afternoon, everybody, and thank you all for dialing in. I'm delighted to have on the call from GVC, which we'll still call it GVC at the moment, till shareholders approve Entain, CEO Shay Segev, and also David Lloyd-Seed. I guess we all know how these calls work. I mean, we'll keep everything on phones on mute. The call will take 45 to 50 minutes. I mean, amazingly, some people have sent in some brilliant questions, so thank you very much for that. Keep sending them in if you want to during the call. Without further ado, I'll hand over to Shay. Maybe Shay, maybe just give a brief summary of what you talked about last Thursday at your CMD before we get into a bit more detail.
Right.
Great questions.
Yeah, great. Great. Let me go for it. Yeah, so last week, I announced first, again, let's talk about the symbolic piece of it, but I think it's critical as well. A new corporate identity for the business. We're launching the business under a new name, Entain, which resembles the journey that actually we believe we've been on anyway, but actually it's a better, much more important. It's something which is much more embedded in the future journey that we are on as well to become leading and to revolutionize the entertainment sector in the space of gambling. And we believe we are already the leader.
As we see as a leader, we have further responsibility as well to continue and innovate and do and then take this industry and continue investing into it and take it to even a better place. We believe this new fresh start will give us this momentum, and if I want to get into a bit more meat on the bone, then basically we put two big concepts there. One is us looking into a long-term sustainable business, and second, the growth potential, and if I look into the sustainable business, then I think we've been quite bold. I'm very bold about it as well.
The idea is for us to create a long-term value for our shareholders, for employees, and for our customers, and the idea is even if we need to make a short-term sacrifice in order to make a long-term better value creation opportunity, then this is clearly our strategy. The strategy is to maximize value on the long term or mid-term even as well, so I'm not the one who thinks long term. I'm talking about 10, 20 years. I'm talking about mid-term as well. It means that our focus is going on only regulated markets. I think it's something trivial today to say, but it is important to put something clear. I mean, the opportunity today in the markets are pretty much mostly in regulated markets is where the industry is moving forward as well.
And second is we want to make sure that we're doing what is right for this industry as well, meaning investing whatever it takes into player safety, responsible gambling, using our asset as a technology business to use all of this great technology and know-how that we have to use it to protect customers. We launched a new concept, a new tech, which is it's more than tech. It's a program. It's commitment, which is called ARC, A-R-C. It's Advanced Responsibility and Care, which is basically putting a lot of our know-how and our technology in terms of AI, BI, try to predict problem gambling before it's really happened and protect customers.
I believe something which will become very, very valuable in the future, and we can even share it with other competitors, others in the markets as well. I mean, we don't want to compete on player protection. So definitely something that I believe that we as a leader should be doing, work very closely with regulators. So anyway, on sustainability, our objective is to make sure this industry is continuing to grow in a safe way, protecting what needs to be protected and focused on in regulated markets. And the second pillar is about growth, which is basically we as a business, we want to continue to grow. There are many, many opportunities for us.
I've been very bold on this, and I'm still we can double or triple our business in the next five years. I really believe that there are so many opportunities, and actually double or triple is very, very realistic to double or triple our business in the next five years, and we put it into four categories of growth opportunities. Clearly, number one is in the US. The US is a massive opportunity. It's going to be probably the biggest online iGaming and sports betting market in the next five to 10 years. I mean, New Jersey is a good example. Only single market. It's probably going to be a $2 billion market, very, very clearly.
Only iGaming is $1 billion. So I think the US, I think the estimation by 2025 to be $20 billion. There's some estimation it's going to grow as big as $50 billion as well. I believe it will be at least $50 billion market as well in the long term, and we are very bold on this. We believe we'll be at least 15%-20% market share from the whole US, which again, if you run the numbers, 15%-20% on these numbers over the next three-to-five years, then it's massive growth opportunity by itself. We have the best partner in the US, and I can touch it later as well with MGM, so clearly, our number one growth opportunity is the US.
The second one is to continue to grow our core business. As we've shown in the last 19 quarters, we'll be growing double digits in the last 19 quarters, consecutive quarters, double digit online business. Our online business is pretty much now almost pounds 3 billion a year, pounds 3 billion a year. If you apply 10% to 15% growth on that, then you will see the potential, just the core business to continue growing double-digit. It's massive. The second one as well. I did mention that our focus is only regulated markets. We currently operate besides the US.
We operate in another 20 regulated markets, and there is probably another 60 regulated markets, which we are not there yet. If you look into the opportunity for us to penetrate these 60 regulated markets, then we're definitely going to put it as a priority as well. These are markets that our brands are very relevant. I mean, people know the bwin. They know partypoker. So we have global brands. Our technology is very relevant. Our marketing know-how is very relevant. There's really no real reason why we don't take all of our assets and deploy them into these other regulated markets.
These are markets in Latin America, in Africa, in Europe, etc. I mean, we made already one step to this direction a few weeks ago. We acquired the business in Portugal. We as a business have a proven track record of acquiring or entering these markets and becoming a market leader quite quickly. We did it in Georgia two, three years ago. We will do it now in Portugal. I'm looking forward to doing it in another 30, 40, 50 markets in the next three to five years. Probably the last pillar on growth is new audiences as well. I talked about it as well last week. It is the fact that we have already all of these assets and we see other trends happening.
These are consumer trends. This is external to our industry, but these things are converging, and probably one of the examples I gave is esports, which I believe is a very interesting trend. More and more people spend their personal time on gaming. Gaming is probably the most growing consumer trend in the world today. There are two billion gamers. This is growing very fast. It is a massive industry. From this perspective, it has also become more and more popular, esports, as people compete each other on computer games.
We want to be dominating this industry as well as a wagering business in the e-gaming or esports business as well and take you to very exciting places of VR, AR, 5G, all of these trends. I believe this all will come, and we will have a lot to offer there with our technology, with our know-how. So to summarize in terms of the growth opportunity, if you take US, if you take our organic growth, which we're growing, and you take the fact that we will enter another 30 or 40 regulated markets and penetrate to new audiences, this is why I'm so confident that we are going to double or triple our business in the next five years.
Wow, Shay, that's fantastic and a great intro. I've got a lot of questions in on technology. So I suppose almost cutting to the chase. I mean, what sets your technology apart from the others? And is your technology the best out there, the best in the US? That's the question.
So yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I think this is, again, it's not a surprising question. Many people ask me the same thing. So I mean, the clear answer is yes. I mean, we are leading on technology. And maybe we'll try to break it down why we are leading on technology. So first, I mean, take me. It's symbolic again. But again, these symbolic things show a lot, right? I'm a technology guy. I mean, I don't think you see in any other business as a CEO whose background is technology. I used to be CTO.
I love technology. If you now ask me to sit and write some code, I can do it. Clearly, as a CEO, it's not my role to write code. But I love technology. I spend a lot of my time on tech. We as a business, I mean, we are very tech-driven as well. I mean, we basically created a lot of value for our shareholders in the last five years through technology. We've been able to, again, acquire businesses like bwin.party, like Ladbrokes Coral, improve it through technology, drive synergies, and create better products and better products to our customers through technology.
Now, to throw one more thing there, again, just it's basically a question which has a lot of angles to it. But if you put it all together, this is how you understand it. We are the only business as well who owns its full technology stack. I mean, none of our competitors own the full technology stack, right? I mean, some of them are talking about technology, and they do own technology, to be fair as well. But no one really owns the full technology stack because we have our own sport platform, which is the trading tools and the core engine of the betting as well.
We have the casino platform, bingo platform, poker platform, the CRM platform, the BI platform, the website, the mobile platform. We basically have all of it, right? So basically, when we go to a new market or when we penetrate a new state in the US, we don't need anybody to do anything. I mean, externally, it's all done internally. We don't rely on any providers. We do everything internally. So we have more than 3,000 IT people. We have more than 3,000 IT people who basically work for us and develop our products every year, which is massive. I mean, it puts us pretty much on a tier one technology company like any other technology comp
any.
It gives us the flexibility to be able to go and to prioritize internally. It gives us the ability to go and grow this team as well. And over the long term, it gives us the agility as well. Meaning, if we decide that something is important, like we want to launch Tennessee or develop content, we just go and do it. By the time that our competitors are thinking about doing something, we've already done it. And we've seen it in a few other markets, a few many markets. So I think we are the only one who will be able to do so many things at the same time. So we bought a business like Ladbrokes Coral.
We migrated it to our own tech and extracted pounds 160 million of core synergies. In this time, we launched 10 states in the US. We changed the regulation in Germany, and we launched in Colombia, and we continue to lead the product. I mean, no other business will be able to do all of these things at the same time, and the only reason we can do it at the same time is because we are very tech-driven and technology enables all of that.
Wow, that's pretty impressive. Now, Shay, I've got a lot of questions on the US, and I'll do my best to get through most of them before I go on to the rest. What do you see as a bigger opportunity for the industry in the US? iGaming, which I think people talk about as an $8 billion market today, or sports betting, which is a $12 billion market today by 2024, 2025?
So I mean, just to be understood, so the question is, what is the opportunity in the US?
I guess what's a bigger opportunity? iGaming or sports betting? I suppose you answered both.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's conflict. I mean, it's both, right? I mean, I think both are clearly big opportunities. It all depends on how fast the regulation will go, right? I think the regulation, I think it will end up with both anyway in most of the states, if not all of them. It's just a matter of timing. Clearly, sport is currently more a front runner. But I think iGaming is catching up as well. I mean, more states are now coming with iGaming as well. Again, what we've seen in other industries, sorry, in other markets, is that iGaming actually has a better economical model than sport. We've seen it in other markets.
I believe in the US, it would be similar as well. I mean, New Jersey is probably a good example. So it's much more easier to drive ROI on iGaming than sport. But again, sport is very lucrative as well. So both of them are very, very relevant. Ideally, we want to dominate both, and I think we will dominate both. I mean, iGaming is probably the easy one because, again, the BetMGM brand and the BetMGM M Life database and our strong product on iGaming is putting us already as a very strong front runner, market leader in iGaming. I mean, we have number one market share in New Jersey.
And actually, it's amazing what we did in the last 12 months. So we are now 23% market share in New Jersey, which is the largest market in the US, the largest iGaming market in the US, and we are the largest in this market in iGaming. So you can see that, and we just did it in the last 12 months. I mean, we pretty much almost doubled our share in the last 12 months in iGaming in New Jersey. Again, evidence to our capability in terms of the tech, the product, and the operational capabilities. So iGaming will be massive, and I believe we will dominate this category.
Sport is more competitive. It should be a bit more slower for us, but I think we're making really good progress. We are now 10% market share. New Jersey is an example. In Colorado, we are probably double digit there. I don't know. You call it 15%, 17%, 18%. Again, it's still growing. Nevada, I believe, will be a very big state for us as well with MGM presence there. Michigan will be a great state for us. We are about to launch in Pennsylvania in two weeks' time, I hope. Hopefully, Michigan will launch online before the end of the year. So I think both of this, iGaming and sport, will be lucrative.
Probably sport will be more states in the short term, but I think it will balance itself at the time. And I think we will definitely lead iGaming, and I think we will lead as well sport as well. And if you want me to say why I think we will lead, I can touch this as well.
Thank you. Just a couple of questions have come in about what lessons have you learned as you've launched in new states, i.e., sort of more aggressive customer acquisition strategy? And also, what are the main differences or similarities between a US and a UK customer? I guess I'm thinking of stickiness and spending per head there and loyalty.
Yeah, so I'll start with the lessons, right? So what we learned? We learned that, again, we really launched only 12 months ago, to be honest, right? I mean, again, if you give some credit to DraftKings and FanDuel, they probably got their game the last 18, 24 months. We really started 12 months ago in the US. I mean, clearly, I mean, we have 20 years of experience outside the US, so clearly. But our focus really came into the US only in the last 12 months, and again, I want to give ourselves a—and I'm saying it as to give ourselves a credit on the massive progress we made in 12 months, right?
I mean, we are now clear number three. I hope that in 12 months' time, if we have a chat, we will be more than just number three. Number two in our objective is to be number one. What we learned is that how important is it to be a day one in every market? We learned that. I mean, Tennessee is probably a good example. I'm looking forward to seeing the result of Tennessee when the first market share report will come up. I think it's going to be really positive, surprisingly, for everybody and for us. We learned it's very, very key to be on day one. Other than that, I think we just continue to localize the product.
I think our product, where it is today, versus where it had been the last 12 months ago, is in a much better place. I think, again, iGaming, we have pretty much the best product today. Sorry. On sports, the product is getting really competitive. Just a second. Yeah. Sorry. On sports, the product, yeah. On sports, the product became much more competitive as well, and again, we just launched a few products on parlay as an example. I think we were discussing this as well, which makes it a really good edge. The integration we made with our partners, with Yahoo, with BetMGM are coming up as well.
So again, it's a bit the market open, everybody went through. I think the capabilities are now starting to play a big part now as well, and now you started to see that the business, like ourselves, with coming with all of these capabilities, which I mentioned before, and the experience we have in other markets as well is starting to play as well, and what do we bring from Europe and from other markets as well? We bring a lot, right? I mean, the whole CRM, digital marketing, product execution capabilities that we have are very, very similar in the UK that you can leverage them in the US as well.
I mean, trading, all of this. I mean, again, we've been operating sport and iGaming for 20 years in other markets, and it's a massive tech and depth that we have that we leverage. I can give you many examples. I mean, let me just take two as an example.
Take a couple. Yeah, great.
So it would be tangible, right? So real-time marketing, right? So real-time marketing, something we've been doing for like four or five years now in the UK as an example, right? So now one of the technologies that we own is the ability which gives us that as a match is going on in real time based on what's happening in the match. We've been able to understand through our BI data who are the people actually watching this match or engaging now with bets. And based on the events, we're sending them real-time promotions or real-time offers to continue and engage.
So say you bet on a team and your team to lead, and your team is not leading, so we offer you to change your bet, or we offer you to put another bet. Or if you bet, you say in the first, you put an NBA game, and you say, "I bet my team will be leading in the first quarter of the game." And let's say the first quarter is done, but you didn't place a bet for the rest of the game, we will engage you in real time. So this is real-time marketing. And again, it sounds trivial, but it's not very trivial. I mean, to get all of these real-time capabilities when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of customers or tens of thousands of customers where you need to segment them and be able to communicate with them in real time, it's really important.
And again, this is something which will take competitors many, many years, many years to build this capability. We have a built-in capability, which we already use in other markets. For us, just take it, plug in, press the button, and run it. Another example is CRM automation. I mean, one of the things that we have is that our CRM is today 95% automated. And it took us probably really good 10 years to build it properly. What does it mean, CRM automated? It means that today, when you engage in our website, 90% of the communication you will have offline, online, will be automated.
Meaning, you came in, you didn't deposit, you get a message. You deposit, but you didn't place a bet, you get a message. You place a bet, but you never come back, you get a message. All of these different scenarios, which sound simple, some of them are not very simple because let's say you lost your bet four times in a row. And as a result of losing your bet four times in a row, you feel you're not unlucky. We will make you an offer to come back, right? So we basically understand the different scenarios of the customer. And based on that, tailor the CRM communication. We have probably more than 10,000 different CRM tools in our system.
And again, bringing them in and leveraging, it's a massive IP that will take years for others to build. And I think this is why we'll be able now to start getting this market share that we're showing every month.
Wow. That's very clear, Shay. I've got quite a few questions that come in just on the joint venture with MGM. I mean, and you kind of touched on it, but can you or do you need to go toe-to-toe on marketing dollars with the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings? How can you take so much market share from the leader, which obviously is FanDuel? And would it be mainly through the likes of, I don't know, Yahoo Sports or MLive or true better products?
Yeah. I mean, so financially, clearly, yeah. I mean, there's two strong parents here, MGM and GVC, soon to be Entain. I mean, we are very big, profitable businesses. And I don't think we have any issue with the financial commitment for this business. We are both very committed to this, so I don't see an issue. And if we need an external source of funds, that means funding, then we will get it. I mean, I don't think we'll have an issue, so I'm not worried at all. And we will do whatever is right for the business. If we need to spend more, I mean, we both said, I said it, MGM guy saying it as well.
We were fully committed to be a leader in the US. And if we need to spend more, we will spend whatever it takes to be a leader. And we demonstrated it. So not worried about that. Now, in terms of, so our capabilities are there. In terms of how are we going to get market share? Yeah. I mean, as I mentioned, we're already showing that we're getting market share. I mean, New Jersey, iGaming, we are number one. I would think that, again, and we're getting market share in every other market we operate. In markets which are already open up and running, I think it will be every month we're going to get another 0.5% to 1%.
And you're starting to see gradually how we're grabbing market share, exactly as it happened in the last six months. If you look into the data today versus six months, you see that this is exactly what we did. I would expect this to continue. And this is done, again, based on better product, more aggressive marketing that we're doing as well. And then probably the crown jewel, as you mentioned, is Yahoo. And probably the biggest one is actually MLive. MLive is the jackpot. And let me explain what I mean on that. So MLive is more than 30 million customers in the MLive database.
We know that these are customers which are very, very relevant. They are very relevant in terms of their preference in terms of gaming and sports. MGM has a relationship with them, clearly, because they're part of MLive. And even if you take just the big tier, the gold and the platinum tiers in terms of MLive, you're still talking about a good few millions there as well. These are very, very valuable customers. And these people are already loyal to MGM. And one of the things we've been doing, and we've already done it, is create the BetMGM journey as part of the whole MGM experience.
And this is what we've been doing probably for the last few months. So today, if you are an M life customer, then you're getting the M life tiers. As you spend with BetMGM, you're feeling basically that it's part of the journey as well. As I said, in terms of you being able, we just launched, I think, I think this week we launched also the ability to redeem the points as well through the BetMGM app as well. So again, it's all part of the same ecosystem. And then we would ideally, again, this is pretty much where we're going with this, we would want to see all of the people who are with MLive, who like sport betting, who like to play iGaming, to become a loyal BetMGM customer.
And as I said last week, we're already seeing through this journey, which we just started it. And it's actually. I'm surprisingly amazed how fast progress we make so quick. In the last few weeks, from the all-new customers we've been onboarding into BetMGM, 25% of them, one quarter, 25% of them are MLive customers. Just show you the power of this. And we know that these customers are very loyal. They will stay with us for longer. And we also know that their value is at least double. So now, put it on millions of customers, which I believe that over time will be more loyal for us. They stay longer with us.
They are more valuable. This is a massive value for us. And again, we just started to get this working. And I think this will be a big competitive advantage on the long term.
Thanks very much. And Shay, just to relate, I mean, you've obviously got some great partners, but are you seeking more partners to add to your proposition?
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, again, it's not something that you would always stop looking for. I mean, we're doing it also in our core business as well. You're always looking for partnerships that you can create value. I mean, currently, again, I wouldn't say that we feel that we miss anything. We have all the ingredients for success. So even if we don't end up with any other partner, I don't think we need anything else. So we have the tech 100% internally. We have the market access, right, through MGM and partners that we already have. So we have market access to everywhere we need to go.
And we have the product. We have the brand. We have access to players through MLive, through Yahoo. We have DFS access through, again, through Yahoo as well. Yahoo Sports is a big DFS database as well. So we have everything, actually. So we don't really need anything. And whether we will have an opportunity to accelerate some of the stuff through other partners, I mean, yeah, we will definitely explore it. I mean, something that we're always open-minded to see whether we can accelerate value.
That's great. Just two more questions on the US before we move on, Shay, if that's okay. Somebody just asked, could the election of Joe Biden change anything in regulation in the US or not?
I don't think so. I mean, again, I'm probably not the best person to comment on politics. I do enjoy watching it from time to time, but I don't think so. I think my personal view is that the train left the station in terms of sports betting and iGaming in the US. I believe that if anything, we actually see that it's accelerating in more and more states, definitely through the pandemic. We actually want to accelerate legislation to online gaming, and I think it just continues in one direction. I think now, also, you think about it, there's no one else who will lobby against it. There's no one really left to lobby against.
I mean, the casinos want it. The leagues want it. So there's no one, I think, left to object to it, so I think it's just moving in one direction.
Great. Another question coming in here is somebody's asking, curious to know what IAC are bringing to the table at an operational level in MGM because of the joint venture. At IAC's recent earnings call, management brought up GVC as the key reason for the $1 billion investment into MGM.
Yeah. Clearly, it's very flattering for us. I mean, a business like IAC, which is well-respected and has a track record of value creation in digital environments and internet consumer brands. I mean, it's impressive how they build their business, and if they identify GVC and GVC as a technology leader entering the U S market, partnering with MGM as a safe bet in terms of one of the leaders in this market, then again, I mean, great. This is what we've been saying for some time, and it's great to see that someone like IAC gets it quite quickly.
IAC, I mean, they are a massive shareholder with MGM, and clearly, through our relationship with MGM, the voice is being heard, and they are very valuable people. I mean, their opinion and experience is very valuable. I wouldn't say that a lot of it is currently lending yet, but I think we will expect to see them more and more active. I will definitely welcome that.
That's great. And again, sort of the last question and segue on is, up until recently, Kenny Alexander spoke about Brazil as the biggest potential market for GVC. Now, it's obviously the US. I guess the question from this person is, why has this changed? I think we know the answer, but more just to talk a bit more about the.
Yeah. I mean, it's all about macro. I mean, again, the numbers are there. I mean, Brazil remains a very strong potential for us. We are the leading brand in Brazil. We actually, again, are working very closely there with authorities to get Brazil fully regulated. It's been regulating for some time, and again, we are a leader there. I believe that we will continue to be leading. There is a massive opportunity in this Latin America and Brazil as well. We're just about to launch in Colombia now, by the way, any day now, Colombia, which will be fully regulated.
Another country in Latin America, which is a massive opportunity. We are working to enter Mexico as well. So I mean, Latin America in general, it's emerging markets. They have a massive opportunity. I mentioned Africa as well. I personally believe in a lot of growth to come from emerging markets. I mean, the US is the biggest economy, right? I mean, it's massive, right, and I think we have to be there. We want to be there. We have a great partner. It's probably, again, if you look five, 10 years from now, it will be the largest market, and we have to prioritize this as the biggest opportunity for us in the next five years to create value, and we're doing it.
But again, if you look, again, as I said, our strategy is more than just three years or five years. I'm looking long, long-term here. US, we'll be a leader. Europe, we are already a leader. Australia, we are the leader. I want to see how we can lead also in places like Africa, Latin America, more countries in Europe, continue expanding the US. Again, it sounds like we're trying to do a lot. Again, we have actually these capabilities. We've been proving that we can do all of these things, and we excel in all of these things. Yeah, so I see Brazil as a massive opportunity. The US is a massive opportunity.
Thanks. Thanks, Shay. And again, you mentioned sort of the 20 regulated markets you're in, but the 60 that you're not are pounds 45 billion of GGR. And just a bit more detail. I mean, could you maybe be a bit more precise with which markets you think are most interesting? And maybe what's holding you back entering these markets? Are they too competitive, lack of regulatory enforcement, payment solutions, technology?
Yeah. So I mean, entering into. I mean, clearly, I mean, again, part of the growth strategy is entering into further. I mean, call it like organic plus-plus is basically entering further regulated markets besides the US. These are markets like, if you look in Europe, you can talk about Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria. I mean, these are all markets. And I can continue. I probably can give you 20 to 25 countries in Europe which are regulated, Serbia, that you can get licensed and you can operate. Actually, markets where the bwin or party poker brands are well-known as well.
And probably we, as monetizing the bwin.party acquisition in the last probably five years and the Ladbrokes Coral acquisition as well, have been focusing to make sure we integrate creating this platform, which we did. Moving forward, they've been focusing on these core 20 markets, which have been the largest one, to be honest. Now we can expand even further. If you talk about Africa as an example, I didn't give some examples. I mean, Kenya is a big market, Tanzania, Uganda. These are all regulated markets online. There's more than 20 regulated markets in Africa.
Latin America, I did mention Colombia and Mexico as an example, but there's other countries. Paraguay is another good example who are regulated. You can get a license. You can launch. Now, how do we prioritize that? Clearly, you want to go more to the bigger markets, which still have growth, a lot of growth in front of them, which, by the way, all of them have a lot of growth. They are far from being a mature market, which is attractive by itself. Then it all depends on the opportunity as well. I mean, Portugal is a good example. Let's take Portugal as an example.
I mean, the ideal formula for us is actually to buy, to acquire the number four, number five in the market, like an operator, which is number four, number five, already have license, have some presence, and within two years to make it number one. Again, we did it in Georgia. We bought a business, which makes $10 million EBITDA. And within two, three years, we make it $40 million EBITDA. We fully transform the business within two, three years. Again, deploying our marketing know-how, our technology, all of these things basically.
And we just a few weeks ago announced that we acquire a business in Portugal, again, fully regulated country, which makes €6 million EBITDA. And I'm very confident to say that this business will make EUR 20 million EBITDA in the next two years, right? So basically tripling it. And again, you think about it, it's an amazing model because we paid, say, EUR 60 million for this business to make six. So you pay 10 times, which is relatively, I would say, a bit expensive or normal digital, I mean, to buy a business. But then within three years, we make it EUR 20 million, which makes it three times.
So it's a massive formula for us to create value to our shareholders and accelerate earning as well. And if we can make another 10, 15 Portugals like this, just show you the opportunity. And this is what we're planning to do around expansion.
That's really simplistic. With integrating, is it really just - is it just basically plug and pay or plug and play with your sort of technology platform?
It's as simple. Yeah, it's as simple as that. I mean, it's a bit more than that, but it's as simple as that. I mean, again, after we did the bwin.party one, which is a massive business with, I don't know, 20 countries, and we did the Ladbrokes Coral one, which is a massive migration for us to do now bolt-on ones, which is more, it's like, yeah, it's something which is already, again, launching 20 states in the US. I mean, after we're doing all of these changes, for us, doing this is almost like a natural BAU walk. So it's, again, I mean, for other businesses who maybe don't have the expertise or the experience internally to buy businesses, integrate them, extract value, move technology, integrate cultures,
I mean, it's not just technology. It's much more than that. Then clearly, it will become a challenge. But we've been doing probably already, I don't know, 20 of these already, right? So we know exactly. It's almost like a formula that, yeah. You just do it. And we're doing it really, really good. I mean, we didn't fail in any acquisition we did. And we did all of them. We extracted all the value from them. So it's great.
Shay, you talked earlier on about 2 billion gamers and you being a gamer yourself also. I mean, can you talk a bit more about how exciting the opportunity is within esports, what the trends are telling you? And also just from a category, how does it tick the sort of ESG box too, i.e., young players and stuff like that, just from a concern people have?
Yeah, of course. Of course. So yeah. So yeah, I mean, gaming is. I mean, by the way, I don't know if you hear back. Do you hear background noise or no? I apologize if you do.
I think we've heard Amazon come a couple of times to the door, but all good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually, yeah, I had to jump to the office because I have to go home today because they're doing some fixes today. So I apologize. I was supposed to take this call from the office.
No, no. It's perfect.
Yeah. No worry. Okay. Okay. So again, I mean, I think, again, I'm very excited about it. As I mentioned to you, it's all about future trends. And the idea here is not necessarily to try to monetize this in the next year, two years, three years, but to create a long-term sustainable big business, the big value opportunity for us. So gaming is massive. It's a massive trend, right? I mean, there's probably, as you mentioned, 2 billion gamers, and we only know that it's only going to grow, right? Gaming becomes more and more popular. I see what my kids are doing. I see what I'm doing as well.
You see probably what your children are doing. Most of the time, they're spending on Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, PUBG, all of these different cool games. If you look into different consumer trends in general, then actually, it's quite interesting. I just read actually last week a recent report, and he said that basically the average person, how much time he spends per day on doing what. So it's, again, and if you put on average, people usually spend five hours per day on average on video. So they watch Netflix, the Amazon Prime. They watch news, linear TV as well.
You watch channel, you watch sports, etc., five hours per day. They do two hours per day on social networks, the WhatsApp, the Facebook, the Instagram, etc. You do four and a half hours per day on work. Again, the average person, probably, and then they do one and a half hours gaming. If you look at how this trend is going to change over the next probably three, four years, the only sector that's going really to grow fast in terms of time-consuming of people is actually gaming, right? Gaming becomes more and more.
Actually, you know what? The funny part, the interesting part is gaming is actually growing at the expense. It's going at the expense of social networks, right? You will see social networks are starting to reduce and gaming increase. The reason for that is that gaming becomes their social network, by the way. People are going to their computer games to Fortnite and to others, and they start spending there as their communities. Basically, their communities become more in terms of, again, they're meeting their friends there. They're sharing experience within the game itself.
Gaming has a massive potential as a consumer trade. Now, add on it, again, they're watching a concert. I mean, again, the Fortnite run through concerts as well. E-commerce within gaming as well. Everything is pretty much starting to evolve around this ecosystem. And gaming becomes like a hub. Now, if you add this and you look basically on the ability to monetize this hub, wagering becomes a really powerful thing there as well. And again, there's currently no proposition which feels natural there. And we want to be there. We want to be there. We want to, again, leverage our experience in terms of protecting people.
And again, I'm taking to your point as well, protecting customers and using our technologies and experience from other sectors as well to make sure that we're doing that in a safe way and deploying it to these communities as well. I mean, you will be also, you probably know it, but you're amazed that a lot of 25-34 age as well, I mean, more and more playing computer games, and it becomes a big trend as well, so it's not just the young audience, but it's also a much older audience, and these people are getting older as well, and again, I would look into it also as evolving it as a very responsible recreational offering that creates even more excitement to people who like basically spending time on that, so I wouldn't see it as a pure gambling or something like that.
I would see it basically as more recreational engagement as well, and again, this journey is pretty much starting, and we want to be, we want to lead this as well.
Just a follow-on from that, could you build acquired assets in esports, or will you just stay outside and manage the bets?
I believe that probably the best place for us is to start with some acquisition in this place. I think this probably will be my preference. I mean, we need to look into different options, but ideally, we will do some acquisition in this space. And again, when you're saying acquisition, maybe I just want to make sure that I don't give the wrong impression. I don't see ourselves, at least at this point, becoming a content provider. So we're not starting to compete with Activision or Epic or others, EA. I mean, I don't see us becoming the one who creates the computer games.
I see us as a platform integrating with these guys and providing them the ability to offer to their consumers or working with them to create basically the ability to wager. So let's say, and it can be in two different ways, right? It can be there is a very big tournament. I mean, again, I gave you the example last week in League of Legends finals last year. There's 100 million people watching that. 100 million people. It's more than the Super Bowl. Hello?
I think somebody, and that person thought it was a little kid coming in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's more than the Super Bowl, right? So again, there is clearly demand in this area, and we know that there's already quite a lot of people using it on the traditional brands. So again, if you look into Bet365 or Ladbrokes or bwin, people are betting on that. But again, these are more. You're taking it from the natural environment to a different environment. And the other thing which I think is quite exciting as well is the ability to allow people to also bet on themselves. And I think this is another area which I would like to explore.
If you liked your game, so let's say you're playing a lot of PUBG or you're playing a lot of Fortnite and you want to bet on yourself to win the next game, you can put a $1 bet. I'm going to play. And again, it makes your excitement. The game is much more exciting for you as well because not only now you play, you also put $1 that you're going to win the next round.
That's great. I suspect Shay will be asking you over the next couple of years a lot of questions about esports, but that's really clear. And you touched earlier on about sort of regulation and true technology protecting your customers. Just one quick one here is where are we as regards to the timetable of this gambling app review? When do you expect it to come in force? And what do you expect will be the major changes we need to take in limits to marketing ongoing consultation?
Yeah. I mean, so I think the government will launch the process probably somewhere in December. This is the current expectation that we have, right? Clearly, I cannot talk on behalf of the government, but we believe that it will happen during December. There will be an evidence period that clearly we will take an active part of it together with the BGC, which is combined from the leading operator in the UK, and we're working very closely together with Flutter, with William Hill, with Bet365, and others. We're very active in the UK in terms of providing evidence.
We believe that this process will take probably three, four months, and after that, the government will digest the input, will interview people, and probably through the end of next year, might come with a revised act. So this is what we believe is probably the most optimistic timeline for that. It can delay another year probably. And definitely through the uncertainty we have today with the pandemic in the world, but let's say the most optimistic is probably the end of next year. We'll have some clarity in terms of these potential changes in legislation.
And the topics to be discussed are all of the things you mentioned. Yeah, and I think they're all valid. And again, we are very—we as an industry, we just had a call about it earlier this week. We are welcoming it. I think it's a good review. The government is doing it. It's very important it will be done based on evidence, based on facts. And again, player protection, again, as I mentioned, is something which is important. It's key for us. We want to lead on that. We want to make sure that it's done in the best way. So we'll be fully transparent through this process. In a way, actually, we as a business are quite already.
We are advanced on it. We actually believe that we'll be doing even a lot of the things that would probably be required or be discussed already by this process as well. I mean, we're proactively doing the things which make sense. Again, whenever we can identify that there is a potential harm, then we don't wait for any legislation. We definitely. I mean, again, we as a business have to protect our customers. And again, I'm not really worried about the outcome of that. I mean, I'm more thinking it's a good thing, right? Even if the regulation comes a bit more strict than what we expect, you go, again, one step back and then three steps forward.
I mean, we've been proving time over time that we are very good with adjusting ourselves to regulations, again, through our systems, through our operational expertise. We've been growing even when regulations get much more stricter. We've been growing faster than others. In a way, if the regulation becomes more strict, it probably puts mostly stress on the smaller operators, who might, some of them actually might exit the market, meaning even if the pie becomes a bit smaller, we might take a bigger piece of the pie. So I think, yeah.
No, that's really, really clear. I'm also cognizant it's a Friday afternoon. If it's okay, I've got a couple more questions, Shay, because there's still more questions coming in, which is great. But listen, you've reported 19 consecutive quarters of double-digit online growth, which has been incredible. I mean, given the headwinds from Germany, the UK, and increasingly tough comps, do you think this can continue? And related to that, given the acceleration to online, will you reevaluate the opportunities for your real estate in the UK and obviously in Italy?
Yeah. I mean, so our retail business is doing. I mean, it's great. I mean, our retail business is also doing better than our competitors, right? So I mean, again, if you put the pandemic aside, which is clearly an important event, but we managed to. I mean, we are probably now 40% market share in the UK. I mean, remember that the UK betting shops business in the UK, the retail, is still pounds 2.5 billion per year, pounds 2.5 billion market pound per year. So it is a big market. We have 40% market share there. I believe that through the things we're doing to run it, we will just take in more and more market share.
I mean, I'll be not surprised if a year or two years from now, we'll be 50% market share in the UK. because we are the only ones investing into these shops. Clearly now with the William Hill sale through Caesars, probably it's going to get less focus. I think we're going to get more market share there. It's clearly not as attractive as digital because we cannot talk about UK retail about how we're going to double or triple our business, but it's still a very solid business. I mean, it will make more than pounds 100 million and more than pounds 120 million, I believe, pounds free cash flow for our business in the next years to come.
It's a very solid business, which is creating a lot of cash. We're running it very efficiently. We're deploying our technology there. It's clearly getting us also in terms of our digital strategy as well because a lot of the customers that are actually coming to our shops are actually the customers coming to our online business as well. We are very good. We've shown, we've demonstrated that we are very good on this omnichannel conversion from shop to online. And again, this is exactly what we're replicating in the US European retail, which is Italy and Belgium, it's actually a growth business.
It's growing very well, and so it'll continue to grow. It's more a franchise model, so it doesn't have this whole cost base. So yeah, I mean, it's a solid business. I would not look to. I will not look to exit that. On the other end, I will not look to expand retail unless it has strategic value. And in some places, retail does have a strategic value. It depends on the countries. In some countries, actually, you do want to have some presence in retail because it enables you to grow faster and give you some other competitive advantages as well.
I mean, Italy actually is a good example. Italy now, to own retail, it's an advantage, especially with the new marketing ban requirements, so you cannot do any digital marketing anymore on gambling, and actually owning the shops and with the Eurobet brand, it's become a big competitive advantage for us, and I believe that the UK might go there at some point as well, and again, us owning the high streets in terms of the betting shops will only make our brands even stronger.
That's really, really helpful, actually, Shay. And sort of almost having your sort of Rob Wood hat on now, I'm going to ask sort of people, the optimal capital structure, is it sort of the one to two times net debt to EBITDA, and under the assumption you will resume dividends, will they go back to, or do you expect to return to pre-COVID policy, which I think was to grow double-digit?
Yeah. The simple answer is yes. I mean, yeah. I mean, post-COVID, yeah, the idea is to grow the—I mean, again, I think the board needs to make a decision about, again, we didn't discuss our dividend policy for next year, but I think we clearly have the incentive to resume dividends as soon as we can. I mean, we do want to do it. We want to grow it. We want to generate as much cash as we can. We also need to look into the growth opportunities of the business going forward and the investment, the capital investment we want to do to continue the acquisitions, to invest in the US.
And I think once we have something to update, we'll update. But again, we've been very efficient. We've been growing very well. I'm quite confident that we will return value to our shareholders in the best way.
Thank you very much, Shay. Now, I know I said the call would be 45-50 minutes. We've gone way above it, but it's for all the right reasons because, I mean, there's been so many interesting things that you've touched on. Just before we finish up and before I say, is there anything else that you'd like to touch on or another message to give, or I think we've covered most bases?
Yeah. I mean, I can summarize. I think we covered all of it. I mean, you did very well at homework as well. So you know exactly.
I'm a very good analyst.
Yeah, very good. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's an exciting new era for our business. And I apologize. I don't have a fancy background. I was planning to do it, and then someone came in to do some stuff. So I apologize for that. So imagine you have a fancy background behind me. There is an exciting journey for us. I mean, again, clearly, we as a technology-driven business have a big competitive advantage. It's been demonstrated again and again in every market, actually in every sector. It's not even in the gambling sector.
The long-term winner is the one who has the best technology and the best product because short-term, some brands or some businesses can win on better marketing or better brand or spending more marketing. It has always been proven that the long-term winning in every sector is the one who brings the best value for the customer. We believe that we are the one because we're investing in exactly what you need to invest, which is the product, the offering, the technology. Our consumers engage with our brands, with our products. They get more value.
They stay with us longer, which enables us to spend over time more and more marketing and then bring even more. It becomes like a cycle that builds themselves. It's happening pretty much in every market we operate. I would expect it to open in the US and any other market that we penetrate as well. Clearly, we are here not just to create next year, 2021 or 2022, as the most profitable year. We're here to create the businesses, the best value on the long term. So again, if you talk to me about regulation in the UK or Germany, etc., I think this is good and this is good.
I'm very welcoming these regulations. It creates certainty, certainty to our employees, certainty to the shareholders. And once we have a base, we start to grow again through all of the things that I said. So I think it's a good thing for us. I will actually launch a strategy focusing only on regulated markets. Same goes for player protection and player safety. Again, we do whatever it takes to protect our customers, even if it's going to hit us in the short term in terms of earning. But again, it's improved the quality of our earning.
I'm not worried about any of this because I mentioned there are so many growth opportunities in our business, in the US, in our organic business, in new markets we're going to penetrate and even expanding to new audiences. You just put all of it together. I think the proposition is very hard to ignore.
That is a phenomenal, brilliant way of finishing up. And Shay, listen, can I thank you? I can't thank you enough for your time this afternoon, especially on a Friday. And David, thank you very much for all your help in organizing this call. And also for everyone dialing in, thank you very much. I didn't get to everyone's questions, but I will go back through David with those questions. So I'm going to just wish everyone a superb weekend. And again, Shay, David, thank you very much.
Bye. Great weekend, everybody. Thank you.