At this time. We would like to begin CyberAgent's FY 2022 First Quarter Earnings Briefing. This session is being live streamed. Please refer to the disclaimer included in the briefing document with respect to the content shared today. Now I would like to hand the microphone over to President and CEO Fujita. This is President and CEO Fujita. FY 2022 first quarter, I would like to take you through the performance. This is for the first quarter starting from October to December of 2021. Starting with the sales, it went up by 30.6% year-on-year and the OP went up by 2.8 times.
Within our budget that we had internally, we have not disclosed the forecast for this fiscal year yet, so this is not disclosed yet, but it is far more than the budget that we had internally defined. In terms of the media business, it went up by 22.4% year-over-year, so it is doing well. The ad business as well has grown by 14.7% year-over-year. The game business increased by 94.7% year-over-year. We have significantly increased both sales and OP. This is the quarterly results. This is the sales.
I know that those of you who have been keeping an eye on us for a couple years are aware, but the first quarter tends to be a difficult quarter for us, but year-on-year we have grown by the OP by 2.8 times, so we have significantly increased our profit, our revenue. Sorry, we were talking about sales. The sales has increased significantly. Last, at the end of last year, when we didn't provide a forecast for this fiscal year, we told you that the game business is volatile and it's hard to predict, and we wanted to make the Uma Musume a little bit more stable, and it is becoming more stable. We have seen signs of stability.
I'm sorry, this is, we've gone back and forth a little bit, but the OP has grown by, increased by 2.8 times, so we significantly increased profits as well. In terms of SG&A, the game business and WINTICKET, we have launched a marketing campaign, so the ad spend has increased slightly. We have 6,171 employees to date as of the end of December. This is the PL. This is the balance sheet. There's no major changes to the balance sheet either, so. In terms of the forecast for this fiscal year, we have not provided a fiscal year forecast yet. As we mentioned, for the first quarter, we have far surpassed our internal budget.
In Uma Musume we wanted to make sure that the business was a little bit more stable, and we're starting to see signs of stability. In April, when we announce the second quarter performance, we hope to give you, provide you with a business forecast. Moving on to the individual businesses. The internet advertising business, as you can see, for the sixth consecutive quarters we have increased sales, so it is growing steadily, especially the internet ad business. Our strength is technology, so we're using AI and also DX as well, is we are seeing great many opportunities. Even within the internet advertising business, we have continued to make upfront investments. One area is digital transformation. We're working with large companies as well as local government as well. In various areas we are working together with various entities.
With respect to the internet ad business, within the last quarter, first quarter, we've established three companies. One is CyberAgent DX. We're working with large companies to create new revenue streams, so this is one company and another company will support the unmanned staff-free stores, as well as another company will plan, produce, and operate online events. We are planting the seeds for new businesses. Moving on to the game business. Last year, Umamusume: Pretty Derby became a huge hit. It was very scary. We didn't want it to just become a temporary hit, but it has continued to generate a high level of sales, and it's becoming more stable as well. We're going to be having anniversary in February, but we want to continue to operate the this game so that it will be loved for a long time to come.
The operating profit was JPY 17.1 billion for this quarter. Umamusume: Pretty Derby has surpassed 12 billion downloads. As I mentioned before, next month is going to be its first anniversary. Also, we are going to release GCREST next month, and we're also working on Jujutsu Kaisen Phantom Parade, as well as Tokyo Revengers. These are major titles that we will be re-releasing, which we will be releasing one by one, going forward. Moving on to the media business. As you can see from the graph, the business is performing well. ABEMA is growing, and also the media-related business is also doing very well. This is the number of downloads. It's exceeded 76 million downloads. The WAU, we had a Major League when Ohtani was very popular, doing great, so we benefited from that as well.
The WAU has been remained stable at a high level. Currently, we have shogi and mahjong, so we have exclusive unique content as well as high-quality dramas and variety shows as well. We release them one after another. Going forward, we want to continue to improve on the quality and develop more original content as well. We want to add to the portfolio. We also have music, musician lives as well. LDH, Keisuke Kuwata, Hikaru Utada. We have live events, and also combat sports as well. Naoya Inoue, as well as pro wrestling. We have released big content on pay-per-view one after another. ABEMA has, and within ABEMA, pay-per-view has been established as one genre.
ABEMA is now compatible with Nintendo Switch as well, so you can watch our content on the gaming console. This is the sales for ABEMA. As you can see here, advertising business grew significantly and we're no longer disclosing the figures, but the subscription is also increasing as well. Related business also has grown significantly, mainly around WINTICKET. WINTICKET has grown significantly. It's only been about two years since we launched, but it has continued to grow significantly rapidly. We also have Midnight Keirin. We have our own program as well. WINTICKET is a service we issue win tickets in addition to the original program. The online gaming market, online betting market, has grown from JPY 142 billion to JPY 185 billion.
It has grown by, the market has grown by 1.3 times. We've also expanded our share from zero to this level. It says 13%, but we started from zero, and it went to 13, and then to 27. It is a dramatic increase. Also, the other day, we announced that we have welcomed BABEL LABEL, a content studio, into our group. It's a consolidated subsidiary now, and their production quality is on the world-class level. We are trying to gather top creators to this company and to continue to create world-class content from the studio. This is the document that we share every time. With respect to ABEMA, advertising and subscription will be the foundation, and then grow related businesses for ABEMA. This was the plan, and we're on track, and we're progressing per this strategy.
Over the mid to long term, this has not changed either. Ad and game, while it's still stable, we want to launch a new media business and grow the business, expand the business, and then monetize the business. It's been five years since we launched ABEMA, and we talked about how we're going to spend ten years to grow this business, and we're halfway there. In the past, we invested in blogs as well as the smartphone businesses as well. We forewent the profits right in front of us to invest. We've invested, so that's why we are where we are now. We're also at a stage where we need to invest again. We will continue to keep mid to long term in mind to operate our company.
We hope that likewise, you will support us over the mid to long term. That's it from me. Thank you very much. This concludes CyberAgent's FY 2022 first quarter earnings briefing. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the IR counterpart. Thank you very much for joining us today.