Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2020 Interim Results Presentation. I'm here in our Hammersmith office with Jonathan to introduce our H1 results. We're sorry we can't be with you in person, but I hope we can see you all soon. The presentation that follows provides you with an overview of all the major things that happened at Flutter in the H1. It was certainly a momentous one for the group, as we completed our merger with The Stars Group while navigating our response to COVID from a customer protection, colleague welfare, and business perspective. We tried to cover most of the key moving parts in the slides that follow. Later this morning, we'll also host a call to answer any questions you may have. With that, let's get started with the presentation.
This morning, we'll cover an overview of the H1 highlights and an update on the progress we have made with respect to the merger. I'll run you through the details for our key regions before Jonathan gets to take all the glory by taking you through our very strong financial performance. I'll then talk about the investment opportunities we see ahead of us for the group. Starting then with the highlights. 2020 has been dominated by the global COVID pandemic. I'm proud of the support we've provided to our colleagues and customers through this challenging time. It was the right thing to reject government support, and I'm pleased that we were able to enhance player protection. I'd normally start these presentations with a reminder of our four pillar strategy, but I won't do that today.
Suffice to say that whilst I've talked to the benefits of scale and diversification in the past, recent events have shown how critical they are to the continuing success of our business. Completing our merger with TSG amidst the pandemic added significant complexity and workload for all colleagues across the enlarged group, and I'd like to recognize their hard work, commitment, and resilience over the past four months. At this stage, integration is progressing well, and we remain focused on maintaining momentum in the group whilst bringing the businesses together. To that end, we're off to a good start. Pro forma revenue growth was 22% in H1, 29% for online, while EBITDA growth was 35%. The H2 has started well with the return of major sports and the reopening of retail.
While the outlook remains highly uncertain, particularly with respect to COVID, we feel we have demonstrated a good level of resilience across the group in a variety of trading scenarios. Let's look at the merger with The Stars Group. Our combination completed at the start of May, earlier than many people expected. It's fair to say that we could not have envisaged when we announced the deal last October that the diversification benefits it would bring would become apparent so quickly. The pandemic has led to some major impacts in our industry. Firstly, the cancellation of most global sports had a significant impact on all sports betting businesses. Secondly, we saw the closure of all non-essential retail with the resultant migration from retail to online.
Finally, people sought alternative forms of home entertainment during lockdown, which meant that having a bigger poker and gaming business across our regions was a real benefit to the group. The charts on the right show the group's revenue split in H1. Gaming and poker combined accounted for approximately 50% of the group, helping to drive online growth of 29% across the half. Geographically, our share of revenues coming from the U.S. and the U.K. and Ireland were more impacted by the disruption of sports, with the growth in PokerStars driving revenue growth in the rest of the world. Slide six shows the organizational design for the enlarged group. Flutter will continue to use a decentralized operating model with a lean Flutter function supporting four divisional teams, which will be the U.K. and Ireland, International, Australia, and the U.S.
On the slide, you can see that Conor, Dan, Barni, and Matt have been appointed as CEOs of each of our divisions. I'm delighted that Ian has agreed to stay with the business to support the U.K. and Ireland. Pre-completion, we thought that PPB would have to form part of the international division for a period of time. I'm pleased to say that we've now concluded that we can move Paddy Power and the U.K. and Irish part of Betfair into U.K. and Ireland sooner than we previously thought. From a reporting perspective, we will move to this four-division basis next year. We will, of course, provide pro forma reconciliations to you when we make this change. Turning to slide seven. In Australia, integration progress is well advanced.
You will likely have seen that we've decided to adopt a single brand in Australia, having concluded that this would give us the best opportunity to retain product leadership and maintain momentum in the business. We have wasted no time in executing on this plan, and BetEasy customers will migrate across to Sportsbet imminently. I'm very pleased with the work of our tech and change teams to have moved so fast. We are very excited about the tech capabilities available across the group, with over 3,500 technologists on three continents across the globe. FanDuel have recently moved their sports business onto their proprietary account and wallet and will soon adopt PPB's sports betting platform, which they have confirmed will be the group's solution for sports.
You will recall that I introduced the concept of an API-based integration where we would allow brands to maintain their own accounts and wallet while benefiting from group's resources. We picked the PPB sports betting platform because it allows us to achieve these aims and has proven capabilities for multiple jurisdictions and innovative product developments. We all know how important product leadership is in our industry. There is more work to do to evaluate the approach for gaming, as well as risk and trading. We are very impressed with the gaming capability that was built in-house at TSG. Likewise, we are impressed at the quality and capability of the SBG team, and look forward to leveraging their capabilities. You know our priority is on building a business for the long term, with a focus on growth in sustainable markets.
We said at the time of the merger announcement that we would review the compliance standards and market exposures of the combined group once the transaction was complete. Our review has covered two areas. Firstly, we've looked at the quality of TSG's safer gambling and compliance procedures, and concluded that PokerStars should adopt Flutter standards in these areas, and these enhanced checks have now been put in place. Secondly, we're carrying out an assessment of the legal, regulatory, and tax risk in each international market. While we are yet to fully complete this review, we've already identified a small number of jurisdictions that Flutter had previously determined it would not operate in. In such cases, we've now switched these markets off. We estimate that the combined impact of these measures will reduce contribution on an annualized basis by around GBP 65 million.
Across the remaining divisions, detailed reviews are well underway to determine our brand, product, and technology strategies. Once completed, we'll move swiftly to execute on our plans, just as we have in Australia. We intend to provide a further detailed update on these plans and synergies at our full year results in March. At this stage, I would say that we are very comfortable with the cost synergy guidance previously shared. We'll now turn to look at what happened in each of our key businesses in H1. In the U.K. and Ireland, both PPB and SBG delivered strong performance in the H1. The widespread disruption to sports meant that our sports books faced a challenging period. The chart on the top of slide eight shows the combined staking trends as the half progressed, with an almost 70% drop in stakes at the peak of the disruption.
Given that the Betfair Exchange is particularly dependent on the volume of events that take place, COVID disruption had a disproportionate impact on it. To put it into perspective for you, we estimate that we offered 64% fewer markets on the exchange in Q2 than we did in the same period last year. In our sports books, revenue benefited from favorable sports results, with a significant variance in year-on-year margin, particularly in SBG, where sports book margins have been depressed in the prior year. As a result, year-on-year revenue performance was less impacted. On the gaming side, both SBG and PPB performed very well in the H1. As you can see from the bottom chart, both have been delivering strong customer growth even before COVID disruption began. The performance of Sky Vegas, the number one gaming brand in the U.K., has been particularly strong in the period.
What has been very encouraging to see is how quickly sports staking recovered once the return of sports occurred, and the resilience of gaming since then. On slide nine, the picture paints a 1,000 words. The introduction of lockdowns in many countries led us all to look for alternative ways to entertain ourselves. One of the pastimes that many people rediscovered was poker. The growth in customers at PokerStars during the Q2 was remarkable, with a 70% increase in daily actives. When we asked a sample of those customers why they were signing up with PokerStars, what came across loud and clear was that it was the social aspect of the product's offering. Our Home Games product, which allows friends to set up a private online table just between them at zero cost, proved very popular, with a sevenfold increase year-on-year.
Over 50% of the new customers acquired told us that they also have an interest in sports betting. The customers acquired very much fit into the recreational grouping. As the chart on the right shows, average weekly spend was largely unchanged year-on-year at around GBP 10 a week. What is also important to note is how quickly activity has normalized. As we would have expected, once people were no longer under full lockdown, the number of people doing Zoom quizzes and playing online poker quickly reverted to more normal levels. Turning to slide 10, our Australian business delivered a truly excellent performance in the H1. In the period pre-COVID disruption, our revenues grew 24%, helped by favorable sports results and strong customer growth. It is the performance of the business in the subsequent disruptive period that really stands out.
We believe this was driven by the combination of horse racing continuing behind closed doors, coupled with the closure of the retail outlets, which has accelerated the migration of customers from retail to online. As can be seen in the chart on the left, our daily active sports customers fell almost 90% at the peak of sports disruption. This was more than offset by growth in racing actives, such that our pro forma revenues grew 57% in the disruptive period. Even more encouragingly, racing demand has remained resilient since the return of sports. The key for us now is to do all we can to retain these customers, and I'll talk about the kind of investments we're making to do that just later in the presentation. Australia wasn't the only region to benefit from excellent racing performance.
As can be seen on the next slide, our U.S. business experienced a similar benefit. At our U.S. Investor Day in March 2019, we emphasized how we were the only operator that could offer the unique combination of Sportsbook, gaming, DFS, and online horse race wagering. The H1 of 2020 was a clear demonstration of the benefits that this level of product diversification can bring. Our multi-year investment in TVG has clearly paid off. Live in 33 states across the U.S., the TVG TV network reaches over 60 million households and was watched by around 1.6 million homes monthly in the H1, and was also broadcast on the NBC Sports network from March. We saw a significant increase in new customers in Q2, with our daily actives up 79%.
TVG broke its previous records in H1 with Belmont Stakes day, the biggest ever day for handle at $35 million. During H1, we also launched our new FanDuel Racing product, which is now live in 23 states, and we believe that this product will appeal to more recreational racing customers. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide, you can see how our gaming business performed in the period. We are now the clear market leader in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with our multi-brand, multi-product offering. We launched FanDuel Casino in Pennsylvania in January, complemented by the launch of our standalone app in June. Our strong gaming performance was helped by excellent poker performance and an improvement in our direct gaming customer acquisition. Given the absence of major sport, cross-sell actually exceeded our expectations in the period.
Slide 12 provides an update on the progress we've made in U.S. sports. Obviously, it was a more challenging environment, given the disruption to the sporting calendar. Nonetheless, we were pleased with how resilient the business has been. The DFS-led strategy is clearly winning in the market at the moment, as you can see from the chart with the respective market shares of operators. You'll also see that whilst actives reduced during the absence of sport, they've now bounced back. Sportsbook customers accounting for 80% of our historic volume have returned since July. For a nascent business, we are pleased to see nearly 50% of the FOX Bet sports customer base active in the last couple of weeks.
Like our exchange, DFS is particularly exposed to the cancellation of sports, and therefore a key focus for our team was keeping customers engaged and entertained across the platform during the period. For example, they created innovative content such as FanDuel free-to-play contests on the Democratic presidential debate. Engagement has been really encouraging, with around 75% of our customers having stayed with us while our mainstream sports were off. The same was true for FOX Bet, with their free-to-play Super 6 contest on the NFL draft. FanDuel Sportsbook is now live online in six states, with the addition of Colorado and Iowa since our update in February. We have now acquired over half a million sportsbook customers since we launched in September 2018. You'll no doubt have seen that remote customer sign-up is currently permitted in Illinois, and we expect to go live there in the next few days.
Looking to the future, we expect to go live in two further states in the H2, with the addition of Michigan and Tennessee. Our iGaming presence will also be expanded given that Michigan is a multi-product state. As you have seen, each of our divisions performed well in H1, despite this highly unusual trading backdrop. What has been very important for me through this period has been that we ensure we meet our heightened responsibility to protect our customers during lockdown. We have introduced additional measures to protect our customers, while stay-at-home restrictions have been in place. At SBG, we sent deposit limit messages to over 700,000 customers that were active with our brands in the early weeks of the pandemic. Across PPB and Sportsbet, we increased our number of customer interactions by two-thirds year-over-year.
What has been reassuring is that the revenue growth we've seen in our businesses has been predominantly driven by growth in recreational customers, not an increased spend. The charts on slide 13 show the average staking across SBG sports and gaming offering has fallen during the disruptive period. As I already mentioned, there was no spike in player spend at PokerStars either. As we think about future regulation of the U.K. sector, we've been encouraged by the largely evidence-based approach taken in the House of Lords report, and look forward to engaging with the government to help shape future regulation. With that, I'll hand you over to Jonathan to talk you through our financial results for the half.
Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everybody. As you will understand, it's been a very busy H1 to the year, so I suggest we get straight into the numbers. Starting with slide 15. In my commentary that follows, when I refer to growth, I'm referring to growth in a pro forma adjusted basis, which is before the impact of any Separately Disclosed Items. The group delivered an excellent performance in H1, with revenue growth of 22% to GBP 2.4 billion and an Adjusted EBITDA growth of 35% to GBP 684 million, with the group clearly benefiting from operating leverage. The business enjoyed strong free cash flow generation in the half, generating over GBP 600 million in free cash flow before deduction of interest costs and Separately Disclosed Items. We finished the half with a leverage ratio of 2.3x based on trailing 12-month pro forma EBITDA.
As previously guided, we are not proposing to pay an interim dividend. Remain committed to revisiting our dividend policy once our leverage returns to our medium-term target of 1- 2x . In summary, though, a really pleasing H1 with adjusted EPS up 56%. Just reflecting on H1, we have maintained momentum in the business post-merger. We have strengthened our balance sheet to provide additional strategic optionality. We have begun the process of refinancing the group's debt to reduce our finance costs. Slide 16 essentially sets out the reported income statement for the half. I won't dwell for too long on this slide, as clearly the strong growth year-on-year reflects our combination with TSG on May 5th. As I will be explaining the drivers of performance above the EBITDA line in subsequent slides, I will touch on those items below EBITDA here.
The group's depreciation charge grew 29% year on year or 14% on a pro forma basis, reflecting ongoing investment in the business and our U.S. expansion. Our interest cost for the half year reflects the additional debt taken on as part of the TSG deal. Separately Disclosed Items relate primarily to amortization from the TSG merger and costs associated with the combination. Our reported adjusted EPS grew 29%, thanks to the TSG combination and the strong performance of the combined group in the period. Slide 17 provides an EBITDA bridge, which takes you from Flutter standalone H1 2019 EBITDA to the combined group's pro forma EBITDA generated in H1 2020. Moving from left to right, last year, we reported pro forma EBITDA of GBP 216 million post IFRS 16. We have then added TSG's reported results for 2019, which equate to GBP 336 million.
As you may recall, at the time of the merger announcement, we highlighted that there were certain costs that TSG historically treated as exceptional items, but which Flutter treat as business as usual operating costs. We said that we would adopt Flutter's accounting treatment going forward. The adjustment of GBP 29 million on this page rebases TSG's H1 2019 earnings to align for treatment of these costs. The main items relate to the treatment of share-based payments, professional legal fees, and lobbying costs. In Appendix 2 of this presentation, we provide a full reconciliation of this adjustment, and as you will see, the full year adjustment for 2019 is GBP 61 million. In that appendix, we have also moved TSG's U.S. operations out of TSG International and into the U.S. division.
We then adjust for the adverse impact of foreign exchange in the current year, which gets us to a pro forma H1 EBITDA for the combined group of GBP 508 million in 2019. You can see the year-over-year change in divisional profitability with the decline in the PPB Online and Retail businesses more than offset by the growth in SBG, Australia, and PokerStars. As a result, Adjusted EBITDA of GBP 684 million was 35% higher than the prior year on a pro forma basis. Slide 18 provides an overview of EBITDA performance by division with more detailed summaries in Appendix one.
I won't go through every division here because Peter has already touched on the key drivers in each region, but I would just like to flag a couple of important points which may help you think about H2 and a more normalized level of profitability as we move towards 2021. In retail, we experienced a GBP 47 million decline in EBITDA in H1 due to the closure of shops for two and a half months. It is worth noting that retail had been trading ahead of expectations before shutdown, with revenue growth of 13% in the pre-disrupted period. Secondly, I want to touch on the relative performance of PPB Online and SBG, given that they operate largely in the same region and had very contrasting profit growth rates during the half. Most importantly, SBG experienced a significantly greater variance in net revenue margin year-on-year than PPB.
Football results, in particular, went the bookies way, and Sky Bet has a higher mix of football. Additionally, as Peter explained earlier, the Betfair Exchange was much more exposed to COVID disruption, given that its revenue is so highly correlated to the number of markets it offers. Finally, in line with Peter's chart earlier, Sky Vegas is a more direct online casino acquisition business than Paddy Power and Betfair, and direct gaming businesses performed particularly well in the disrupted period. I'll talk more about PokerStars in a second, so the only other thing to mention here is the standout performance in Australia, where strong revenue growth of 45% translated into EBITDA growth of 84%, benefiting from the retail to online migration.
Slide 19 is designed to help you quantify the two biggest one-off benefits that occurred in H1, namely, the increase in gaming revenues of PokerStars during lockdown, and the benefit of favorable sports results across the group in the half. At PokerStars, prior to the lockdown, gaming revenue had been down around 3% year on year, reflecting the ongoing impact of some market switch-offs and the continuation of the poker trends seen during H2 2019. Post-disruption, however, growth was 76%, reflecting the strong recreational customer growth Peter described. We estimate that had revenue trends continued at pre-lockdown rates, the business would have generated revenues that were around GBP 205 million lower in the half. That hopefully gives you a sense for a more normal revenue base in this part of the business. Secondly, across our sports books, sports results were favorable in all key regions during the half.
Net revenue margin increased 280 basis points year on year, with 220 basis points of that relating to sports results. On GBP 9 billion of staking in H1 2020, this is a significant benefit. Of course, not all of this revenue uplift would have been lost if we had experienced more normal results, as in all likelihood, there would have been a higher level of customer recycling. It is extremely difficult to even estimate the split of the year-on-year staking reduction between sports disruption and lower recycling. On to the pro forma cash flow, where we had excellent cash generation in the half, with adjusted free cash flow of GBP 608 million, generated from GBP 684 million of Adjusted EBITDA. Capital expenditure of GBP 118 million reflected continued investment in our online products and technology, as well as our expanded footprint in the U.S.
The strong H1 trading performance of the group had a positive effect on working capital, though we anticipate that some of this will unwind in the H2. Cash SDIs in the period primarily related to integration costs and professional fees from the combination with TSG. Cash interest was GBP 101 million in the half, which was GBP 12 million lower on a pro forma basis than the prior year. Our placing in late May raised net proceeds of GBP 806 million, which we used to pay down debt in the first instance. The raise has provided us with additional flexibility to make future investments, be they organic or via acquisition. There was a negative FX translation on the debt of GBP 253 million, which will be more fully hedged going forwards.
Net debt at 30th June was GBP 2.9 billion, up from standalone Flutter's GBP 356 million in December 2019, due to the inclusion, obviously, of the TSG debt following the combination. On slide 21, I have provided you with an overview of where our debt facilities currently stand. You can see that our net debt as of 30th June was GBP 2.9 billion, equating to leverage of 2.3x the combined trailing 12-month EBITDA. Our strong liquidity position and significant covenant headroom have contributed to initial positive ratings from credit rating agencies.
We refinanced our term loan A in the period, just before COVID impacted borrowing rates. This leaves our weighted average cost of debt at 4.3%. As we de-lever further, we believe that there will be good scope to achieve further finance cost savings on some of the assumed TSG debt, which you can see is relatively highly priced.
This will be dependent on prevailing credit market conditions and our rating at that time. Slide 22 provides some technical guidance. Firstly, as Peter mentioned, we are aligning TSG's compliance standards to those of Flutter. The annualized contribution impact of the compliance and safer gambling measures we are putting in place on the international business will be approximately GBP 65 million, with around half of this likely to be reflected in H2 2020. At the time of our placing, we noted the investment opportunities we are seeing in some of our markets. This investment will begin in H2 with incremental marketing spend of around GBP 50 million earmarked across the business. Peter will go through some of these areas of investment shortly. Pro forma CapEx is expected to be between GBP 250 million and GBP 270 million.
This will include some of the proprietary product and technology work we are doing in the U.S. on our account and wallet, and ongoing rollout of our global betting platform. Okay, moving on to outlook. The H2 of the year has started well, as Peter has said, with the group benefiting from condensed football fixtures, favorable sports results, and good ongoing gaming performance. We anticipate that pro forma Adjusted EBITDA for the group, excluding the U.S., will be between GBP 1.175 billion and GBP 1.325 billion in 2020. We have included a wide range, given that the outlook remains highly uncertain, particularly with respect to the future impact of COVID and how customer behavior will evolve for the next few months. Additionally, in a business of this size, small movements in expected margins can have material impacts on the outturn.
In the U.S., we now anticipate an EBITDA loss of between GBP 140 million and GBP 160 million for the year. This compares with a loss of GBP 82 million last year on the combined pro forma business and reflects the increased number of states that we will be live in during H2. Our U.S. guidance assumes that we have additional state launches in Michigan and Tennessee during H2, and that mobile registration remains permissible in Illinois for the remainder of the half. Should mobile registration be restricted at some point, the loss will likely be closer to the GBP 140 million end of the range.
We will provide a further update on U.S. guidance at our Q3 numbers in early November, when we will have better visibility on Illinois registration. Based on our earnings guidance, we expect pro forma leverage to be between 2.5x and 2.8x at the year-end.
This is based on the midpoint of our EBITDA guided range. All of the group's guidance is premised on the assumption that we see no further disruption to the sporting calendar from COVID, that our retail operations remain open, and that net revenue margins for the remainder of the year are broadly in line with expected margin. If we think about 2021 and beyond, it's obviously important to build forecasts off a normalized 2020 base, so I would urge you to consider the one-off factors we have called out this morning before applying growth rates to next year. Our businesses have good momentum and our brands are strong, but as Peter will discuss in a moment, we do need to invest more, particularly in PokerStars. That investment means that the historic EBITDA margins within that business are unlikely to be repeated.
The investment we make will be designed to improve the growth trajectory of the business, but to be clear, this turnaround will take time. Our focus will, of course, be on maintaining momentum in each of our businesses as we deliver the necessary changes and synergies within the business. I remain as confident as ever in the long-term outlook for the group. With that, I will now hand you back to Peter, who will run you through some of the investment opportunities emerging for the group.
Thank you. As Jonathan said, in this final section, I just want to talk a little bit about some of the investment opportunities that we see for the group. Starting with slide 25, we've spoken about the migration of customers that we've seen from retail to online in the U.K., the U.S., and Australia in recent months. A key objective for us now is to retain as many of these customers as we can. In the U.K., you can see just how pronounced this trend has been of late, with a near 20% drop in the number of betting shops on the high street in the last two years alone. In Australia, the channel shift is following a similar pattern, with retail's share of sports betting GGR continuing to fall. We believe this creates a big opportunity for us.
In the U.K., we commissioned Populus to conduct a survey. They found that less than 50% of retail customers migrate to the brand that they bet with in retail. There are still over 6,500 non-Paddy Power betting shops in the U.K., suggesting that there's a material prize to go after. We think this helps explain the strong online performance seen across both Sky Bet and Paddy Power in recent years. In Australia, we're continuing to invest in generosity to retain customers. We're also going to improve our product offering. Last week, we signed a new multi-year deal to secure streaming of Australian domestic racing pictures, which is now live. Bringing Sky Racing over to Sportsbet means that not only will BetEasy customers continue to enjoy the content they're used to when they migrate, Sportsbet customers will receive an enhanced live racing streaming offering.
Turning to PokerStars on slide 26, we've now had the benefits of several months to look more closely at this business. Our initial reviews confirm much of what we previously suspected. It is a business with a great brand, a large global footprint, and a customer base open to being cross-sold more than one product. In summary, it is a business with huge potential. It has also confirmed our other key impression, and that is that this business has been deprived of proper levels of investment. Take sales and marketing. While the industry norm is to invest about 25% of revenue in sales and marketing, it accounted for just 14% of revenues in PokerStars last year. While the business has grown its casino revenues impressively in recent years, all of that growth has been a function of cross-sell from Poker.
There's been negligible investment in direct casino acquisition, and that strikes us as a big missed opportunity. Customer generosity, too, has reduced significantly over the last five years. This reduction has been deliberate, with specific initiatives undertaken to make sure that generosity was being better directed towards customers who would enhance the overall health and liquidity of the poker ecosystem. While such measures have been effective, there's an important balance that has to be struck when developing the business for the long term. In addition, much can be done to improve the sports betting offering within our newly formed International division, and we will leverage the assets of the rest of the group to achieve this over time. Finally, it is clear the customer perception of the PokerStars product lags behind competitors in a number of jurisdictions today, and we have work to do to address this.
Make no mistake, the online poker market is a competitive market, and we're going to have to invest in our product and customer experience to remain competitive in this space. Getting this business to where I believe it should be is not going to happen overnight, but I'm confident that with the right direction, it has all the assets it requires to achieve its potential over time. Finally, there is the U.S., which for me remains the single biggest market opportunity for the group today. The total addressable market for Flutter in the U.S. continues to expand. Our latest internal estimate is that it could be more than GBP 12 billion over the medium term.
We believe we remain uniquely well-positioned to go after that market opportunity through our combination of brands, media partnerships, products, technology, people, and access to all of the assets that the wider Flutter group brings to bear. That breadth of product offering gives us a unique advantage as it allows us to acquire customers in states in advance of the regulation of online sportsbook or online gaming. The illustration on the left-hand side of slide 27 highlights the point. As the number of states regulating sports and gaming continues to grow, the circle in the center will continue to widen. From our point of view, it is widening into a space where we're already active.
This is reflected in our H1 performance, where despite widespread sports disruption, we still managed to acquire over 350,000 new customers. That breadth of product is also a valuable source of funding for the business.
We had positive contribution of GBP 73 million in H1. There aren't too many of our competitors who can say that. As Matt outlined in February, and I reiterated in May, for as long as the prospective returns in this market remain as attractive as they are today, we will not hesitate to continue to invest heavily to build our customer base. We will be disciplined, of course, but where attractive opportunities present themselves, we'll be unafraid to invest for the long term. Customer acquisition remains key. We'll be investing in direct online sports acquisition in at least nine U.S. states in the H2. The pipeline for further state regulation is encouraging, with proposed referendums in both Maryland and Louisiana set for H2. Investment goes beyond customer acquisition. It extends to proprietary technology, risk and trading capabilities, and people.
Having migrated our business across to our own accounts and wallets in recent days, we'll commence staggered migration of the business across our sports betting platform in H2. While I'm pleased with what this business has achieved to date, I'm even more excited about what is to come. In summary, I'm delighted with our performance in the H1. We've prioritized the welfare of our colleagues and customers during this challenging time. We've already made considerable progress with respect to our merger with The Stars Group. I remain excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for us as we look to invest further for future growth. Thank you all for listening, and I look forward to joining you all shortly to answer your questions.