Welcome, everyone. Today marks an important day in XLMedia's current and future business journey. As the Chair and Representative of the Shareholders, I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce you to the new leadership in the business. Today, you're going to hear from David King, the CEO, and Caroline Ackroyd, the new CFO. David brings a wealth of media and digital publishing industry experience. He is an experienced Chief Executive Officer with extensive leadership and financial expertise. Caroline is also an experienced Chief Financial Officer with a track record of successful value creation and deep expertise in the sports and gaming sector. In the past few months, as I have dug deeper into the business and worked with David and Caroline, my confidence in XLMedia has continued to strengthen.
David and Caroline are committed to executing the strategy the group set forth and to providing more information to all of you. This morning, we're going to hear about how the business has evolved, the opportunity in North America, specifically the United States, and the H1 2022 results. This truly is an evolved XLMedia, one with new leadership, new operations, new technology, and new growth. This is the business you are investing in. As your representative, I am delighted to officially introduce you to David and Caroline and XLMedia.
Thank you, Marcus. Good morning, everyone. So XLMedia today is a global digital media company. We create content, and we connect audiences with advertisers. We've had a very good H1. As you can see, revenue is up 38%. Adjusted EBITDA is up 60%, both benefiting considerably from the launch of the New York State, which was legalized during the period, and, of course, from the Super Bowl. Today, XLMedia is now a sport-led business. 76% of its revenue now comes from sports. In 2020, it was around 18%. 68% of that revenue is now coming from North America. Gaming remains important at 19%, but both Gaming and now Personal Finance represent, as you can see, a significantly smaller part of our portfolio. Our strategy is to implement the existing strategy that's been previously communicated. The purpose, clearly, is to realize value for shareholders and all our stakeholder groups.
How are we going to do this? Well, we will prioritize regulated markets, as we've shown in North America. We will roll out our sports offering to new U.S. states as they open up. We then control the timing of when those states go live, and critically, in the rest of our business, we will focus on fewer, higher-quality, branded marquee sites. Our priorities: we will always have an eye to cash, cost, profit, and return on investment as we evaluate and implement our business priorities. Critical to developing new destinations and, indeed, to nurturing our existing websites and destinations is building high-quality content that is both engaging and the audience's trust. Partners: we select partners who similarly focus on high-quality content, provide access to scale and to speed of market, and complement the high-quality brands that we already operate ourselves.
We will develop our technology, redesign the user journey, and we will use data to enhance the relevance of the ads that we present to our audiences. We will expand our footprint, as I've said, into regulated markets, typically before they go live in preparation for online betting ultimately being legalized. So, North American expansion. As you can see from the slide, estimated growth in the market is around a 20% CAGR over the next few years. That provides considerable opportunity for us to continue to grow our North American sports business. As I said before, we don't have any control over the timing of state launches, which are obviously a significant driver of revenue in the launch period. And as a result, we don't expect to see linear growth, but we will expect to see underlying growth populated with spikes as each new state launches.
What are our routes to market? Well, we see it as three primary routes to market. We can buy and develop. We have, as you know, bought a number of assets in local markets and SBD, Sports Betting Dime, as a national site and service to the betting market. We can build, which is to take our existing sites, as we have with Saturday Down South, where we've extended the existing proposition into markets in the East and West. And we can use SBD to engage in all legalized markets, as we have recently, for example, in Kansas, where we've already driven over 5,000 registrations using our existing portfolio. And thirdly, we can work with partners, as we have in, for example, New York with amNY, which allows us to expand our footprint beyond the reach of our existing and developing websites.
I'll just say a little bit more, if I may, about the difference between owned and operated brands and our media partnership brands. In our owned and operated brands, we create content, we build relationships, and we own 100% of the results of that activity. In partnership, critically, part of the experience that we bring to the partner sites is the creation of the commercial content that engages directly with their audiences and enables them to consider and ultimately register to bet. In that instance, we share in the rewards of that activity. We use our skills and our experience to monetize relationships with their audience. The particular benefit of partnering into a new state is that they have existing scale, existing relationships, and we can gain rapid access.
Whereas if we go through to a new state with an owned and operated brand, where we're extending the reach of our brand or launching into that market, then we would typically expect to have a slightly smaller initial audience and not take full advantage of the spike that we've talked about in terms of the launch of a new state. So, here is the sample of our main brands. So, on the left-hand side, you can see Saturday brand, Saturday Down South, and some of its newly developed brands like Saturday Out West. Some of the recently acquired brands, Crossing Broad, ESNY. And on the right-hand side, some of the more substantial partnership brands that we have: amNY, as we've already discussed, Mile High Sports, and so on, all of which ultimately present us with the opportunity to participate across all the live markets.
In 2019, while there were a couple of states allowing legalized sports betting, we were not present in the marketplace at that time. But since that point, as a result of our acquisition program, we are now live in 16 states. And by the end of 2023, assuming Massachusetts and Maryland also go live in the period, which they're expected to do, we will be live in 19 states with either direct participation through our own brands, partnership participation, and, as I've said before, reaching all states through our Sports Betting Dime brand. I'll say a little bit more, if I may, around new launches that we are expecting. When we go live in Ohio, we see it as a very significant state, a large number of sports teams, and our partner, Cleveland.com, with 9.9 million monthly unique users.
It presents a significant opportunity for us and them to participate in the spike that we anticipate, so in addition to Ohio going live, Massachusetts, which has approved legalized online sports betting, will also go live. The exact timing of which we don't know, but probably in H1 next year. As the 15th largest state with some exceptional teams, we are already active working with our partner in the state. We anticipate there will be a hiatus and a big spike when it goes live in the period. If we move on then to our other verticals, gaming, we're going to focus on four brands: Caziwoo, Nettikasinot, Casino.se, and WhichBingo, and we're going to reduce the focus down to these primary sites with a small number of additional sites.
The purpose here is to move away from an environment in which we had a very large number of thin sites, largely using the same content. So instead, we are now going to have a focus on new, higher-quality content, more features to build engagement and to build trust. We will trial, for example, new games to encourage return visits. And while we expect gaming in the short term to remain in decline, in large part the result of obviously declining tail revenues, we have a very clear focus on driving new revenues, which in turn will create new tail revenues. In Personal Finance, we have similarly contracted the number of sites, again removing the nature of duplication and the thin levels of content that were present on our sites.
We've taken on board the impact of Your Money or Y our Life (YMYL) and the need to provide high-quality authoritative content in order to present personal finance information to enable audiences to make judgments around where they would like to use a financial service. This is now 2% of our business, and we now treat it as non-core. In the short term, we will focus on rebuilding the content, as I've said, recreating the authority, and enhancing the website and the user journey. Finally, Bluec law Media, that is our in-house SEO agency, acquired a relatively short time ago. We're going to focus that on optimizing the SEO on our owned and operated marquee sites. Thank you very much. Let me hand over now to Caroline, as you know, a highly experienced sector specialist being in the industry for many, many years. You can talk us through the financials.
Thank you, David. To cover our financial highlights for H1, we generated $44.5 million in total group revenues and an Adjusted EBITDA for the half year of $10.6 million. This was a growth of 60% year- on- year. We generated free cash flow of $7.8 million, which is up $8.1 million. This has enabled us to fund deferred consideration and earn-out payments relating to our acquisitions of $13 million in H1. I'd like to start by covering our progress on revenue growth and the mix and how it's evolved year- on- year. The group achieved $44.5 million of revenue H1, which was a 38% improvement on prior year. Significant progress in the U.S. has seen our revenue mix shift in H1 to 68% from U.S. assets, 19% from gaming assets, which was $8.4 million in revenue, and 8% from European Sports, which was $3.8 million.
U.S. Sports generated $30.2 million. This incorporates both our owned and operated sites and media partnerships. Sports as a whole is now largely focused on regulated markets and is now 76% of our total group revenue. Gaming in H1 has declined. Euro Sports has declined overall, largely due to websites we have closed and are no longer in operation and are cost-prohibitive to continue operating. But our U.K.-focused assets have grown year- on- year by 7%. Personal Finance and other revenues are no longer core and represent less than 5% of the business, so we've now grouped these together. New money in H1 generated 77% of revenue, and that is up 50% on the prior year. More of our revenue is being generated from new money in year as CPA deals in the U.S. dominated our performance in H1.
The U.S. sports betting market is focused on a CPA strategy as it largely looks to capitalize on new customer acquisition as new states open up. Typically, we're seeing around CPAs of between $300 and $350 to acquire customers via these channels in the U.S. In our more mature markets, casino and European Sports, we have a mixture of hybrid, fixed, and revenue-share deals, and we typically have lower CPAs with an ongoing revenue share. Tail revenue has subsequently become a smaller proportion of our overall revenue, as this is predominantly being generated from European assets, including U.K. and Finland. We will continue to build new and tail revenues in Euro Sports and casino, but to fewer quality brands. For our declining tail revenues, this is largely low-level maintenance, which requires no significant investment to underpin it.
We have generated over 100,000 RMPs in H1, dominated again by acquisition of customers in the U.S. Growth in gaming RMPs has been more challenging as the focus of our casino assets is in Finnish territories. In order to give a clearer understanding of the business mix within XLMedia, I wanted to break this down into the component parts. Our gross margin is defined as margin as a percentage of revenue after deducting associated content, technology, marketing, and people costs. North America Sports in H1 generates around 40%-50%, and this splits into two areas: owned and operated sites ranging between 60%-70% in margin, and media partnerships, where we have lower associated costs but higher revenue shares as we share revenue with our partners, and these are typically lower margins ranging between 40%-50%.
The mix of owned and operating revenues and media partnerships can be very dependent on the presence of those partners in legalized states and our own coverage from owned and operated sites. The U.S. market is a fast, large, and growing market with regulated tailwinds. This is very unlike our more mature markets for E.U. sports and gaming, which are subject to regulatory headwinds in Europe. These verticals include tail revenue share, revenue from customers introduced in previous years, and therefore have higher margins at 60% and 70%, respectively, in H1. To cover Gaming, Personal Finance, and others specifically. Gaming, our gaming revenues are expected to continue to trade below our historical levels. It remains a high-margin vertical, and we've implemented a cost-based reduction to ensure that the operations mirror the scale of the business.
We are also looking to selectively invest in content, people, and SEO to cement our position in key regulated markets and multi-territory opportunities. Personal Finance, we are making efforts to continue to rebuild the Personal Finance portfolio through improved operations, technology, brand, and product design. Currently, it's loss-making, but only represents around 2% of the revenue. We estimate this will have a $1 million-$2 million loss in this financial year. As a result, we will continue to review the strategy to determine the optimal path to return to profitability. Other revenues contain our external SEO agency, Bluec law, and our affiliate network, Reef Media. Both are deemed to be non-core. With Bluec law, this gives us greater in-house ability with largely external revenue from clients covering the costs associated with XLMedia.
We're now seeing consistent growth in Adjusted EBITDA year on year for the half years, growing from $6.6 million in H1 2021 to H1 2022, $10.6 million. Transformation costs in the half year are similar to the prior year at $3 million, and are forecast to be completed by the end of the year, and these activities will become part of BAU. Annually, these costs have benefited the group by delivering cost savings of $5 million-$6 million annualized, with $4 million realized in this financial year. In Adjusted EBITDA, margin has improved to 24% of revenue against a prior year of 21%. In H1, we've considered impairment of our Personal Finance assets and have written down the value of these assets by $3.5 million, which is included in our amortization and depreciation in H1.
In regards to our tax position for taxes in Israel for the years of 2016 to 2020, we have been working with the authorities to conclude this process, and we expect to have this finalized by the year end. Our cash reserves have reduced since the end of 2021 and are $17.7 million at the end of H1 2022. We've continued to fund deferred consideration and earn-out payments relating to our acquisitions: CBWG, Saturday Football, Sports Betting Dime, Bluec law, which we have been able to fund via excess cash generation. Our operating cash flow, which is cash from operating activities, excluding CapEx that relates directly to an acquisition, was $7.8 million for H1, which was $8.1 million higher than the prior half year. In H1, we've also funded $13 million of acquisition-related payments, and we will fund around $8 million of deferred consideration in H2.
The transformation program has also required further funding within 2022, but this is expected to be completed by the year end. In next financial year, we expect to fund a further $7 million relating to acquisitions from our free operating cash . As a final reminder, the business currently has no debt arrangements in place. This remains a consideration for the future as required for funded purposes. Thank you.
Thank you, Caroline. Let me update you on the outlook for the full year. We expect full-year Adjusted EBITDA to be broadly in line with the prior year. We have successfully shifted the business's focus towards sports betting with a particular focus on the North American regulated markets. We benefited from the upside in the New York State launch, which created a significant H1 upside, but we're now into a more normalized rhythm. We still believe that our U.S. Sports betting revenues will come in line with expectations for the full year. The gaming business is tracking in line with expectations. The anticipated cost savings that we were planning in 2022 of some $4 million will also be delivered. Personal Finance, however, has not recovered at the rate we had anticipated.
Revenue will be significantly down on last year and down on expectations, and the impact of that will be to see one, perhaps $2 million of loss in period. I'll summarize by saying that we think the full year will be broadly in line with last year's Adjusted EBITDA and will return to growth in 2023. If I can leave with you some further final thoughts and takeaways. We have had a strong first half of the year, as I said, buoyed by Super Bowl and New York. We are actively seeking to enhance the internal stability of the business following a significant amount of change, particularly around the move away from Israel. We are focused very much on improving the reporting and transparency of the information that we present to shareholders. We will and are implementing the existing strategy.
We will launch and expand into new markets in North America as they open up, working either with our partners or with our own assets where they reach into those markets. We will focus and prioritize on North America, and we will continue to enhance our activities in other markets, and as I say, we will focus on fewer, better, higher-quality sites and brands. Finally, I do want to just draw your attention as part of our program of improving reporting and transparency to our new website, which was made live earlier in the week, which you can access information around the half year and more information around the company and, as I say, prior year results and information. I do want to say a couple of things around KPIs. I know there's an appetite for more information around KPIs. We recognize that. We are working on them.
We are planning a Capital Markets Day where we will introduce you to the senior team and give you a much deeper and richer understanding of how we go about managing our business. So many thanks for listening. I'll now hand over to questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your phone is unmuted locally. To confirm, that's star followed by one to ask a question. As a reminder, that's star followed by one to ask a question on the phone line.
Thank you, operator. It seems we don't have any questions at this time. I think people can submit questions subsequently via the platform and via our website if they want to, and we'll get back to them as soon as we can. But I think that concludes the results webcast for this morning.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for joining. You may now disconnect. Good.