Good morning, and welcome to the Flutter Entertainment Q1 2023 Trading Update, hosted by CEO Peter Jackson and CFO Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson. There will be a chance to ask questions later, which can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. Now I will hand over to Peter.
Thank you, Jess. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q1 Trading Update Call. I'll take the opportunity to run through the highlights from our trading update and then host our usual Q&A session. Before I start, I'd like to welcome Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson, who is with me here this morning for his first trading update since joining as CFO in March. Paul's experience in driving long-term sustainable growth and in strategically allocating capital positions as well for our journey ahead. It's been great to see how Paul is settling into the business with a very busy couple of months out and about meeting the divisional leadership teams across the group, including trips to Australia, America, and all around Europe. Our call this morning provides a great opportunity for Paul to share some of his initial observations as he's been getting to know our people and businesses.
However, I'd like to talk to you about some recent developments of the group before touching on our Q1 performance. Last week, we welcomed the publication of the U.K. White Paper, which has set out the government's framework for safer gambling in the U.K. We believe this is an important and necessary development for the industry to ensure all operators raise standards and make responsible play a priority. We at Flutter have already taken a leadership position on safer gambling across the group in recent years. Positive play is embedded at the heart of our strategy through the Play Well pillar of our sustainability strategy, our Positive Impact Plan. To demonstrate how important this is to our future growth, we've set ourselves a challenging target to have 75% of all customers using a Play Well tool by 2030.
I've been really pleased with the progress we've made to date with usage of over 40%. In the U.K. and Ireland, our affordability triple step approach and proactive steps to build a more sustainable business have meant that our customer base has materially changed in recent years to be far more recreational. We've led the industry in this area as evidenced from our performance in the U.K. and Ireland in recent quarters. There have been a number of subsequent consultations. However, importantly, we believe that the White Paper provides a clear framework to understand the impact on our business. We've assessed it as a potential GBP 25 million to GBP 50 million EBITDA impact, with half in 2024 and the rest in 2025, largely as a result of the proactive actions we've already taken.
We look forward to further contributing to the process along with the industry, the government and the Gambling Commission to develop a sustainable framework for the future. Last week, you may have also seen that the resolution to approve the addition of a U.S. listing to the Flutter Group received overwhelming support from our shareholders at our AGM, with 99.99% voting in favor. We expect to add our U.S. listing at the end of 2023. Over the coming months, we'll be considering our approach with respect to our existing Euronext and London listings. We'll provide an update in due course. Have no further comment on that today. Turning now to our quarterly trading update.
Our Q1 trading was excellent, delivering 29% revenue growth on a pro forma basis as we continue to execute against our strategic objectives of delivering profitable growth in the U.S., growing our gold medal positions and investing for leadership positions across international markets. A 46% increase in Average Monthly Players or AMPs to 12.3 million underpin this revenue performance as we continue to focus on recreational growth. We believe these numbers demonstrate the benefits of both our clear scale advantage and the benefits of the Flutter Edge, empowering our brands to win in their respective markets. This has translated to very pleasing market share gains in our key markets, including the U.S., one of our newest, as well as the U.K. and Ireland, one of our most mature. Looking at each of our divisions in a little more detail.
In the U.S., the three tenets of the FanDuel advantage we talked to you about at our Capital Markets Day in November, sustained our strong performance with revenue up 92%, including sports book revenue up 147%. Importantly, growth in existing states, i.e. those that launched pre-2022, was also very strong, with revenue almost doubling in the quarter. Firstly, our efficient customer acquisition drove a 20% increase in new players, combined with improved player values as we focus on acquiring higher quality customers. We also achieved number one positions in both the new state launches of Ohio and Massachusetts. We look forward to the launch of Kentucky later in 2023. Secondly, strong retention rates delivered through our market-leading propositions also drove AMPs up 46%.
Thirdly, Q1 customer value grew as we delivered significant structural net revenue margin improvements year-on-year, in line with our strategy to reach 12% gross win margin by 2025. We did this by meeting customer demand for entertaining and engaging products through our market leading and higher margin Same Game Parlay offering. We now have a 50% market share in the U.S. sportsbook, up 15 points year-on-year, which positions us well for long-term market leadership. Our iGaming strategy is also delivering great results with product improvements driving AMP and revenue growth. This in turn has delivered gaming market share gains in the quarter, growing to 23% of the iGaming market. In the U.K. and Ireland, as I previously mentioned, our online businesses continue to take share and delivered a really strong performance with revenue growing 17% year-on-year.
This performance demonstrates the reshaping of our business to focus on recreational customer growth in prior years. Product improvements across both sport and gaming led to strong retention of World Cup players, as well as good customer acquisition levels, with Flutter brands holding a 56% share of Cheltenham Gross Gaming Revenue. In our retail estate, we also took share in both the U.K. and Irish markets as our leading product and customer proposition resonated well with customers. In Australia, our increased investments in promotional generosity ensured we continued to grow our customer base in a competitive market. Sportsbet delivered a resilient performance in line with our expectations against some challenging COVID comps, with revenue down 4% but AMPs up 9% year-on-year.
Our international business continued to leverage the Flutter Edge to accelerate performance of its brands, delivering pro forma revenue growth of 6%, while AMPs were up 14%. Consolidate & invest markets, which are the markets where we see the best returns on our investment and make up 77% of the international division's revenues, saw pro forma revenue up 20% in the quarter. This included an excellent performance in Italy, where our newest acquisition, Sisal, saw its market-leading player proposition continuing to drive strong conversion of retail customers to online as well as to multi-product play. Sisal is an excellent example of our strategy of adding gold medal brands to our business and then help them achieve their potential using the Flutter Edge.
In India, Junglee was the fastest-growing Rummy brand in the market and continued to deploy exceptional digital marketing capabilities to acquire and retain customers, driving revenue up 65%. The Indian market is very well-positioned for long-term growth, and we've already established a great position from which we can continue to grow. I'm really pleased with how 2023 has begun and look forward to the progress we will continue to make during the year. Now I'll turn it over to Paul to take us through some of his initial observations since joining the group.
Thanks, Peter. It's been great over the last couple of months, getting around to various locations in the Flutter group. I can clearly see how the Flutter Edge is providing the group's many brands with access to Flutter's global scale and enabling those brands to deliver a more meaningful and powerful proposition in their local markets. Our Q1 market share gains are a very obvious validation of that powerful competitive advantage. As I think about the future of Flutter, I'm excited to be joining the team and in our opportunity to drive growth across the group through continuing to build and maintain leadership positions in our markets.
Flutter's growth algorithm of driving sustainable revenue growth through both more users and higher spend, with resource deployed from a scalable infrastructure platform and with relatively low capital intensity, offers us the opportunity for both structural margin improvement and significant free cash flow generation. We're also in the position of being able to bolt- on gold medal acquisitions like Sisal, which will drive high returns on capital employed. It's unusual to combine such a high market share with so much opportunity across the group for growth and margin improvement. I look forward to working with Peter to deliver that opportunity.
Thank you, Paul. With that, we'll turn it over to questions. As this is a quarterly trading update, we'll be keeping the call to around 30 minutes, we'd ask you to limit your questions to two to give everyone a chance. If we do run out of time, the IR team are on hand to help with any questions you may have. Jess, over to you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The first question, it comes from the line of Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. My first question's on Australia. There is a credit card ban being introduced. Can you just talk to your exposure to credit cards as deposits, how you expect that to go? The broader regulatory outlook with the Lower House also having a committee looking at the market. What's the regulatory outlook in Australia? The second is just on capital allocation. You mentioned it there, Paul, you've talked sort of broadly. I wondered if you could just comment briefly on your kind of attitude towards M&A, whether it's bolt-on or something larger. I appreciate you did the Sisal last year, which was quite a chunky deal. I just wondered if you could give me an update of thoughts on use of balance sheet towards M&A looking forward. Thanks.
Morning, Ed. Look, you know, there have been lots of press reports and sort of speculation about a credit card ban in Australia. There's, you know, there's quite a lot of, sort of, other speculation about other regulatory interventions. I think the thing I'd say in general, and I think this, you know, we've seen this happen all around the world, is that as and when the regulatory changes happen, we grow through those typically, and it helps reinforce the market-leading, you know, position, which is, of course, what we have in Australia. You know, specifically around credit cards, only a small percentage of our customers use credit cards only.
Y ou know, I think when we, if we look at what happened in the U.K. when credit cards were banned here, you know, we guided to a sort of 2 % or so revenue headwind, and I think it's probably a reasonable estimate for you to use in Australia. In terms of sort of capital allocation, look, you're right, we did acquire Sisal, you know, and we've been very pleased with how that business is bedded in. You know, I think the international team have got quite a lot on their plate in terms of, you know, big scale acquisitions. You know, if we see, you know, bolt-on deals, you know, of course we'd consider them as long as they're met with our strategy. You know, Paul, I don't know whether you want to sort of comment on that.
I guess the first point is this business is obviously highly cash- generative, so there will be plenty of fuel for investment in the business. With the EBITDA growing, the leverage will pretty quickly come down. First priority is always gonna be to invest organically to take advantage of the very significant opportunities that we have to continue to grow the earnings profile of the business. Beyond that, as Peter just said, yes, there are opportunities, and Sisal is a great example. You know, we bought that for less than EUR 2 billion. If you look at the 2022 numbers, that translated into less than 7 x EBITDA multiple. You know, fantastic example of what we can do, and it will generate a very high return on capital employed.
those are the sorts of opportunities that exist out there and exactly how we allocate capital over the coming years, we'll have to see, but it's great to have the range of opportunities that we do have.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Monique Pollard from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Yeah, just a couple of questions from me. The first was just on the phasing of growth in that U.K. and Ireland online business. Obviously, you know, phenomenal growth in the first quarter. Just wondering whether in March and April that rate's continuing to run at around the 17% mark, or whether we should expect it to slow a bit as we're lapping some of the new product launches that you'd brought in last year. Secondly, on the U.S., obviously, your iGaming market share really impressive, been improving consistently every quarter.
I was just wondering if you could give some examples of what's driving that, you know, in particular, what impact the Reward Machine, you know, that free-to-play product is having, if it's been a similar impact to what you've seen in the U.K. with the Paddy Power brand, whether you've got to the 90% of the top 25 games that customers care about that you've mentioned in your Capital Markets Day yet. You know, any update on retention and direct iGaming customers.
Okay. Morning, Monique. So look, we are really, really pleased with how the U.K. i business is performing. I think I said back in March, I felt like we had our mojo back, and you can see why I was talking about the business so positively. I'm really pleased with what the team are doing. It's a terrific job, up 17% in the first quarter, you know, when I think at best the market will be flat and probably have gone backwards. We're taking share. I feel really vindicated about the proactive approach we've taken to safer gambling, and our, you know, strong focus on recreational customers. Of course, I think it's also important to recognize that we've made a lot of product improvements as well.
I think, you know, I'd estimate around sort of half of the, you know, the growth we're seeing is being driven by that. We introduced the Bet Builder, you know, in sort of early Q2, last year. You know, I think by the time we get into the second half of the year, we'll see a degree of sort of moderation in the growth as we start lapping some of those product improvements. Look, I think with, you know, the business is trading really well. In iGaming, you answered your own question, right? You know, the a lot of the benefits are coming from the Reward Machine. We've been really pleased with the way in which U.S. consumers have engaged with it, and it's working very, very well for us.
I think what's particularly pleasing for us is that actually most of the market share gains we've been seeing have come from the direct casino acquisition channel. This hasn't been just from the cross-sell piece. Look, you know, we know that there's further product enhancements to come. The team are doing a great job. We always plan that, you know, this is the year where we get to sort of product parity with the market knowing that we were behind last year and then we could get ahead next year. We've got pattern recognition. The team are implementing down a sort of well-trodden path for us and, you know, I'm very confident that, you know, the business will continue to take share.
Excellent. Sorry, just on the iGaming retention rate, has that continued to improve?
Look, our retention rates are, you know, very strong across, you know, sports and gaming. That's what's helping contribute to the sort of the, you know, very strong AMP growth you're seeing.
Wonderful. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Clark Lampen from BTIG. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I've got two. One on the U.S. and one on the U.K. On the U.S., I'm hoping maybe you can provide an update on what you've seen year to date in terms of competition promo and customer acquisition dynamics. Does the collective change on those fronts lead you to feel any different or perhaps better about profit generation potential for the U.S. business this year? On the U.K. side of the business, you've been meaningfully outperforming local peers lately. I was hoping you could provide us a little bit of detail on what exactly is driving that between product initiatives, maybe relative to headwinds from safer gambling measures that you were earlier to implement, and whether or not those things, I guess, are sustainable over the balance of the year, maybe specifically the latter.
How much of a gap, I guess, is there between where you guys are in terms of affordability measures and checks relative to your closest peers? Thank you.
Morning, Clark. I think it is very early morning to you know, thank you for getting up and joining the call. Look, with, when we look at the U.S., I mean, there's a lot of confidence we have in our ability to make a profit this year. You know, the question really for us isn't sort of specifically how much we make, it's what the trajectory of the business will look like over the next subsequent years when we keep adding in layers of new customers who will of course flip from, you know, costing us money to generating very significant contribution and then that falling through to enhance our profitability in future years.
I think what we've seen over the course of this year, you know, we've been really pleased with the shift in our acquisition strategy to acquire customers of higher value. I think that the insights that the team had around acquiring customers in the run-up to the sort of playoffs in the, in the football rather than trying to acquire customers in the sort of second half of the Super Bowl sort of, you know, has vindicated, you know, the good work that the team is doing. Look, I think that in general, the, you know, levels of promotional sort of generosity seem to have, you know, moderated somewhat in the market.
We are, though, not really looking at what our competitors are doing, we're focused on what we're doing, and we're acquiring as much business as we possibly can whilst everybody sees the sort of capped LTV dynamics, remain as strong as they are. In the U.K., we, you know, we are outperforming. I'm really pleased to see the performance. It, it's quite hard to sort of separate how much of that is product and how much of that is, you know, is sort of competitors belatedly trying to sort of implement the safer gambling initiatives that we've already undertaken. You know, I just, you know. I think if you had to sort of guess, you might say it's sort of half and half or something like that.
I think from a product standpoint, you know, with the, you know, 4,000 engineers we have globally developing product for us, I wouldn't want to be trying to catch up with us 'cause we continue to race ahead. That's, you know, as true in the U.K. as it is in America or the other markets in which we operate.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from the line of Joe Stauff from Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Peter and Paul. I wanted to ask about your AMP growth in the U.S., you know, big number, 46%. You know, just less than a half a million or so of that you attributed to, you know, or that is 20% of the growth is from Ohio and Mass. I'm wondering if it's fair to assume that's gonna continue, say, into the second quarter, given that you only have three weeks really operating in Massachusetts. What's the right way to maybe think about that and into 2Q as well?
Do you have any follow-up questions, Joe, just while, you know, while we're at it?
Sure, yeah. The follow-up question is, you know, Kentucky Derby is this weekend. You know, you have a new content deal, you know, with Churchill Downs. Wondering if that's gonna be as big a customer acquisition event as you have, say, in Cheltenham as well?
Okay. Well, look, I think in general, we'd call out the very strong, you know, retention performance that we're seeing across the business as something that's helped supporting the AMP growth. I think that, you know, that's down to the quality of the product that we have there for customers. You know, if I very specifically answer your question about, you know, growth in Massachusetts as opposed to Ohio, you know, I think you're never going to get the same level of penetration in a market when you're outside of the football season as you do when you got football for people to bet on. You know, I think inevitably there'll be further sort of penetration we'll see in Massachusetts, you know, later on in the year when football restarts.
Look, as it relates to the Kentucky Derby, you know, look, I'm really excited about it. It's the sport of kings. It's the coronation of King Charles this weekend. You know, I'm feeling really good about it. You know, there are sort of, you know, people living in 33 states in America who can bet on the Kentucky Derby using the FanDuel Racing app. You know, all those Californians who are desperate to get a bet on can open their FanDuel app, and I think we're gonna give people a $20 free swing. Look, we hope it'll be a, you know, a big opportunity for us to acquire customers and showcase the great innovations that FanDuel bring to the market.
Thanks, Peter.
The next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.
Good day, Peter and Paul. Two questions from us. The first on FanDuel, just congrats on that No. 1 GGR share in Massachusetts in the first month, despite several of your peers, having unique competitive advantages, relative to whether it's local routes or owning a retail casino, et cetera. Curious how you guys attack that market, whether it's the same playbook you'd run in another state, or if you change that strategy relative to those factors there. Secondly, international, new Morocco sports betting contract, is there opportunity for Sisal to expand into other, whether it be North African countries or elsewhere, or was that kind of a unique one-off opportunity for the Sisal brand to expand? Thanks.
Good, good morning. Look, you know, we were really pleased with our, you know, performance in Massachusetts. You're right, you know, we were No. 1 with GGR. Look, I think the team have done a fantastic job in, you know, refining the, you know, new state launch playbook that we have in each market. You know, when I look at the success we've had in Kansas and Ohio, now in Massachusetts, you know, we've been very successful in the new states, but we also continue to take share in the very earliest states we launched in as well. Look, it's a combination of factors, a lot of which we discussed at the Capital Markets Days. Things like the Refer a Friend campaign, where the sort of natural scale of it helps.
Of course, we use our DFS base, as well to help sort of drive the business. You know, then it's also leveraging the sort of, you know, local you know, local personalities in the different markets and, you know, and frankly, a bunch of other things that we don't tell our competitors we're doing as well. Look, I'm really pleased with how the team are doing. Paul, do you wanna pick up the international piece?
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. In terms of Sisal, yeah, the first thing is it's been a tremendous acquisition for us, and in its home market of Italy, doing really, really well and exceeding our expectations from when we bought it. Our ability to take our retail customers and then get them online has really been helping there. It does bring that additional lens, as you mentioned, of lottery and it's got a very strong lottery product in Italy. Outside, it's got a strong presence in Morocco, and in Turkey. Because it brings that capability, it does give us the option to look further afield, and we'll certainly do that. Very happy with the acquisition.
The next question comes from the line of Paul Ruddy from Davy. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Peter and Paul. Just 2 quick questions if I may. First is just wanted to follow up with you, Peter, just on the margin for the best seller products.
Paul, it's very difficult to hear you.
Okay, sorry. Is that any better?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. All right, first question is just on the U.K. margin. Just to follow up there, you referred to the Bet Builder product. Could you give some context on what you're looking at the structural improvements in margin in the U.K. from those products improvements. The second is just a little bit more color, if possible, on the Italian market and the kind of 20% growth rates you're seeing there. Is that primarily the retail online migration? Is there market share gains there or kind of what other things are contributing to the growth there?
Okay. Thanks, Paul. Look, in terms of, you know, why don't I just give you a little bit of color on the Italian market, and then Paul can pick up on the, you know, the structural improvements in U.K. margin from Bet Builder, which I think was the question you asked. Look, in terms of Italy, we are seeing a very strong performance at the moment. You know, the dynamic we're seeing is that actually a lot of the retail customers who converted, you know, to online, and accelerated the conversion to online through the pandemic have remained online, and we've been very pleased with the way in which they've continued to expand the range of products that they've been operating in.
We've also continued to, you know, retain the levels of sort of retail engagement that we had, you know, pre-COVID as the, you know, the markets reopened. You know, the combination of those things is really what's driving the Italian business. I think, you know, you know, Sisal are doing a pretty unique job actually, of driving, you know, great, you know, products and innovation to get customers online, capture them and, you know, there's some really interesting innovations there. Things like, so Tipster, in sports and some really clever things they're doing to drive lottery customers online. You can scan the back of your ticket and effectively then have an opportunity to, you know, it's a free entry and get access to sort of gaming and other content.
They're just doing some, a really nice job in delivery and, yeah, I'm absolutely delighted. As Paul said earlier, it gives us some great new sort of lottery, you know, capabilities that we can take to other markets.
In terms of the U.K., I think the first thing to say is we're really pleased with the U.K. performance. I think Peter said at the at the full year that we've really got our mojo back in the U.K. We're clearly taking market share and the Bet Builder product is certainly helping that. Bet Builder penetration in football stakes has doubled year-on-year. There's a net revenue margin increase of 150 basis points, and that was all structural. The product is driving real improvement and expansion in U.K. now similar to the U.S. Of course, that then gives us the opportunity to deliver more value to customers. As we have a higher win margin, we then decide whether we give that back through generosity or not.
It provides us with options and so we'll continue to evaluate that. You know, a really good performance in the U.K. Very happy with the business there.
That's really clear. Thank you both.
Next question comes from the line of David Brohan from Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Two questions. Firstly on the U.S., the net revenue margin of 7% that you reported, obviously there's a bit of a drag from bonusing there in newer states. Wondering could you give any color on what that would look like maybe ex Ohio, Massachusetts or ex state launches from the last 12 months? The other one is on international, the kind of 17% pro forma constant currency growth in sports. Any color, is that driven more from staking or margin or anything you could say on that? Thank you.
Morning, David. Look, we're not going to start to, you know, breaking apart the net revenue margin in the U.S. I think what we will say is that we're, you know, we remain very confident in the 12% that we guided at the Capital Markets Day. Look, from an international perspective, if I look at the, you know, the, you know, the margin position and how that's evolved, you know, I mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day, it's being driven by sort of the Sisal and, you know, we've talked about that and the strong performance there. There's no sort of big margin, you know, change there really year-on-year. I think it's just the performance of the business.
Okay, thanks Peter.
The next question comes from the line of Kiran jot Grewal from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hey, morning, guys. First one's on international. Are you able to share some more details, sort of ex-Italy, how the business is performing? I think India is doing particularly well. What's behind that, and what are you hearing from the ground on the reg front there? The second one is on the U.S. I think AMPs grew 46%, sports stakes were up 43%. Are we getting to a stage where the incremental customers being captured in the U.S. are increasingly recreational? Thank you.
No, I think in terms of sort of, you know, markets outside of Italy, I know, you know, it's of Turkey came with Sisal, but I think, you know, we're very pleased with the way that the, you know, the Turkish business is performing year-on-year. Of course, the terrible, you know, earthquake that we saw, you know, in Q1, you know, we were concerned about how, you know, first of all about all of our, you know, the colleagues and, you know, the business that was based there. Actually, you know, it has, you know, really delivered a very strong performance, you know, notwithstanding those awful events in Q1. We're really pleased with that. We've brought lots of, y ou know, when we think about the Flutter Edge, we've brought lots of capabilities to support the Junglee business.
Paul referenced earlier how important it is to be investing in organic acquisition, we've been doing that in Junglee. It's the fastest growing, you know, Rummy business in India. I think the digital marketing capabilities we've been able to bring to it really helps to supercharge the business. You know, when we bought it was the number three business, it's now the number two business. We, you know, we like gold medal positions, right? I don't know what the gold medal equivalent is in Rummy, I'll have to go away and think about that. In terms of the U.S., you know, look, AMPs are, you know, up very strongly.
I think what you've got to remember is, you know, the FanDuel business and brand already resonates very well with the sort of mainstream mass market. You know, when I look at the success of the Kick of Destiny that the, you know, the Gronk, you know, got behind and, you know, all of the other activities we take, we are a real sort of, you know, mainstream business in the U.S. We're not focused on Customers. Inevitably, there is going to be a degree of sort of moderation as you get into the sort of, you know, the adoption curve. I don't think that's having any material impact. The important thing for us is we continue to sort of trade well within our sort of CAC TV dynamics of 12 to 18 months.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of James Rowland Clark from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Two quick and final questions that I hope just on M&A. I appreciate you mentioned that the priority for you would be investing organically, and then you'd look at M&A sort of bolt-on opportunities. Would you focus on your existing consolidate and growth markets, or would you look elsewhere into new markets? In Australia, would you mind just updating us on the competitive dynamics? Obviously in Q4, one of the new competitors on the block was pretty aggressive. What the trends like there and how is that impacting marketing spend as well as your offer, which you'd mentioned was a slight headwind for you in Q1? Thank you.
Look, James, I'll pick up the Australian one. Then Paul will talk to you about sort of the M&A piece. I mean, I think, you know, we referenced in Q4. Of course you need to remember that, you know, that's a very competitively intense period in the Australian market. You've got all the racing festivals and things coming on. We had some big new entrants trying to make a splash. There was a lot of sort of focus on generosity. People were also trying to sort of scale their businesses in advance of the changes in Point of Consumption Tax. We wanted to defend our leadership position. We did so. I think the team did a fantastic job for us.
As we come into, you know, this year and look at sort of Q1, you know, look, there is a sort of, you know, there's still a very competitive environment in Australia. You know, people were trying to sort of take positions ahead of the launch of the two big sporting codes. We were really pleased with, you know, how our business performed. You can see the significant AMP growth that we had in the market. I think the team are, you know, are doing a great job.
In terms of M&A, I think that, yeah, we'll look at what's out there. We like to buy excellent businesses that we can grow in great markets where there's lots of future runway for growth. If you look at what we've bought, whether that's Adjarabet, whether that's Sisal, whether it's Junglee, these all have a lot of opportunity to continue. We don't really obviously so much like your fully built-out businesses that we're paying, you know, high multiples for. It's all done, because we know we can bring the Flutter Edge to bear and make a good business even better. It's looking at the business, gold medal positions, and then looking at markets where there's a lot of opportunities for growth. I think that will dictate what we do going forward.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender from JMP Securities. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. The market share gains have been impressive in the U.S. Can you maybe just talk about how spend per session or time on device has positively impacted that revenue growth in the FanDuel business? For my follow-up on the retention, you know, is the retention you're seeing in your AMPs kind of typical for what you see fall in a World Cup period? Thank you.
Morning, Jordan. Look, I mean, I think I'm really pleased with the way in which the team have performed in the U.S. I think the market share gains we've taken in casino were, you know, terrific, particularly in light of, you know, the fact we've expected to make that progress later on than we have done. I think the team are doing a terrific job there. I think in sports, we know that when you have the best product in the market, and we clearly have the best product in the market, that you can expect to have high levels of retention.
You know, retention rates, you know, have continued to be a little bit better than we anticipated in the U.S. market, and that's what's helped contribute to sort of some of the higher lifetime values that we've seen over the years. Then look, and in terms of sort of engagement and sessions, you know, and bet frequency and stuff, you know, it's been very strong. You know, when I look at the World Cup and think about it from a, you know, that's a big soccer event, it's been very, very successful for us in the U.K. business, and we've seen very high levels of retention because of the quality of products and engagement we've had.
Actually, in the U.S., we saw, you know, really good results as, you know, with the World Cup, much better engagement than we'd anticipated. I think that has helped contribute to the momentum that carried on into this year. If you look at it, you know, 50% market share in Q1, it's up 15 points on last year. I think the team are doing a really good job, and it gives us a lot of confidence that the business is gonna make a profit this year. Of course, I think the right thing to do is be then thinking to the, you know, the size and scale of the business in future years.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Jordan. Well, look, I think that's all we have time for today. Thank you all for being patient. I know we've run over a little bit longer. If you have any questions or follow-up, I know the IR team are here to help.
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