Good afternoon, everybody. David King speaking. I'm with Marcus, the Chairman, and Caroline, CFO, is on video. I'm going to jump rapidly forward, if I may, to jumping straight into the main presentation. Jump over the first few slides. So XLMedia now is a digital media company, and our purpose is to create compelling content that attracts highly engaged audiences and connects them to relevant advertisers. That is the fundamentals now of what this business does. I'm going to move through at a reasonable pace because I know you've had an opportunity to look at the presentation online and hear the original webcast. You can see that we've had a very strong first half year, $44.5 million in revenue, 38% up, and a strong adjusted EBITDA, a significant portion of that being driven by North American sports revenue growth.
Now, that has obviously benefited significantly from the annual event of the Super Bowl, but also, of course, from the New York State launch with nearly 20 million people being brought into the market, and we'll say more about that shortly. We are now a sport-led business. 76% of our revenues come from sport, 68% of those coming from North American sport, and we are no longer operating in the very large number of websites we historically ran in casino and more recently in personal finance. We can say a little bit more about that, so we've taken out risk penalty, and we have met, as a result of YMYL, we are now seeing a much smaller personal finance business within our overall group. We are very clearly now sport-led and North American-led. Importantly, we operate now in regulated markets in North America.
As I've said, we focus on the high-growth market of sports. And what we're doing is we're not changing, but we are implementing the strategy that's previously been described by my predecessor. We're going to focus in even more so than we had, perhaps, previously on a small number of marquee brands and sites. And the reason for that I'll expand on, but in principle, is that rather than a large number of very thin sites with poor quality content that either suffer from Google penalties or the YMYL, we're going to focus on those brands with high-quality content, engaging with audiences, trusted by audiences, which have strong Google authority and can ultimately drive revenues up as we move forward.
Our priorities in the immediate term, apart from the obvious and continuous focus on cash, cost, profit, and return on investment of the different things we're doing, we are going to expand and develop our websites so they become destinations, so that by investing in quality content and revenue, we can drive greater frequency of consumption. The intention of being is to get more people to visit more often, become more engaged, build more trust, and ultimately, when we present them with an offer or an advert, they're more likely to engage and respond to that advert. When we look for partners, and I'll say more about why we look for partners later, when we work with partners, we look for partners with a similarly engaged, high-quality audience, whether it be sport-specific or whether it be a news site with a large sports audience.
We want those partners to have the same principles and ethos of us, i.e., high-quality, engaged audiences, again, so that when we promote offers to them, there's a higher likelihood of them converting. We have more to do around our technology. We've made a significant stride, but we think there's more opportunity to optimize our sites, both through SEO and enhanced user experience, combined with the enhanced quality content that I've already described, and ultimately, to significantly improve the way in which we engage audiences with advertisers by putting relevant adverts in front of them, using technology to understand the journey that the particular individual has been on our sites, so that we can promote the most relevant ad to them at the most relevant time. And as I've already said, we expect to expand our footprint by moving into new North American states as they go live.
I'll say a little bit more about that. Jumping on then quickly to why are we in North America? We've moved into North America because it's a large untapped market, and it's growing very rapidly, as you can see, with an underlying CAGR of some 20% or more in the upside plan. We're focusing in on a high-growth market. The way we expand our footprint, there are three options. As you know, we've built the sport business largely by acquisition in North America. What that's done is given us a real footprint across a number of states in the U.S.: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, ESNY, across the board. We've bought Saturday Down South, which is a fandom in many ways, engaging particularly in college sports across the south of the country.
But we've recently, in the build category, launched it into the east and the west of the country to give us and build out our footprint in those markets as well. It's very important that we continue to build out our audience and continue to reach more people, both in the existing states that we currently operate and offer the opportunities to bet into, but also that we build out our presence into markets that have yet to be legalized, California, by way of example. And we can reach that state currently through our Saturday Out West, on the one hand, but also through Sports Betting Dime, which is another acquisition, which has national coverage and is a pure betting site, as opposed to a sports content site that offers and introduces you to betting promotions. So we do have reach into all legal states.
What we don't have in all states is large-scale audiences, and where a state is launching, say New York being the most recent example or Ohio being the one that's coming up shortly, it's very important for us to find a partner who has a high-quality audience through which we can monetize the opportunity. Now, when a market goes live, there is a huge spike. We've seen that in New York, where, as I said, 20 million people come to the market and are available to bet. There is obviously pent-up demand and indeed the concept of pre-registration where people register in advance of a state going live, and they're booking people now who are registering to go and bet when Ohio goes live shortly.
But if we think on New York for the moment, and if I may, I'll just turn the page so you can get a bit more substance to that. When a state goes live, people who have wanted to bet but are, I mean, unable to open a book. They may open more than one book. We have the opportunity to reach out to them through our own sites, through our partner sites. The partner sites, where we don't have an existing presence, offer a rapid-scaled entry into that market. And while we might only take 40%-50% of the gross revenues from that transaction that we have with the customer, ultimately, we have a much higher overall profitability because we take 40%-50% of a much larger number than if we'd enter the market with a more modest site.
Now, the value of our owned and operated brands is they give us ongoing presence in markets. So, for example, in New York, we have Elite Sports New York, ESNY. So that enables us both to sell into the launch of the market, but it enables us to have a presence into the future, and those sites, like ESNY, CBWG, Crossing Broad, etc., those sites are performing very well for us despite the fact that they launched into New Jersey and Pennsylvania some years ago. They continue to drive a significant portion of the $9.6 million of owned and operated sports revenues that we delivered in the first half. Media partners, on the other hand, delivered some $20 million, of which around two-thirds was North American New York sport with our partners AMNY.
It's very important to go into big markets with a large footprint, and it's very important to have our owned and operated brands sitting alongside in key markets to enable us to benefit from sustained revenue as the spike becomes a normalized rhythm. As I say, spike on launch, and then it drops into a normalized rhythm going forward. These are our main brands. On the left-hand side are owned brands. On the right-hand side are partner brands. I won't linger too long, but you can see that we have both well-known publishers with large sports audiences, and we have some very specific, more niche publishers and/or operators, such as PGH Hockey , because they have a very focused, specific audience in a specific market or in a specific sport.
So these are various sorts of people that we would look for, for partners as we move into new markets. Just as a reminder, back in 2019, we were in no states, although New Jersey and, I think, Pennsylvania had gone live. We're now in 16. In January, we'll be in 17, and by the end of the year, Massachusetts and Maryland, we hopefully have gone live, and we will be able to participate. And I think this leads us to one of the challenges that we face, which is we don't control the timing of when a state goes live. A state legalizes, and then there is often a period of time before which we are unable to know the timing of exactly when it will go live and therefore exactly how to plan for the revenue upside.
But what we do do and critically do is we make sure we are building our content out in those markets so that we start to gain pre-registration and that when the month's date does go live, we're ready to maximize the outcome from that. If I move on then rapidly to Ohio and Massachusetts. Ohio is not as big as New York, with about 11 odd million people in Ohio, whereas nearly 20 in New York. So, nevertheless, seventh largest state, a significant number of teams, and as we see, our partner, Cleveland.com, has nearly 10 million unique users, which provides a very solid base for us to promote betting into their already existing engaged audience. Massachusetts, again, we don't know when, as I said, 15th largest, so won't see the same spike. But nevertheless, two very strong teams, Patriots and the Boston Red Sox.
So, again, we hope very much that it will perform ever so slightly higher than the relative scale of the market, given the nature of the teams that are in that market. I emphasize that when these states launch, you get a spike, and then after a period of time, you drop to a more normalized rhythm, as we're seeing in ESNY in New Jersey, for example, and in Pennsylvania through Crossing Broad. Very quickly, a short update on the other parts of our business. There's been a lot of discussion around our casino or our gaming business, which includes both casino and our WhichBingo site. There were many, many hundreds, if not well over 1,000 sites. We now have this boiled down to a very small number of key sites, and we are planning to reduce this potentially a little bit further, as you see on the page.
We're focusing in very much more on those markets where we believe we can drive new customers, and a new customer, you will remember, becomes a tail customer, as it's referred to, on the 1st of January every year, so while we have said and expect to see a small drop-off in revenues because tails slowly declined over time, we're working very hard this year, and we'll be doing so next year, to drive up the new customers who then, as I said, become tails going forward. We're going to focus on quality. I'll give an example of what that might mean. It might mean a little bit more content, but one of the things we're doing is we are providing a complaints service to people on the casino sites. The logic is very simple.
People don't always have the experience they're looking for, either getting paid their wins or whatever it happens to be. So, if they're having a problem with a particular operator, they can contact our website, and we will help them resolve their problem with the operator. Again, it's about building trust and confidence that this site isn't just there to take their money. It's there to actually support them in the whole process. On the other side of the house, we've obviously got personal finance. That's been hugely disappointing this year. A number of levels. It's performing well below expectations of the market, performing well below our own expectations. Not through any lack of effort from the team. We're working incredibly hard to replatform the sites, rebuild the content, and rebuild the authority within Google.
But that clearly is going to take, has taken, significantly longer than we had anticipated, and will continue to take significant time going into the future. So, we are, by definition, conducting a strategic review of that asset to assess how we take that business forward and what we do with it. And that's something we were doing as we were over the course of the coming months to assess how we deal with the personal finance business, which is making a loss this year. Finally, I'll just mention Bluec law. It was another business that was acquired. It has a specialist SEO team in-house, and it's one which I believe is critical to actually optimizing and driving the future of our primary sites. So, I'm going to hand over, if I may, now to Caroline.
Thanks, David. So, moving on to the financials.
Our financial highlights for H1 generated $44.5 million, which was the 38% improvement on the prior year, Adjusted EBITDA of $10.6 million and a 60% improvement on the prior year. We generated this half $7.8 million in free cash flow, which is an $8.1 million improvement on the prior year. The one thing to highlight here is we've utilized cash largely to make payments related to deferred consideration and earnouts, which relate to our acquisitions that were bought through the years of 2020 and 2021. And those earnout payments and consideration were around $30 million within H1. Moving on to our revenue performance and the mix, as you will have seen, no doubt, from looking at the presentation, we've shifted the business towards the U.S.
So, the revenue mix is now 68% in the favor of U.S. assets, at $30.1 million in revenue, 19% in gaming assets, $8.4 million in revenue, and 8% in European sports, which is $3.8 million. Just to give you a bit of a breakdown of that makeup, U.S. sports is broken down into owned and operated sites and media partnerships. We generated $20.5 million from media partnerships and $9.6 million from owned and operated sites. But the shift in our business, particularly in sports, is largely towards regulated markets now, and we see that as a positive. So, 76% of our total group revenue is coming from those regulated markets, from the sports markets. Gaming in H1 has declined, as we anticipated. European sports, just to give you a bit more insight into that, we've got a number of things that make up our European sports segment.
We've got some assets that are focused towards Finnish language speaking websites, and those have declined, and we've got a long tail of tail revenue that relates to websites that are no longer in operation and would be cost-prohibitive for us to continue to operate them. So, we've been making a loss on that, and those continue to decline, but positively, within our U.K.-focused assets, we've seen a 7% growth despite the regulatory headwinds in the U.K. Personal finance and other revenues are no longer core, and these represent about 5% of the business mix, so moving on from revenue and into the mix between new money and old money, we're generating more revenue from new money. New money, this is money that we've earned within the year.
It's predominantly CPA-related, and that's because the U.S. is dominated by a CPA strategy as they look to capitalize on new customer acquisition as states open up. So, that's why you've seen the shift of this business towards new money versus old money. Typically, in the U.S., we're seeing CPAs of around $300-$350 to acquire customers, and that's continued into the start of the NFL season. In the more mature markets, such as casino and European sports, there's a mixture of hybrid fixed deals and revenue share deals. These typically have much lower CPAs and a revenue share attached to it because of the maturity of those locations and regulation hitting the European markets. We'll continue to keep growing tail revenues in our casino and European sports areas, but it's not at the same rapidness as we would expect in the U.S. vertical. So, moving on.
So, for RMPs in particular, we have generated over 100,000 RMPs in sports. That was predominantly within U.S. Gaming RMPs has been more challenging because the assets are predominantly focused towards Finnish territories and our gaming sites that relate to Casino.se, which is a Swedish site, only came out a penalty very recently. And so, that would require an amount of investment in order to drive new RMPs. The one thing I wanted to get deeper into and give more clarity to investors is how the component parts of XLMedia are made up of and to give you some insight on gross margins. We talk about gross margin. We have allocated all of the direct costs, such as content, technology, and marketing people costs, against the individual verticals so that we can measure what the gross margin is versus revenue.
Typically, our owned and operated margins in North America sports are around 60%-70%, and our media partnerships are between 40% and 50%. That generates overall a 40%-50% blended margin. Media partnerships typically have less resource to underpin them than our owned and operated sites. This is very much unlike our more mature markets, such as European sports and gaming, where we have that tail revenue running through from previous customers that we've acquired. Those margins are typically up around 60% and 70%. Just to remember that these markets are much more heavily regulated and more mature, so our ability to grow those markets is more limited than our North America sports vertical. Moving on to our other categories.
Gaming, we have right-sized the business and the scale of the operations to mirror that decline in tail revenues and reduce the resource to focus on four leader brands within gaming. So, it's going to continue to trade at historical levels, but we expect to do some investment, particularly in content people and SEO, in order to look at opportunities outside, particularly in more regulated markets and multi-territory opportunities. So, those typically could be U.S. and Canada. U.S. has five states that are legalized from a gaming perspective, so we see that's a potential opportunity to potentially drive more new customers. Personal finance, as David had highlighted, has been disappointing for the organization. We're currently loss-making. We're estimating to make a $1-2 million loss in 2022.
It now represents only 2% of our revenue, and we're continuing to evaluate the strategy around personal finance and how we address that going forward. I think the only other kind of revenue areas that we have are Bluec law. So, we bought a marketing agency back in 2021. We've used that in-house ability to bring in the right technical skills to support XLMedia for the future, particularly in the U.S. markets. And with that comes some external revenue from external clients, and that largely covers the cost of running that business internally. So, moving on to Adjusted EBITDA. We've grown Adjusted EBITDA year on year for the half year, growing from $6.6 million to $10.6 million. Transformation costs. We've had a long program of transformation. We anticipate that this will be completed by the end of the financial year.
In this financial year, we've realized about $4 million of annualized costs. We think we'll deliver $5 million-$6 million over the whole of the program in cash savings, not necessarily P&L savings. Transformation costs in this period for the half year were around $3 million, so similar levels as prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin rose from 21%-24%. It was positive. We did take an impairment in this half year relating to personal finance. We've reduced impairment, or we've taken an impairment charge of $3.5 million to bring down those assets. The only other thing to mention, I think, is we are literally imminently about to agree our tax position with Israel and the Israeli Tax Authorities. That's been going on for some time. It relates to years 2016 and 2020, and we're hoping to have it concluded this week, hopefully.
On operating free cash flow, our cash reserves have reduced from 2021 to $17.7 million for the half year. We've actually used some of that cash to continue to fund deferred consideration and earnout payments, particularly in relation to CBWG, Saturday Football, Sports Betting Dime, and Bluec law. So, we've used that excess cash that we've been generating to make those payments. Just to remind you, we funded $30 million of acquisition-related payments in this half year, and we'll fund another $8 million in H2. Into next financial year, there is a further $7 million of acquisition-related payments that need to be funded, and just as a reminder, the business as yet does not have any debt arrangements in place, but that remains a consideration for the future as and when required for funding purposes. Thank you. Over to you, David.
Okay, thanks, Caroline.
The outlook we've already obviously had is out in the market. We have made a very clear that we believe that we will be trading by Adjusted EBITDA broadly in line with the prior year. The reason for that is twofold. Number one, the personal finance issues that we've already described, simply the market would normally start to see a pickup in that over the remainder of the period, and we're not seeing that, and we're not expecting to see that happen. We continue to anticipate this relatively flat performance in personal finance in terms of the current year. The second reason is obviously the anticipated cycle of the New York launch in particular and how long New York launch will last. Clearly, the market as a whole is getting to grips with the biggest launches had so far into this new environment.
And the enormity of the market is still being assessed. It's growing very, it's still growing, but nevertheless, perhaps not growing with the same level of profit, if I can use that term, as it was in the first half of the year. And therefore, as a result, the combination of those two things, as I said, means that we anticipate being more totally or broadly in line with prior year. I may leave you with a few takeaways. Obviously, very strong H1 performance, buoyed by the spike of a new state launch.
state launch in H2 this year is Kansas, which is much more modest in size, although our Sports Betting Dime business has already driven over 5,000 registrations, and that was in the first three weeks of September, so nevertheless, a good performance from that asset. We are very conscious of building greater stability, both internally and externally, because there's been an enormous amount of change in our business: people leaving, people being recruited, moves of businesses out of Israel and into North America, and so on, and we are making every effort now to try and improve external transparency, as evidenced in this presentation, and also, you will find a new website now available with this information and other information available so that the market as a whole and customers, etc., can much more visibly see what it is that we do and how we do it.
As I've said, we're implementing the existing strategy. We are intending, as I've said, to expand into new states and do so in advance of them going live. We don't control the live dates, which means we have to plan ahead as best we possibly can. We are going to focus very heavily on North America and take full advantage of the regulation and the fact that we are now pointing into a growing market as states are regulated and we're allowed to offer online gambling. And as I've said, we're going to invest in a small number of higher quality branded websites. So, that concludes the presentation today. So, if I may hand over now to Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you very much. David, that's great. Caroline and Marcus as well. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon.
Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. I would just want the team to take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already. I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Marcus, Caroline, David, we did receive a number of pre-submitted questions ahead of today's event, as well as, as you can see in the Q&A tab. We've also received a number of questions throughout today's presentation itself. So, firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions.
If I could just hand back to you to run through the Q&A tab to respond to those questions where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you.
Thank you, Jake. We've had a good number of questions today, and we'll do our best to get through as many as we can. A running theme on the forecast for the current year and for full year 2023, and I'll break it down to a few parts. Why the disparity in forecast from the trading update first published to the results last week, and also why the shift in forecast for 2023, and just sort of general point, why has it become quite difficult to forecast this business? I'll pass it over to David.
Okay, well, thanks, Jeremy. I think I've already addressed that in large part in the presentation.
It's quite clear that this business has obviously, in the first half, seen a significant spike from New York. I won't repeat that. I've also emphasized that we don't control the timing of when states go live. They have a significant bearing on the level of revenues and profitability in a given half year. Obviously, we enjoy the Super Bowl every year, and so the spike that that delivers is obviously something that can be repeated. I think the market as a whole is learning what happens when a new state launches, the scale and the nature of how that grows in the initial phase, as I described, and then settles down to a more normalized rhythm. I think the assumptions were that the New York State in particular would continue to be very, very strong for a significantly longer period.
There were no signs that that was not going to be the case until the beginning of the new season, when the anticipated levels of activity in New York, based on the first half of the year, were not emulated in that period. I think we have also, as I've said, anticipated that personal finance would start to pick up in the back half of the year. We've seen very little movement on that in August and now in September. So, it was essential that we obviously readjusted, and as I said, we've pulled the company's expectations to be broadly in line with the prior year. It is a market that we are learning about. These were clearly inherited forecasts. We have had to reflect what we are seeing both in personal finance and, as I say, particularly in New York, in the early stages of the season.
But we continue to see growth, and we will continue to get better at forecasting. But I emphasize this point. We are not going to have linear growth. We will have underlying growth from existing states as we layer on new states, and then we will have spikes when a larger new state launches.
Next question. Given the lack of share ownership across the board, is there any appetite to change that in the near term?
Marcus, should I ask you to answer that one?
Okay, thank you, David. So, first of all, just to note, the executive management of the company's incentive scheme is directly related to share price movements. So, all people are aligned to growing the share value and the share price within t he organization.
Second thing, from non-executives on the board, many aimless companies try to be careful with the number of shares non-execs have to ensure they remain independent. Thirdly, we've just exited a closed period, so I couldn't lead and wouldn't want to lead the market at this point. But from a personal standpoint, as a Non-Executive Chairman, I would see no reason that I wouldn't take advantage of acquiring shares moving forward at the appropriate moment, given I think the strategy is sound and currently shares are undervalued.
Thank you. Next question. At what point does management draw a line under, let's say, non-U.S. sports verticals within the business, as it's evident to a number of people on the call that it's now becoming more of a distraction?
That's probably more of a reference around personal finance.
Yes.
Well, thank you.
I mean, personal finance, again, as I've said, we're conducting a strategic review of that asset. It's clearly significantly underperformed rather than the market's expectations. It's loss-making. We are in the process of replatforming it and rebuilding its content. And as we do that, so we will make a judgment on what we do with the business going forward. But I would not anticipate carrying the business for a significant period if it were to continue to make losses and not have a potential to deliver significant value over time back to shareholders.
Okay, next question. How does management intend to grow top line more aggressively, given that probably where the share price is, additional acquisitions are going to be challenging to fund? Is it a question of organic SEO website creation, or is it more to do with additional media partnerships, particularly in the U.S.?
Unfortunately, I probably think it's all of those things. I think we will continue to look at new markets and think very hard, as I've said, about how we participate. That could be through making very small acquisitions. It can be through extending our existing portfolio. Within our existing portfolio, clearly, as I hope I made clear, we think there's an opportunity to optimize our sites better than they currently are through the rollout of our in-house agency, particularly focused on SEO, through Infuser to improve user experience and greater quality content. So, I think there's a combination of expanding our existing reach, improving the quality of what we deliver to our audiences, and optimizing the assets we currently have, while always looking to see if there are assets that we can, very small, modest assets that we can buy and build in new markets.
And then, of course, as I said, we will always look for a substantial partner in a new market, as we do with New York, as we have with Ohio, as we will, for example, if and when California is looking likely to go live. A large partner with a large audience that we can participate in driving up and getting the benefit of the spike while then allowing it to settle down into the normalized rhythm. There's been a question here about U.S. sports being stronger in the second half than it has been in the first half. There's a general question around, is it too early to predict the first half, second half weighting of that vertical? I think there are moments in the U.S. sports season. I mean, I'm obviously learning fast, as they say, three months into the run.
The college football has a moment just briefly before the NFL season starts. So, around August, early September is when college football really pops. The NFL start of the season is usually a big moment. In the previous year, we had a lot of new operators, one new operator coming into the market and spending a lot of money last year. This year, there are no new operators coming into the market. But Kansas launched, which is a much more modest-sized state, that size of state, I should be able to predict. So, there are a number of variables that drive performance. So, H2 this year will not be growing as fast as H1 this year, based on the fact that we had New York launch and the Super Bowl, which, as I said, is an annual event that draws a substantial amount of activity.
Whereas in the second half, start of the season didn't have quite the same fall as the New York launch. We'll still deliver some growth, but will not be at the same scale. How long do your partnership agreements tend to last? This is probably more about the U.S. Partnership agreements tend to be something around two years initially. We have recently, when we worked with Advance Local to secure the Massachusetts MassLive contract, we also extended the Cleveland.com contract by a further year to reflect the fact that we were a good partner delivering in the early stages of that relationship. And, of course, we have the track record of delivering for other partners in other marketplaces. So, typically two to three years.
Clearly, where possible, it's attractive to have both our own assets, so we can have our own assets in every market through Sports Betting Dime, through expanding our own base. But, as I said, we will always seek to launch into new markets of size with a new partner wherever possible. Given that the full year 2022 and 2023 forecasts are basically showing flat growth, is this a case of new management being overtly pessimistic and just trying to redress historic forecast misses? Look, I think it's our obligation to give the best guidance we can in terms of what we see as a sustainable underlying business. I've emphasized the issues of spikes, how difficult it is to forecast the size of a spike. We anticipate Ohio, as I said, will be a strong performance, but not on the same scale potentially as New York.
We don't know when MassLive will be able to go live and start taking betting. It might be after the Super Bowl. At least, hopefully, we'll be in time for the following season, so it is quite difficult to predict the exact scale of the underlying growth, but we look at underlying growth, and we think these are sort of sensible, realistic, sustainable numbers so we can build a track record of delivery rather than the issues of excessive short-term optimism, which can't be matched by the state law to roll out on the underlying growth that we can deliver.
I'll read this next question out, but I'm not entirely sure Caroline can answer it. When are Israeli Tax liabilities related to 2016-2020 settled? Will there be any Tax liabilities outstanding from the years prior to 2016? And how much are the tax payments expected to be?
No, there will not be any Tax liabilities before the 2016. So, that actual period is dealt with between 2016 and 2020 and all prior periods. We expect it will be settled and signed, hopefully, this week, as I said. But until there's pen on paper, I'm not able to confirm what the actual Tax liability will be, but I expect it will be lower than the provision that we have in place in the accounts.
Given that media partnerships now represent almost half of the company's revenues, could you please provide more color on the structure of these partnerships, if possible?
These partnerships are relatively straightforward in the sense that they have a profit sharing. So, for every $100 taken out of the market, there's a fixed rate that we share and that they share. And as we've said, they can vary.
Typically, we take 40%-50%, although that can vary. In principle, they are required to retain some key things in the market without getting into too much detail. For example, they're required to retain their Google authority, etc., etc., so that if they were to lose their audience about some form of catastrophe, then some of those arrangements would clearly need to fall away as we would no longer be able to monetize them. So, there are protection criteria in these contracts to ensure that the audiences they deliver remain at the same quality that we would have anticipated in order when we entered the contract, and they provide access to us. We load promotional content written by us to engage with their audience in order to promote a particular operator's promotion. We load it onto their site.
We bring that commercial expertise, and they, as I say, provide us access to their audiences. That is about the size of it in its simplest terms. Okay, next question. Can you please elaborate a bit more on the performance of the owned and operated portfolio? Yes. I might, Caroline, ask you to say a little bit more, but let me give an intro to it. The owned and operated portfolio, you'll be aware, Sports Betting Dime was an offshore asset, which was brought onshore, so taken out of and brought into the regulated markets. And therefore, the revenues it was enjoying on acquisition obviously fell away. And we have seen it deliver in the first half of this year, having got zero from when it started to $1.8 million of revenue in the first half. So, we're very pleased with the pickup we've seen.
We think it can do more. As I think I said, it's already done 5,000 registrations in Kansas already through its national footprint. The other states, and Caroline, I'll let you talk more to this, continue to provide broadly spread across Saturday Down South, SBD, ESNY, and Crossing Broad are 9.6 million. It's broadly spread in broadly even terms across those. Is there anything, Caroline, you want to add to that?
No, I think the only thing is we have integrated as much as we can within the operating structure that underpins those assets. So, where we can take efficiencies in order to drive a better gross margin position of between 60% and 70%, we're looking at those opportunities. And we genuinely think we can improve that with an improved revenue in place. So, I think that's the key thing that we have.
We're making an efficient team of one team that services all of our websites and our assets.
Yes. Yeah. So, obviously, we want to leverage the content across the group, for example, and we want everybody using the best practices into each of their different websites, etc., and that's how we are and have integrated those assets. Jeremy, are there any more?
Yes. Other affiliates are now reporting and negotiating revenue share agreements in North America. Is XLMedia having similar discussions with its partners?
I'm not sure I'm completely clear. Obviously, we have revenue share agreements with our partners. As I say, we typically share 40%-50% of the revenue. I'm not sure what question it's getting at. Would you want to read it again, just in case? I can read it again if you want. Yeah, would you?
Other affiliates are now reporting and negotiating revenue share agreements in North America. Is XLMedia having similar discussions with its partners?
I think, just to be clear, we continue to have conversations with our current partners, particularly around renewal of those relationships, and it's dependent on whether the partner wants to continue and whether we want to continue, and that's a balance between how it's working for both parties, and then, in addition to that, we look out in the market where we may not have a presence from one of our owned and operated sites where we know there is a potential market opening up. It might be, for instance, California. It could be one of the Carolinas, so, we're actively looking at how to balance our owned and operated sites and their coverage and media partnerships in order to enter into those states once they go live.
There's a more general question about the, are you pleased with the performance of the three more recent U.S. acquisitions?
I mean, SBD, I've already said I'm a participant in the acquisition, but I've been pleased with the performance. And, as I say, the performance of the first half was. I didn't drive that, but I was pleased with that and continue to be pleased with that. I think Saturday Down South, which is obviously more of a fandom, has an opportunity to drive more betting from its pages. And that's an opportunity for the future, but I think it's performing exactly as we would expect it to at the moment.
Crossing Broad, I think it's performing well and indeed has managed to access some casino revenues, which is obviously another opportunity for us going forward, as there are only five live states at the moment, but it's already accessing it to the extent it sits into a legal market. Sports Betting Dime, again, as I've said, performing well in sport, but I think there'll be an opportunity for it too to access some of those casino revenues. So, opportunity again. And Elite Sports New York has obviously performed extremely well in the first half of the year. But, as we've said, New York has been not as frothy as we had seen, and therefore it's slowed down slightly in the second half.
Slightly left of center question. Does the Qatar World Cup represent an opportunity within the U.S. sports?
Modest one.
The way we look at it clearly is it makes sense that we produce a lot of Premiership and ultimately World Cup content in our UK sites. And to the extent that that can be leveraged and shared with our US teams, so we will do that. But I don't anticipate it being a major opportunity.
Apart from when England played t he USA.
Well, indeed. And in women's football, I didn't get on Friday, so.
Once restructuring is complete and various websites probably within personal finance or even platforms, do you have a view on what you think EBITDA margin could get to, sort of assume 25%-30%?
It does, of course.
It would be premature for me to do that a few months in, and obviously, given the mix issue that we have got to resolve in terms of underlying long-term, taking the benefits of the pop from a state launching partner and then the underlying margin that we can drive from owning those assets with a higher gross margin, albeit an infrastructure to support. So, I think that's one where I would be speculating, and I don't think I should do that at this point. One last question. It's been a theme on a few of the questions asked today, and it's more around capital allocation in relation to either a tender offer or a buyback given the share price today. Is that something that the board are considering? Marcus, do you want to consider that?
Yeah. I mean, the board considers all options to improve shareholder value.
Certainly, the current view in terms of share buyback, it's a better use of our capital to fill the existing ongoing strategy around buy-and- build.
Okay. I think that pretty much covers the majority of the questions that we've had online.
Guys, that's great. David, Caroline, Marcus, thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time there and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. Of course, if there are any further questions that are submitted today, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended for you to review and then add any additional responses where it's appropriate to do so.
David, perhaps before redirecting those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great.
You certainly can. Thank you. I mean, clearly, I think what we're doing here is we're repointing the business from a casino and personal finance world into a regulated market, principally in North America, where we see a significant growth opportunity. We're committed to improving the transparency of information that we provide to you as investors so that you have a better opportunity. We're committed to trying and developing and improving our understanding of the forecasting and how these markets respond.
And we are planning to run a Capital Markets Day probably later this year, certainly later this year if possible, where we will obviously be able to give a much deeper dive into what and how we do some things and, importantly, introduce the market to some of the very able and talented individuals that operate in the business, engaging with customers and operators on a day-to-day basis. So, if I may, I'll leave it with that.
David, that's great. And Caroline and Marcus as well, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? It'll only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company.
On behalf of the management team of XLMedia PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good afternoon to you all.