking to you again when we report our full year results on the ninth of March.
In the meantime, if you have any other questions, do get in touch with David and the IR team. Thank you and goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.