Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Simon Davies. I'm the online gaming analyst at Deutsche Bank over in London, and over in Gibraltar, we have Shay Segev, the Group CEO of GVC. We're fortunate to have up to an hour of Shay's time, hot on the heels from his capital markets day presentation this morning. I have a series of themes and questions I'll put to him, and if the audience has any questions you want to raise, please send them over, and I'll aim to get through those as well. You can just click on the speech bubble on the webcast, so we will get started. So, Shay, you've been in charge of GVC for four months now, and the business has obviously been performing very well. Can you give us a quick overview of how you see the business strategically?
Is this a case of strategic evolution rather than revolution?
Yeah. So, I mean, good morning, afternoon, everybody. And today is a very important historical day on GVC Live. We launch a new corporate brand identity subject to shareholders' approval. We will be named as Entain, which is an important, symbolic, and important part of our journey. We believe that this is better to encapsulate the direction that we are going, focusing on entertainment. And as you mentioned as well, we launched today a new strategy. Again, it's probably not an unexpected strategy, but it's a much more clearer direction, bolder, in a way more ambitious, in a way where we want to aim. We put also a new statement and vision for the business. We want to revolutionize the industry, make our customers, and provide them a richer and safer experience. And in this strategy, we have two pillars that we put.
One is about sustainability, and the second is about growth. In terms of sustainability, there are a few pillars there. It's about responsibility, and it's about regulatory. In terms of responsibility, we want to use our own technology, which, as we use it today, provides quite a lot of customers' insight in terms of CRM and marketing, also to leverage it for customer protection as well, using all of the data scientists that we have, and do whatever it takes to lead in player protection and RG tools, which I can touch on later as well if you want. We also put a clear strategy in terms of our focus only on regulated markets. I mean, we made a decision to move from 96%-99% of our revenues in regulated and regulating markets and committed by the end of 2023 to do 100% regulated.
So, we basically today announced exiting for a few countries that we don't believe will regulate in the next years to come and focus only on countries that are regulated or regulating soon. And again, it's part of our sustainability pillar to create certainty and long-term and work in a way that we can guarantee long-term return to our shareholders. And in terms of our growth strategy as well, I mean, we have four key areas there. One is clearly lead the U.S. I mean, we have a great relationship with MGM, and we have quite successful joint ventures with BetMGM and partypoker in the U.S. So, we want to continue to show progress, and we are very pleased with the progress we've been showing so far. The second growth is around our core business. We've been growing for 19 consecutive quarters, double-digit, more than 10%.
We believe that we will continue doing it for the future as well. Again, if you put it on our GBP 3 billion revenues, 10% or more, then this is a very impressive organic growth within the business. The third growth pillar is around entering new markets. I mean, as I mentioned, our focus is only regulated markets. And when we analyzed the markets, then there are more than 60 regulated markets that we are not there yet, which we can get the license. We have relevant technologies. Our brands are relevant. We have the know-how to operate in terms of our marketing expertise. And we'll be seeking to enter this market over the next five years gradually. We just entered in the last few weeks to Portugal, which is an interesting lucrative market. It's regulated. It's digital. It's growing.
We're about to launch any day now to Colombia, which is another regulated, interesting market, and as I mentioned, there are other 60 regulated markets outside the U.S., in places like other places in Europe, in countries in Latin America, like Mexico as an example, and in countries in Africa. Africa itself has more than 20 regulated markets as well, and if we look into this GDP or these potential revenues from these other 60 regulated markets, we can double our business just by that, and probably the last growth pillar is around us expanding further, again, leveraging our technology and our know-how and expanding into other categories and other audiences and areas that we believe that future trends and consumer trends will become important in the future.
We gave an example today, esports, something that we are keen to create early start and position ourselves for the future as a leader also in the esports space as well. Probably skill games, again, other technology trends which might disrupt also our core business today, things like 5G, virtual reality, AR. Again, being a very tech-driven business, we can allow ourselves to invest into these things. Again, these four growth areas around winning the U.S., growing our core business, entering new markets, and expanding to new categories and new audiences will probably give me, at least, the confidence that we can double or even triple our business in the next five years.
Probably the last thing I want to stretch here is that we wouldn't be able to do all of this to support sustainability in terms of protecting players, support growth in terms of winning the U.S., entering new markets, and expanding further without our technology. This is something which is very unique for the group. I mean, we are the only group owning 100% of our own technology. We have 90% of our non-retail people working for technology and for digital. We have more than 3,000 developers in the group, which put us probably as big as any other tier-one software or digital business or technology-driven business. This gives us the flexibility, the ability to go and do all of these things at the same time to provide our customers with better products.
Clearly, from what we've seen in many markets, the long-term winner is the winner who has the best product. As the technology can allow you to tailor the product for the local market. It's quite exciting. I will take questions now.
The U.S. has been described, indeed, by your predecessor as the biggest single opportunity for creating shareholder value within GVC. Do you think that's right? And is there anything you aim to do differently to maximize the upside?
Yeah, I think it's right. It's probably, again, you're talking about which timeline? I think probably in the next five to seven years, this is probably how you see it. One of the biggest opportunities we have within our group, it is a rapidly growing market. We are live now in the United States. I think we mentioned today that we foresee that by the end of next year, we'll be live with 20 states. The market is estimated to grow in the next three to five years to $20 billion. I mean, some other estimate is to be as large as even $50 billion. So it's going to be a massive market. We already have, again, in the states that we're operating, 18% or 17% aggregated market share. So we are targeting 15%-20%.
And if you take the 20 or 50 billion and you run 50% or 20% market share, these are really big numbers. And this is where we're aiming. And this is there. It's real. So it's not in the air. It's something which is real. And it is probably the biggest opportunity we have in the short, mid-term. But again, the war doesn't stop there. We have many other opportunities we can look. So it's not just the U.S. I mean, clearly, the U.S., we want to grab it because it's there and we're almost there, and we should get that market. But as I mentioned, there are many other markets in Africa and in Europe, in Latin America. There's other categories as well. So clearly, in terms of priorities, we are going to focus on the U.S. This is going to be the top of our priority.
It's been, but I think the group has further opportunities as well.
Sticking with the U.S., GVC should have a number of competitive advantages out there. It's got low CPAs and market access costs. It's got significant existing brand. How high do you think a mature BetMGM business should get its EBITDA margin? Do you think it can achieve the kind of target levels we've heard from DraftKings at 35%? And also, when do you think the U.S. business should move into profit?
So in terms of target margin, I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess DraftKings guided to 35% for a very mature market, I guess it is realistic. One thing I can tell you for sure, I'm quite confident we will have better profit margins than DraftKings for the reason that you just mentioned, right? I mean, first, the market access. In many states where DraftKings needs to pay for a license for market access, we get this market access for free from MGM. The technology has come for free from GVC, which is a massive cost. I mean, they're probably paying today to Kambi. I mean, I know what the deal is. I mean, my background from B2B, I'm familiar with these deals. These deals are probably 10%-12%, I assume, rev share.
So if you probably just put the 10%-12% of rev share on technology and you put probably another 5%-7% on market access, then probably there is a gap there of at least 10% on margins between what we could get and what we can get. So I'm quite confident we will get a very punchy. I mean, the 30 marks sound reasonable. It all depends on taxes, on how competitive the market is going to be. But quite for, again, for what we've seen in other markets, around the 30 for digital market sounds probably realistic as the market will grow. In terms of profitability, it really depends, but it's a bit a sliding game because it depends when the states will open up, right? So our projection is that each state which opens usually takes three years until it becomes profitable.
Then it depends what opens, right? Because next year we'll open a few, and then the year after we'll open a few. It all depends how you run it. But again, you grow it. So probably rule of thumb is that a state within three years becomes profitable. And I would assume that probably, again, not somewhere like 2023, I would believe that we should be already profitable. But again, it really depends. I mean, a state like California, if it's opened up, or Texas, it can be Florida, it can be a massive investment immediately, which might delay your profitability by a year. But I think, again, for us, it's not necessarily focusing on the short-term profitability. It's focusing on the long-term building the best business, which, again, the game in the U.S. is massive.
Lastly on the U.S., we've seen some spectacular valuations for U.S.-focused betting companies. If you do not feel that the value of the U.S. JV is being reflected in your share price, would you consider spinning off the JV as an IPO or SPAC in the U.S.?
I mean, clearly, these are all things that we are considering internally, but I think what we say. I mean, I think, but the clear focus is for us to focus on execution. I mean, I think it's more important for us rather than I mean, clearly, we wanted to reflect value in both the GVC share and also the MGM. Probably they want to do it as well. It makes sense. But I think the main thing is for us first to show progress. I mean, we've been a bit late for this game, right? I mean, we really launched only 12 months ago, and we're already 70%-80% market share while both DraftKings and FanDuel have been running for some time with massive marketing, etc. But we have a good product. We have a good brand.
We just started to untap the M life program and did much better integration, which is much more seamless with the UI as well. So I think we're only just starting to see us getting better and better. And again, the focus for us is not necessarily how do we just reflect value, which clearly we want to do it, but continue to show progress. And I believe that if we continue to show progress, I think the value will come. So we're quite confident about that.
Moving on to the subject of regulation. So any day now, we're expecting the launch of the long-awaited review of the U.K. Gambling Act. Obviously, the last government review of FOBTs didn't end too well for the industry. How far-reaching do you think that this review is going to be? And do you have any sense of when it might actually be implemented in terms of the findings?
So we hear that this probably will be launched. The review will launch probably by the end of this year. The list of topics are around advertising and marketing and stake limits and probably affordability as well. It's probably the biggest topics. I think there are a few other topics, and it's probably the bigger topics. It probably will be a process which will take 12 or 18 months. And then, again, this is me guessing or assuming. I mean, no one really knows how it will go. We clearly will be quite active in this process as well, contributing on the evidence and lobbying to make sure that we land on a sensible outcome as well. And I believe implementation might go as early as 2022, late 2022, or even 2023. This would be my assumption.
I mean, overall, again, regulation is something that I see as a positive thing. I mean, even if sometimes we go one step backward, long-term, I do see growth. Again, as long as we are landing in a reasonable outcome with the regulation, I do see also an advantage in it in some way. So it's not just negative. There is some positivity there as well. It's become a bigger barrier to entry, as an example. For example, I don't see now anybody can enter the U.K. market anymore. It's become very complex to comply with all regulation. So you just see smaller businesses actually exiting from the U.K.
It means that maybe the market is not growing as fast or is not big, but actually the one who stays is getting a bigger share of the cake, which we've been delivering great numbers in the U.K. and some of the peers as well. So it doesn't mean that the market is growing. It means that there are fewer players. We're also using this expertise in other markets as well. So we are now, as a business, we know how to operate in a highly strict regulatory environment, which is, again, something that you need to learn in terms of, again, your technology, your best practices, the management team, etc., which is another key important for us. And as I said, even if you go one step back, I do believe that the market will continue to grow, as we've seen in Germany, as an example, right?
I mean, I think what happened in Germany overall is very positive. I mean, we got regulation. It's certainty. Our revenue in Germany shrank a bit, but on the other end, we got now, again, certainty, and from now on, it's baseline. It's fully regulated, and we will start to grow double-digit in Germany. I think within years, it will come back to what it was, and we'll even expand it further, and the quality of the earnings improves much, much more. This is another important thing. This was a big piece of today around the new strategy around sustainability. It's not just about maximizing our revenues, which we clearly want to do it, but it's also about the quality of the earnings.
Just asking, are you happy with the outcome from German regulation? Do you see some scope of liberalization as the individual regulation?
Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, probably happy is not the right word. But yeah, I mean, I'm pleased that Germany led on regulation at last because, again, we've been operating in the German market for many years. And it has been a bit of a roller coaster for us operating in Germany. And I am pleased that it's landed on a regulation with a tolerance policy for gaming and with full license in sports, which is great, which is great certainty for us, for our shareholders in terms of the German revenues. The regulation itself, again, it's probably on the extreme side of the restrictions. But again, it is still sensible commercial. You can make revenues there and profitability. We need to adjust. We are now in a period of adjustment, which I think will take probably a few months.
And I believe, again, our projections there that we will continue to see a very high growth. So we basically rebased our business in Germany, and then we will start seeing a very high growth again within the German market, again, with a better quality of earnings, as I mentioned before. And again, I don't see. I mean, some of our competitors will go on this journey as well. And some of them, I don't think they can, again, they don't have the capacity in terms, again, of tech, of the business itself to comply with all of these requirements. So I think this is, again, another thing which over time will become a barrier to others and an advantage for us.
Moving more broadly, governments across Europe are going to be looking for incremental tax revenues given the costs of the pandemic. Are you concerned that the gambling sector looks particularly vulnerable? Obviously, a lot of the operators have actually been beneficiaries of COVID, and a number of them would be popular targets for politicians in a number of different markets.
I guess, I mean, this is probably another reason why our strategy is very valid to diversify our business as much as we can, and not just in the U.S. or not just in Europe, so basically, our strategy is to continue. We just, again, entered the Portugal market. We're planning to go probably for another five, six markets in the next 12 months and continue to diversify our revenues to as much as we can in regulated high-growth markets, and again, if tax increase will come, again, it's probably out of our control, and yeah, we just need to, I mean, it's probably the risk is other industries as well, so I don't see us unique from this perspective, and probably the solution is to continue to diversify.
Can you talk to us a bit about the ARC system that you announced this morning? How much of a step change is this relative to your previous offering? Where do you think it puts you relative to your peer group? And what impact do you think it could have in terms of player volumes?
I mean, I think this is very exciting. I mean, I'm personally very excited about ARC. ARC stands for Advanced Responsibility and Care. This is a program we are launching. I mean, the tech, the technology piece is probably the core of it, but it's not only that. If I want to go one step back, we've been investing quite a lot on responsible gaming for some time already. I think probably we have the most advanced solution already. What we've been mostly doing so far is two things. We've been giving our customers, players, the ability to put their own controls. You can go basically say, "I don't want to spend more than GBP 100 a month," or, "I don't want to spend more than three hours a week." You can set up your own controls within the website.
We've been encouraging our customers to set their own controls as well. What ARC is doing is taking it even one step further. What we will start to do is start developing our own data analytic patterns and try to see whether we can start proactively recommend to our customers how to set their own control. Even in some extreme cases, we will set it for them where we think that their behavior will be harmful. Then the whole idea is to start preventing proactively problem gambling before it's even started. This is probably the next generation of RG tools, which is not only you can passively or semi-passively actively can protect players. You are proactively protecting them before it even happens. It takes time.
We got in. Again, we have a lot of data scientists and a lot of internal data experts that's doing for us a lot of the work on other areas like CRM, marketing, personalization. We are now putting a big focus on responsibility as well. From this perspective, from data analytics, we included Professor Mark Griffiths, who is a well-known researcher in the U.K. and one of the universities in problem gambling. He's been advising many governments, and he was doing it also in terms of data analytics and patterns. Together, we joined forces and will start or will continue this journey developing the ARC. The idea will be some kind of a hub that we wanted also to integrate to every touchpoint with our customer.
Every interaction with our customer with our system, we will evaluate whether they are still on a positive journey or we should just send them a pop-up or trigger or something like that in order to start preventing problem gambling. The idea is, again, I think we will be the leader in this perspective. At some point, as we will develop further KPIs and measure it, I want to start sharing it with others, with our competitors as well. I mean, again, for us, I think it's important for us to build the industry as a proper, I mean, to build the industry in the best way we can in order to protect as many customers as we can. It's an important piece on our agenda.
Do you think it's going to have much of an impact in terms of player volumes?
I mean, we've been, again, as I mentioned, probably to 11 impact. I mean, if it doesn't have any impact, then I'll be surprised. So it will have an impact. But again, I think over time, again, it will improve the quality of earning on the long term. I mean, again, if you ask me, "Would you prefer to take GBP 500 from a player in a month and never see him again or take GBP 50 from a player for the next three years?" then clearly the second is what we prefer. We want our customers to stay with us for longer to make sure that they're enjoying the products. And if we can identify whatever we can do to identify if someone's spending with us money that he shouldn't, then it's our responsibility to do whatever we can to prevent that.
I don't even think about it, whether we lose or not. This is just the right thing for us to do, and we will do that. I think there is, again, I just want to make sure that it's a very complex thing. It's not very simple because some people can spend this amount of money, and some people cannot spend this amount of money. It needs to be very tailored, very personalized. I think it's better we, as operators who have access to this knowledge and to this data, will start defining these things rather than we just let regulators come with a blanket approach.
So, I think in a way, I see this also as a solution that we can go at some point with regulators, share it with them, share the supportive data, and prove as well, and making sure that in other places we're landing on a regulation which protects customers rather than just shrinking the industry.
GVC has delivered an extraordinary 19 consecutive quarters of online gaming growth, and that's well ahead of the underlying markets and the listed competitors. What do you think are the key drivers behind this? And do you think it's realistic to continue to target double-digit underlying growth into the medium term, particularly given the regulatory tightening?
I think probably our biggest advantage is our technology. This is probably our biggest advantage. I mean, again, if you look into all of the markets that we operate, we are growing more than our peers in every market. So every market we operate, we're growing more than the average in the market and more than our peers, which means we outperform our peers in every market. And you look what is common in all of this. I mean, clearly, we have really good people. We have great brands. But I think what is really driving it is the product and the technology. And the fact that we have great product and great technology drives our customer to stay with us longer and to spend with us longer, meaning we grow better. We have a better understanding of our customer.
Back to the same point I mentioned today about data analytics and data scientists, better CRM, better engagement, improving our marketing spend throughout our life, all of this done through technology. I think this is our biggest advantage, and I think time after time, we're entering two markets, and we show that we're growing faster than anybody else through this technology. I mean, we just migrated, as an example, the Ladbrokes brand to our own technology after we acquired it. We've seen this acceleration. Foxy Bingo, as an example, we migrated it from a third party to our own technology. Since it migrated, it pretty much doubled the business, and this is only less than a year ago, so we see tremendous impact by driving businesses our own technology. Clearly, some places, again, there is some regulatory headwinds, mostly in some places in Europe.
But again, overall, as a mix, I do feel very, very comfortable. We continue to grow our business as a double-digit. It just shows us the need for us to continue to diversify to other emerging markets, which are growing fast. I mean, markets like Portugal, for example, which regulated only three or four years ago, we're still growing 60% year on year. We want to be more in markets like this. So again, you go to a market like Portugal and you continue to grow probably 30%-40% a year because this will be the average growth in this market because it's a relatively young, immature market. And if we do more of this, so we end up with a mix of some mature markets, which are growing probably high single-digit, and some emerging markets will grow high double-digit. And the mix overall will be a double-digit.
I think this is part of the strategy, going to other markets as well and continue doing that. I'm very comfortable that we will continue to grow double-digit for a long time.
Sticking with technology briefly, do you think that's an area that you need to invest more in? Obviously, you're emphasizing GVC's position as a technology-led business. Is it sufficiently well invested? And aligned to that, you were talking this morning about an opportunity for a review of cost structures across the group. Where do you see opportunities to take out costs, and what kind of numbers do you think we might be looking at?
In terms of investment in technology, this is probably, again, this is a top priority for us. I'm personally a technology-driven person. I used to be CTO. I'm an engineer in my background as well. I love technology. And I see technology as the future of pretty much everything we're doing. Technology disrupts, again, I mean, a good example is actually our industry, right? I mean, we did not invent sport betting or racing or gaming. It's been there for hundreds of years. What we've been doing is disrupting gaming and sport betting through technology in the digital age as well. And I think, again, a lot of industries driven by the digital disruption and technology drives that. Probably the only team in the group that has free rein to go for it and to invest as much as they need is the technology team.
We're not going to save anything on technology. As I said, this is our core competitive advantage. Every dollar we spend there, I'm confident we're going to get $10 for that. The other area of the business is areas that we are optimizing. We actually, funny enough, technology is helping us to optimize all of the other areas of the business. I mean, one thing maybe did not come clear on today is that we are launching another efficiency program. Again, we just came out from a big integration program after GVC acquired the Ladbrokes Coral, and we stripped out quite a lot of costs, GBP 130 million of costs and another GBP 30 million of CapEx. While we're running this program, we also identify further many other areas we can save a lot of cost, which we decided to kick off another program to save further costs.
I think this will be, again, probably tens of millions, higher tens of millions, but it takes time to deliver that. I guess I think the best is we let the team conclude the work, and then we can look into the numbers, and then we can discuss about it publicly. But again, clearly, if we're going to do a program, it's going to be a relevant number. And there will be things like I think we mentioned one thing today, which is relevant to the program. We mentioned our own SSBT, for example, right? So currently, our self-service betting terminal, we are licensing it for our betting shops in the U.K. from a third party. We are building our own. And once we build, we switch to our own. And then we actually will enjoy from two things. It's a good example. One thing is we will save cost.
So this will be a massive cost saving for us launching all of our betting shops on our own self-service betting terminals in the U.K. And second, it will drive more revenues because the SSBT we'll have on the betting shops will be connected to the same ecosystem that we have on digital. So if you are a customer going to a Ladbrokes shop playing on our SSBT, it's very easy for us to continue connecting you to the same journey on the Ladbrokes mobile as well. So if you get a free bet, as an example, you say, "Oh, Simon Davies here for a while. Take a free bet." You can use the free bet on SSBT or on your mobile. And again, and this is another example where technology helps us both to save costs and increase revenues.
We have many of these initiatives that we are basically continuing delivering, which will accelerate revenues, but as important, we'll also save quite a lot of costs in the years to come.
You announced this morning a potential push into esports and digital gaming. This is clearly very much a long-term strategy. But do you see it primarily as an organic opportunity, or is it one that's going to require bolt-on M&A? And how do you think you can address concerns around areas such as player integrity and underage gambling?
So I would say it probably will end up with a bolt-on acquisition. I mean, I think, again, we have quite a lot of capital deployed in terms of, again, the U.S., organic growth, new markets, etc. I think the right way for us going forward is to do some bolt-on acquisition and expand to this area as well. Probably esports is the most trivial one because esports is really correlated with what we do. I do see a convergence between esports and sports betting, probably, again, not in two years, but in 10, 15 years. I think it's definitely going there. I mean, I don't see how it's not going there. Again, we mentioned today that there is the big crowd, a lot of people watching this, more than half a billion on Twitch. League of Legends World Cup was 100 million people watching it.
So clearly, there is a big demand there. There is a big consumer of this type of consumer, a different behavior expectation from the one coming to our sports side. So we think the offering needs to be a little bit or needs to be adjusted for this in terms of the content, in terms of the way it's being presented to this audience. So I think it's going to be quite an interesting market, and I think it's going to grow exponentially, and we want to be there. Clearly, it's a young industry, so it's going to get all of the teething problems.
I think actually someone like GVC, with all of our expertise on age verification, on player protection, etc., I think would be good that someone like us being there and make sure that we're applying all of our responsible gaming and safety expertise on this industry. We're not going to rush into it. We're going to take it slow. We're going to work with regulators. Ideally, we want a partner as well with some of the big players in this space as well to make sure that we're making a big mark there as well. So yeah, I mean, again, we'll start building a baby step to position ourselves as leaders in this space as well as we're starting to look into other areas as well. Probably skill games might be another area for us to start looking as well.
Can you talk a bit about your M&A aspirations? Do you think we're looking at much more bolt-on activity than we've seen in the past, or do you have appetite for one more big strategic deal, particularly given the scale of Flutter now post the Stars Group acquisition?
Yeah, I mean, again, I think we can open for everything which will create value and accelerate value for our shareholders. So I don't think I would say, but clearly, I mean, probably if I need to guess, I would say it's more likely we'll continue doing bolt-on. I mean, there's just not much left to buy, which is big, and will be complementary for us. So I think I likely will continue to do bolt-on. I mean, we can create a lot of value from bolt-on acquisitions. I mean, this is a very tiny bolt-on, but again, what we did in Portugal, it's a good example. We bought a business which makes EUR 6 million EBITDA. I mean, within two years, we're making EUR 20 million EBITDA. So we more than tripled the business within three years.
So you buy a business for eight times and make it three times, fully regulated. So it's immediately value creation opportunity. Ideally, I want to do another 20 Portugals, which would be, again, provide us a very strong revenue stream from, again, regulated digital in high-growth markets, which we can double or triple quite quickly, again, leveraging our technology, our skill set, our brands. And all of these markets that I mentioned, these 60 markets, I mean, we probably will enter to some of them through acquisition. We will look for a local champion, a local brand, which is operating quite well in the business but doesn't have the technology or the capital or the knowledge to expand further. We'll buy them, and we will accelerate them further. I mean, Georgia is another good example, right? We bought Crystalbet only two years ago.
It was a EUR 10 million EBITDA business. We made it EUR 40 million within less than three years, so again, just show you the skill set we have in the group, and ideally, we would have done more Georgian like that, so I think bolt-on is very attractive for us. Buying access to further technology will be interesting for us as well. Esports is an example, as I mentioned, so this will be another attractive M&A type to look at, and larger acquisition, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't eliminate that, but I just said there's nothing really current. Something now for EUR 1 billion, it's probably, again, given the group size, it wouldn't be transformational anymore.
Can you talk a bit about ESG? Obviously, it's a very key focus for investors at the moment. Is it something that GVC is going to be focused on? And as a data-led business, is there much more that you can be doing in terms of both disclosure but also setting out targets?
Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, David here to support me on this as well. Maybe I say a few words, and if David wants to add on this, then great, because he personally has been driven some of the initiatives there as well. I mean, again, we have a new board. Corporate governance is a very top priority of the board. We've been doing quite a lot of work for some time. Clearly, we're investing a lot in our employees. I mean, we just launched. I mean, we want to be the best place for people to work, investing in the diversity, investing into. Again, Rob today gave some KPIs about how many women managers we have in the business. We just launched the Entain Foundation today with a commitment for GBP 100 million giving back to communities over the next five years.
So there's a lot of stuff we're doing, and clearly, this is a high priority for us. I mean, you want to add something?
Yeah, I mean, ESG is clearly a vast topic, the E, the S, and the G individually. G governance, we've clearly made some very strong strides in that, and we put ourselves up as the best in class corporate governance for FTSE 100 now. We've got a fairly fresh board. We've got a board with lots of broad experience. We'll be adding to that. We've got a new chairman, and we've got all the right processes in place. On the E, environmental, we're a technology company. We're not a mining company. So we can do certain things on that, and we've got the Carbon Trust Award that we're quite proud of.
And so Shay says, it's all about sustainability, and it's how does the business set itself up so that's here in 10, 20, 30 years' time, whether that's right through your employment practices, how you prepare yourself for future employment of different demographics of people going in years to come and the next generation coming through, the things that we do to support communities. We're very proud of the Pitching In program we've kicked off. And Shay talked quite in depth about the responsible gaming that we're doing, and that's the sort of key area for us. And the differentiator, as you said, for us is using our technology to take it to a sort of personal level and do it the best way that it can possibly be done.
Great. Thank you. Do you want to talk a bit about the pandemic and the impact that you think that has had on the business? Obviously, we've seen very, very significant uplift in customer acquisition. Do you think those customers stay? Is this just a temporary channel shift given the impact of lockdown? And what do you think the sort of permanent ramifications for the industry are going to be?
You mean in terms of digital, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we did see, again, clearly, as people at home, they spend more on digital channels. I guess this is not unique to our industry. I guess Amazon and Netflix are enjoying from it as well. So we did see uplift. We also see some favorable margins as well in terms of sports results as well. I don't know how to quantify that in terms of uplift post-pandemic. I mean.
Yeah, we didn't really put numbers on it, but the outcome is I'm hearing. Yeah, we didn't really put any numbers on it, but it's clear that there was a significant uplift in people at home gaming. I think what we have said is we're still seeing strength in gaming sort of 20% up from where it had been historically, and that's kind of growing the market overall.
But it's still down. Yeah, it's still down. So I mean, gaming was, again, for a few months, was peaking, and I think it's still down a bit. It's still higher than pre-COVID. Sports betting, maybe again, a little bit higher than pre-COVID. And I do think that people will stay with us for longer, but you probably will see some slowdown. And again, I don't know at this point of time to quantify. I mean, what does it mean for next year? I mean, clearly, we will see again. We need to see basically how things are playing. On the other end, as you know, I mean, in terms of retail, we do see some of the customers. We do see. I mean, our shops have been closed now. We'll be closed now for four weeks. There was the first shutdown as well.
But once retail is back between the first closure to the second one, we see actually customers quite eager to come back. And we saw the numbers almost come back. It was just short by 10%. And again, if trend's going forward, I mean, again, clearly, I mean, I would say probably, I don't know, 5% or something like that of this probably is uplift or something like that.
Just one last question on the U.S. Gross win margins there have been particularly low, and obviously, a lot of that has come down to the intense competition in the newly opened states. Do you think there's anything structural at play, or is it just an issue of competition? And over time, as the market matures, you would expect to see gross win margins broadly in line with the European levels?
Yeah, I think it's the second. I think it's competition. It's also the sophistication of the market as well in terms of product. So one, it's still a very competitive market, as you mentioned. So there is quite a lot of pricing, which are quite competitive as well, and then you have to continue and compete on pricing as well. And second, also is the mix of the bets as well. I mean, it's still very much driven by singles, single bets, meaning you bet on an outcome of a single game versus what you see in Europe, for example, that a lot of the bets are combinations of two or more bets, which by definition have higher margins.
And it's a matter of product and offering and also education in terms of customer experience, how the customer gets time to start understanding the product, try to use the most sophisticated features there, which will basically drive better margins. But I think it's getting there. I mean, I think it will get there. And as the market will mature, I'm sure that we will see better margins as well.
So you think there's nothing structural in terms of the games that people are betting on?
No, I don't think so.
I don't know if anyone in the audience has any questions to put to us. We'll happily pass them on. Otherwise, I might just ask Shay to give you a few comments to wrap up.
Yeah, okay, great. So yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, exciting day for us, new strategy in place, focus on both sustainability and growth. In terms of growth, I mean, there are many, many opportunities for us to double or even triple our business in the next five years. The key ones are continue showing progress in the U.S. and winning the U.S., continue growing our core business in double digits, expanding to new markets, try the bolt-on acquisition or organically, and expanding to new categories as well. This will deliver for us, I think, an exciting growth, but we don't want to do it at any cost. We want to do it responsibly, and we want to do it focusing on regulated markets, and this is the new strategy we put in place, and we have the best people in the industry. We have the best technology.
I think this is why we, as a group, are best positioned to deliver that. Yeah, I hope you all enjoyed.
Good. Well, thank you very much for that. It just remains for me to say thank you very much for everyone for dialing in, and a very, very big thank you to Shay for spending his time with us. Thank you very much.
Thanks so much.