We're very pleased to have Genius Sports. Nick Taylor, CFO of Genius Sports. Nick, thank you for coming.
Hi, guys.
How are you today?
Yeah, good. I was just saying to Jason, you know, it's a bit busy week for everyone, isn't it, on investors? It's my third investor day this week, and there was a moment yesterday when I'd been talking, like, doing my twelfth meeting, that I was worried we might end up having to do this by mime, 'cause my voice is going. Apologies if it sounds a bit croaky than it normally does, but I'll keep drinking water, Jason, and-
You sound good. You sound good.
Okay, we're okay.
All right, so maybe, I find that, you know, investors, since you're a relatively young company, people-
Mm-hmm
... are still sort of getting up to speed. Maybe just a super brief overview—
Yeah
... of sort of who you are, what your role is in the broader sports ecosystem.
Yeah. Yeah, we are a young company. I mean, we've actually existed for about 15 years, but, you know, we listed three years ago. What do we do? We partner with sport, and we collect their live data, and we monetize their live data. That's, in essence, what we do. We've traditionally done that mostly in the betting markets, which is kind of, I guess, where we're best known for, but increasingly we monetize that in the media markets and the broadcast markets based on the technology that we have, 'cause we were founded as a technology business.
Okay. What was sort of the gen- the, the, the origin story-
Yeah, of course.
... or the thesis like?
Mark Locke, who's our Chief Executive, he was our founder, so he found us. I did ask him the other day what date he actually started, and he couldn't quite remember, but it was 20, it was around about 2005, 2006 is when he started. It all came from in-play sports betting. In-play sports betting, what I mean by that is whistle to whistle. You know, you hear now US sportsbooks talk about it. Jason Robins talked about it quite a lot yesterday, actually, at another conference around in-play sports betting as being a major driver. In the U.K., in-play sports betting, mature market, around about 70% of all bets are kind of whistle to whistle.
Mark actually started the business really as a sort of mathematical algorithms. What he went to do is he said to the sportsbooks, "The actual bookmaking itself is just a commodity on an in-play sports bet. Nobody is moving from one sportsbook to another to see if you get better odds on who scores the next soccer goal or who gets the next touchdown. Because by then, you've chosen which sportsbook you want to go onto because of the customer journey, because the way they're treating you as a customer, because of bonusing. Therefore, actually, guys, we can do that cheaper than you can. You don't need everybody in your organisation looking at this, because it's really just a mathematical algorithm, a calculation." That's where Mark started, and he had some success at that, working with the U.K. sportsbooks.
He then, probably about 10 years ago, realised that's great, but the real leverage in the relationship comes from actually owning the data in itself. What Mark then went to do with us in the organisation was to actually partner with sports to, to collect the data itself, you know, go up the source of the river, if you will.
Yeah.
That's really where the genius of today kind of grew from. What we do is we partner with 500, 600 sports leagues and federations around the world, and everyone knows us because we have a relationship with the NFL or U.K. Soccer or NCAA, but it's also with, you know, Singaporean second division basketball or Polish handball or Czech volleyball. What we do is we collect all of that data, and we do that, on the whole, for most people, by controlling our own technology suite. We digitize those sports. On behalf of that, we then get the data, and then we monetize that data. As I say, we do this because what...
In the betting markets, what's also important to understand is that, you know, the NFL is a very important, clearly a very important marquee product for, for FanDuel, but it is only 276 games. And if you go onto a FanDuel website, and what is it now? It's 5- 11 on a Friday, there'll be something you can bet on now on FanDuel and DraftKings and Caesars, and at this time of day, it's probably, you know, Asian. It might be Singaporean basketball, or it might be, you know, Turkish handball. Those, that long tail of events that we're talking about actually have real value to sportsbooks, and the way we go to markets, we sell that all as an overall package.
Okay, that's a perfect summary. Now, your top line has been growing 20% plus over the last few years, and you've said you can grow at that rate-
Mm-hmm
...for the foreseeable future. If you could help sort of unpack—
Yeah
... sort of the underlying drivers that give you that confidence.
Yeah, I mean-
...into whatever logical buckets.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Yeah.
I mean, the two main buckets that we, we, at the moment, the way we, we talk about our business is either the betting business or the media business. There is a sports section, which I'll cover as well. If I look at betting, which is kind of what I've just talked about and sort of the, how it, how it evolved. We go to market two ways in those relationships with sportsbooks. We either do, we call it a fixed fee kind of deal. It's not fixed. There are lots of levers of growth within it, but it's a bit like a SaaS deal, an all-you-can-eat.
You know, somebody will pay $5 million, and for that, we'll give them 100,000 events a year, and that sportsbook can then choose whichever of those events or all of those events just been talking about, they can choose those, which those events are. There's a repeatability, there's a visibility of those revenues, and that—traditionally, that's how we've gone to market in, for example, the European market and the U.K. market. The U.S. market, we've come to market differently. We take a rev share model. Obviously, given the significant growth in the U.S. markets and other markets, you know, Brazil, for example, coming up, I'm sure we'll touch on in the next 30-odd minutes, that's also kind of a rev share model. What we do is we take a % of gaming revenue...
On that basis. At its simplest, if you believe gaming revenue will continue to grow year on year, then Genius should, at a base level, grow the same as, as much, and indeed more than gaming revenue. There is a whole growth aspect around TAM.
Mm.
As new states roll out, that's an important thing.
Mm.
Also existing states. You look at, you know, just looking this morning, New Jersey, which has been betting for four, five years now.
Mm
... year on year, its January to July bet, GGR and handle has grown by over 30%. People sometimes forget that existing states, there's still significant growth as sports bettors become more sophisticated across the U.S. over the years. That's definitely one of our growth levers. Another growth lever in the betting space will be in-play sports betting. As I said to you, in the U.K., mature market's about 70%. U.S. market is probably at the moment, probably inverse that. It depends on the sport, it depends on the sportsbook, it depends on what type of bet. You're looking at somewhere in the region of about 30% of sports bets being in-play sports betting at the moment. It will go. It will drive to that 70% position.
Indeed, I think, I think Jason Robins said it yesterday, is that actually, U.S. sports in many ways lend itself to in-play sports betting, given the natural breaks in, in sports itself. It will move. Now, why does that matter? It matters for lots of reasons. It's great for sportsbooks. It's great for the sport themselves, because nobody's more engaged than the guy who's got $10 on the next... on the score at the end of the, at the end of the fourth quarter. It's great for engagement through dead games. I know last night's game was anything but a dead game, went right down to the wire. A lot of games, you know, this weekend, you get to the fourth quarter, the, you know, the results will be known by that point.
In-play sports betting driving engagement. Why it's important for Genius, Jason, is because we take, broadly speaking, this is a generalization, about three times as much revenue from an in-play sports bet as we do a pre-play sports bet.
Right.
If you were to put $10 on the game last night, 10 minutes before kickoff, traditionally we've earned around about 1.5% of that. Again, massive generalization, but it varies from sport to sport, so it's about that number. You put exactly the same bet, $10, into the game, we've traditionally earned about 5.5% of that bet, with zero additional change in cost base. In-play sports betting, therefore, as it moves, as sportsbooks' product improves, as our product helps develop that, means that that's another big growth lever.
Yeah
... of us. Back to your 20%.
Yeah.
There are lots of other product-related growth, but I'm conscious of time.
Yeah
I can talk about this for a long time. That, that's a sort of broad where betting, betting revenues grow. Price is obviously another one, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit—
Mm
... coming up about, renegotiating with sportsbooks, that are, that are currently ongoing. That's clearly something as well, over the course of not just the next two years, but the next 10 years, the next 15 years, that we'll continue to take.
Is there, I think in general, U.S. rev share, international, more fixed price. Is there an assumption that international moves more to rev share, or U.S. moves more to fixed, or you don't really care, or?
No, I don't envisage the U.S. moving away from rev share for the time being.
Okay
... simply because of the growth in the U.S. ongoing market. Now, at the right price, we would absolutely offer a fixed deal.
Okay.
It's a bit like length of deal.
Right.
You know, you, sportsbooks on the whole, again, massive generalization, want longer term deals because they want the visibility of what that looks like. On the whole, we'd prefer shorter term deals for the exact opposite reasons. It's just a negotiating leverage.
Okay.
If people want to fix it, then we're absolutely interested in that answer, but it would need to be at the right price, in the same way as, you know, we're negotiating all sorts of different-
Okay
...aspects of the contract. European, it tends to be fixed length. The growth isn't quite the same in that. What tends to happen is we go into a new growing market, as I say, like Brazil-
Yeah
... that tends to naturally lend itself more to a variable model for us.
Okay. It seems like given the growth in GGR and the direction of—
Mm-hmm
... travel for in-play betting, the 20% growth doesn't seem like a, like, highly aspirational or stretch goal. It seems something that-
Yeah
... is, is, you know, reasonable confidence for achievement?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at our last three years, and I always try and look at proof points, you know—
Yeah
... we've grown at, these numbers won't be exactly right-
Yeah
... but we've grown north of 20% the last three years. I think our current guide this year, which is $510 million of revenue, gives us an implied 23% growth from-
Yeah
... from 2023- 2024. You know, in the- and in the business we're working in right now, it doesn't feel like a business that's slowing down, and therefore, naturally we wanted to tell the market that we felt that that was a sustainable business.
Okay.
Now, it won't be linear.
Right.
There might be some years where it might grow 18%.
Okay
... but there might be some years that grow 28%.
Mm.
It was kind of a blended view that we felt 20% on an ongoing basis.
Okay
... felt, felt absolutely reasonable.
Primary risks to that, to sort of materially underachieving? I mean, would you say recession is a risk, or if California and Texas don't legalize, or are there... What are the, what, what are the potential-
Yeah
... big banners in the work?
I mean-
If any
... medium term, I don't think there really are any on that basis.
Okay.
You know, we're in a very fortunate position, you know, to talk about the U.S. and growth in in-play sports betting and so forth. You know, the U.S. is about 30% of our revenues today, so proportionately it's getting more important. You know, it'll never become so important that it's probably a majority of our betting revenues, for example.
Yeah.
And not having all those eggs in one basket. You know, I don't... Yeah, California, you mentioned California. California or Texas opening up, clearly that's good news for Genius, as it is good news for the market.
Yeah.
It's just another state.
Mm.
You know, if you think about 70% of our revenues are, are non-U.S. related. If you think about Illinois tax, for example, does it mathematically impact our revenues? Yes, because we take a percentage of gaming revenue. If you think about the funnel saying, "You know, X is on media," and we'll talk about media, I'm sure, in a second. X is on media, which isn't impacted by that. 70% is the other way, is non-U.S. They're not impacted by that. There are 40-odd, 30-odd states betting. You know, by the time you go through the funnel, if you will, actually any individual state behavior, or indeed any individual hold, for example, on a month, doesn't really have that much material difference for us. Yet a good month hold on sports books—
Mm-hmm
... is good news for Genius. Conversely, bad news is bad news, so. It would have to be bad every single month to have anything that really to impact those revenue growths that you're talking about. You know, Super Bowl, I think it's fair to say, wasn't, Super Bowl 2024 wasn't great for sports books-
Mm
... with, with, with, you know, the, the sort of Mahomes effect coming back to win. That impacts our revenues. Yeah, it did, but nothing that was anywhere close to being a material number for us because it was one game out of 200,000 that we offer on a, on a, on a global basis.
Understood. What about competition? Can you talk about competition?
Yeah. Yeah, so, we've concentrated quite a lot on data here. I mean, there's a whole other side of our business around media and tech-
Okay
... which are significant and going to become increasingly significant parts of our business. You know, our media programmatic businesses will do there or thereabouts $100 million this year.
Yeah.
And our tech, you know, we've been, you know, you've heard us talk about Genius IQ, you know, Second Spectrum that we bought three, four years ago, that, you know, one of the world's leading AI and computer vision sports business, is really driving our growth around BetVision, around, around some of our announcements we've made around U.K. soccer, around European soccer. And we'll, we'll-
Yeah
Jason, we'll cover that today. What I'm saying is, no, there is no competition that has the same level of tech. In each one of those verticals, we'll have our own competitive analysis. In that AI computer vision world, our major competitor is a company called Hawk-Eye. Hawk-Eye are part of the Sony Group, for example. On the data side, which is obviously well, better known, our major competitor, and it's fast becoming a bit of a duopoly, is Sportradar.
Mm-hmm.
Sportradar is a wonderful company and does, does lots of things very well, have scale, but they don't have the same... You know, we don't see them as competitors in, in our other, in our other verticals, because they don't have the same, same technology. What I, what I would say on the data space, though—
Yeah
... in terms of, competition, is to say, well, it's fast becoming a duopoly.
Hmm.
We have all the rights that we need to succeed. I know Sportradar have said the same.
Mm-hmm.
You know, our NFL deal is now out to 2028. Our U.K. soccer deal that we announced in the last quarter goes out to 2029. You know, we have a long-term NCAA relationship. Things like Argentinian soccer, that's going to be very important for the Latam, you know, we've had out to the end of the decade. And therefore, we don't need any more. As I say, I know Radar said the same. You know, people think about us being very competitive, and we are on a rights by rights basis for obvious reasons. You know what? There's plenty of opportunity for us both to do very well over the next six or seven years, and frankly, make plenty of money for both of our shareholders.
So, so competitive, yes, but, you know, there's, we can coexist alongside each other.
Okay
... perfectly well.
What about the, the smaller players outside of Radar? I mean, they, is this sort of... It sounds like a scale business where you need to have sufficient scale. What—
I think that's right. I think when we listed three years ago, I think if you went back to our listing documents, we probably talked about another couple of competitors in there. I think we've talked about IMG Arena, which is part of the Endeavor Group, Stats Perform, which is a private equity owned business. Look, good businesses have some rights in there, but they've definitely, haven't grown in the size and scale and the way that Radar and us—
Yeah
... have grown. You know, IMG Arena's up, up for sale. You know, Endeavor Group publicly announced that in their last, in their last quarter. We're seeing both of those organizations less-
Yeah
... now than we did four years ago, I think—
Okay
I was going to say.
Okay. When you told the origin story—
Mm
... it sounded almost like you were a technology company-
Yeah
... first, and this was just sort of a, a natural way to express, the use of software and technology.
Mm.
Can you spend a bit of time-
Yeah
... and go a little bit deeper, both in terms of the technology you're most excited about for the sports books, for sports books that want to advertise-
Yeah
... and for the leagues and federations, where there's, like, a different customer potentially?
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, Jason. That's exactly right, and that DNA as a technology business lives on today. And what we're seeing is that technology is all included in every single part of our business. So, when you look at it in a betting business, for example—
Yeah
... you know, one of the products which I know is, is relatively high profile at the moment is a product called BetVision. BetVision is an integrated betting slip with live streaming through, for NFL that you watch on, on, on a sports book. That's live. It went live last season with, I think it was four sports books. It was live last night. What that looks like for those in the room who don't actually know what it is, so it's at almost zero latency, so certainly a good 45-50 seconds ahead of that you'd have seen on NBC last night. It's actually a broadcast stream, and what we do is we overlay our sports AI computer vision graphics and stats that you see as a consumer, you've traditionally seen on places like ESPN.
You've seen it on Amazon Thursday Night Football, you've seen it on CBS RomoVision, you see it in Premier League Productions on Peacock in the U.S., you see it on, goodness me, NFL.com, you know, all of this. You know, we do all of that, and now you see that on sportsbooks. You see that, but then you also have the integrated betting slip. What you do is you click on the player that's live, you click on that player, all the betting markets come up for that player, and you drive that. That suddenly becomes a very, very effective tool for sportsbooks in terms of dwell time, in terms of in-play sports betting. I can't give you any stats, because they're not our stats.
They're Sportsbooks stats, unfortunately, but the eyeballs on that have been really quite significant. That is- you see our tech in that, within, in, in the betting space. That's a great example of that, of what you see in the betting. In other areas of the business, what you see is-
Can I just, can I just pause you right there?
Yeah, please.
Just on the betting side, I wanna make sure I have this right. I'm watching television, and there's a bunch of graphics on there.
Mm-hmm.
When you said you click on a player, this is the player holding their mobile phone at the same time while they're watching television?
Yeah, so you see it through, you see it through tablet and mobile.
Okay.
You can't second screen it onto onto—
Okay
... TV. It becomes a completely interactive way of-
Okay
... of, of watching the game and-
You know
... and engagement, really. I mean, it's just, you know, all, that's all betting really is, in-play sports betting. It's just another ent- it's, it's the ultimate form of entertainment.
Yeah.
As I say, nobody's more engaged than the person, the guy or the girl who's got $10 on who scores the next touchdown. That's what betting is. What you find is that's why in-play sports betting is coming, is 'cause what you end up is, the bet sizes tend to come down, because you don't get the pass through the acquisition odds that you do on the pre-match sports bet. You think of it as akin to almost like an iCasino product.
Right
... because you win your bet in the second quarter, and then you recycle that bet in the third quarter, and so on and so forth.
Okay.
That's the way to think about it.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
No, no, that's fine.
Okay.
Let's talk about media quickly.
Mm
... 'cause we haven't really touched on that. Just to give everyone an understanding of what we do, and then I'll say how technology plays into it. In our- we have a programmatic media business. What that basically means, that if any advertise- any brand wants to associate themselves with sport, then we are the go-to people to be able to do that. We've traditionally done that through a managed service, and it's traditionally done with sportsbooks. And why does- why Genius? Well, Genius, we have a unique set of data. We have all the first-party data that we have through our sports leagues and federations, through our results, through whether that's NFL.com or other sports leagues and federations.
We obviously have all the live sports data as is, because that's our bread and butter in terms of what we're doing, and that allows us to place, you know, real time to the right person, the right context, at the right moment in the sport to attract that individual to the brand that we are, we are working on behalf of. As I say, traditionally, about 85% of our revenues have been with sportsbooks, so that's traditionally been with Caesars and FanDuel and Fanatics and so on. That's not just an acquisition tool, it's also a re-engagement tool. It's,
So it works, and, you know, we work as much in a New Jersey environment at the start of a season, trying to re-engage fans who perhaps haven't bet for four months, as it is about finding new fans in North Carolina that's just legalized sports betting. But it's equally appropriate for any sport, for any brand that wants to attract-
Yeah
... that sports person. If anyone listens into our quarterly earnings, you'll hear us name-check people and brands that we've worked with recently, and guys like Pepsi and American Express and Heineken, and so on and so forth. You know, that's great. As I say, it's about a $100 million business right now. It's another way that we're able to leverage those relationships with sportsbooks. It's another way we're able to leverage our rights position. Within our contracts with sportsbooks, we tend to have a minimum media spend that they commit to on that basis. In technology terms, the next step for us, and this is going live now, in fact, I believe it's now launched, is a self-serve model.
The model that we've been doing traditionally is a managed service, so we'll manage the whole process for a DraftKings or a Fanatics. The next step is to do a self-serve model. We've just built our own DSP on that basis, as I say, which is ready to go now, and that opens up a whole new addressable market of all the agency spend. You know, the Omnicoms of this world, who are frankly doing the managing on behalf of the FMCG brands.
Yeah.
Now they would use us. Again, from a technology perspective, you can see that's, you know, we spend a level of R&D every year. This is the sort of thing that we are spending in order to drive that product, and that will be a significant part of our media growth story going forward. You know, media's done very well. You know, it's growing at, you know, I don't... I, off the top of my head, but it's, or what it is year on year, but it's 30-40%. It's that kind of number on an annualized basis. Now the in-play, the, sorry, the DSP, self-serve model is just another string to our bow that you'll see, and you'll hear us talking about as we go through 2025 and beyond.
Because, again, margin-wise, Jason, the thing to remember about that, and I'm sure we'll talk about margins at some point, is that's really at 100% margin. That's, or, or close to 100% margin, which obviously makes a significant difference in terms of our margin profile. If you, again, if you think about business, that's the data side, the betting side, and how technology's helping drive that. You've then got the media side, and then the third part is what we call sports. We've not quite got that naming quite right, in truth, and we've spent three years trying to work out how to do that. We look at that as enabler. You know, all of this relies on our relationship with sport.
That, that, that's obviously critical, as you, you've heard, not just with U.K. Soccer or NCAA, but the other, you know, 300,000 events that come from 500 to 600 sports that we're working with. You know, we gain revenues from some of those relationships directly. For example, we'll work with sports, we'll work with teams and leagues. We work with most of the NBA franchise. We work, I think, with all now the, the, the NFL positions, and we work with 19 out of the 20 Premier League U.K. soccer teams, and that's through our AI, and again, through computer vision, using insights, using tools, using our vast level of data working with those guys.
What we're increasingly doing, a good example is our U.K. Soccer announcement that we announced in July, is our AI computer vision, you know, zero latency technology has all sorts of other user cases, and one of those is semi-automated offsides. U.K. Soccer, and apologies, I know sometimes I talk to rooms and everyone knows more about U.K. Soccer than I do, and other times, not so much. Offside rules in U.K. Soccer is a hot topic, I think we'll say, and it's done manually today, and we've just won the, as I say, for this season, go live sometime likely before Christmas, where it will all be automated or at least semi-automated, I think is what we're calling it.
You know, that is a very interesting and strategically important deal. Not only because it's U.K. Soccer and it's massively profiled, it's the biggest soccer league in the world, and therefore classically tech. You know, if it's good enough for the Premier League, it's probably good enough for the other 125 professional soccer leagues around the world, and you build it once and sell it a thousand times. This is all about ingraining ourselves in the sports ecosystem around, you know... Yeah, we announced in the same week that we had won that and we'd extended our U.K. Soccer data deal.
Mm.
You know, you can understand, you know, our job is to ensure, you know, that we are right across all of that sports eco platform, and this is a really good example of that.
That's interesting. The customer there would be the league itself?
The customer there, the league itself.
That decision.
Absolutely.
Okay.
That's exactly right.
Okay.
Another one, for example, is we've announced UEFA. We announced a deal with UEFA, which is the European umbrella for soccer, so look after all the professional leagues in Europe, and we just announced that we are their now official tracking partner. In the same way, I think we've just been announced as we're the official tracking partner for the WNBA here in the States.
What is tracking partner?
Tracking is providing, it is providing the tracking data, live tracking data, to, in this instance, UEFA, to, for... And that's very valuable data for UEFA. At the moment it's valuable data 'cause they can provide it to the sports in terms of their own analysis, their own coaching tools.
Mm.
That same tracking data, that same technology that's providing that, is also providing the semi-automated offsides, is also providing broadcast to what we're doing with, as I say, with ESPN and what we're doing with CBS, and so on and so forth. By getting that deal with UEFA, that's putting our technology across 26 different professional leagues, 120-odd stadiums across the Spanish League and the French League and the Italian League, and it's that same data, that same technology, that's providing all of these different user cases. Again, it's a little bit of, okay, UEFA are paying for this right now, and that's great. Look, I'm CFO, anyone—this, this is all good news to get, you know, talking about our growth rates. The really strategic interesting thing for us—
Downstream from that, yeah.
... is what that technology will then provide over the years.
Okay, that's super helpful. Are there any questions that anyone has for Nick? We can take any questions if you... If you do have them, just feel free to raise your... Okay.
Um-
We just wait for a mic, if you don't mind.
Obviously, it seems like a different story here in the States with markets opening up, but I'm Australian, and there's been proposed legislation around the curbing of sports betting advertising.
Mm
... you know, maybe in some of your more mature markets.
Yeah.
Is that a concern or a consideration at all?
Yeah, and we see it, you're actually, and we see it in some of the European markets. Italy is a good example in the European markets at all. Look, the majority of our media work is U.S.-based. I talked about 70% of our revenues being non-U.S.. and 30% U.S. Within our $100 million media, it's much more swerved to the U.S. Is it creating headwinds in our media space in some of the mature markets? Yes, but the numbers that we're actually driving from those markets are really not, are not meaningful anyway, and therefore it's not a massive concern. The other thing about our media space is also, is, or again, all the other technologies we're doing.
You know, we've just done a deal with X called Trend Genius over the summer, which was specifically in relation to the Olympics, which is not a betting sport really at all. You know, there's very little betting on, in the Summer Olympics. That was working, as I say, with social media. It was with Hershey, the chocolate company, about getting their brand on the social media, attaching themselves to the key moments in sport. There are so many strings to our bow. It's a bit what Jason was asking around, about tax rates or California. There are so many strings to our bow that, you know, there will inevitably be headwinds around, around the ecosystem at various points...
but there are so many different growth levers that I'm in a fortunate position to not get too concerned about any one. You know, we came out with $480 million as a revenue target at the start of the year, went out $510 million. That $480 million included a quarter of Brazilian sports betting, because at the start of the year we felt that Brazilian sports betting would be live by now. That's why, you know, it's no coincidence that the game tonight's in São Paulo. You know, that hasn't happened. That's a headwind, but because of all the different levers, we're able to manage that elsewhere, and therefore, it's... I don't know if the phrase translates into the U.S., but there's a phrase in the U.K. about having all your eggs in one basket. And that-
Yeah, it translates.
Okay. I, I'd never know. Sometimes I say these Britishisms and people look at me as if I'm very strange. But that's the case for us.
Any other questions? Nick, you brought up some of the visibility you have in s- and your data rights sort of being locked up in the NFL.
Yeah
... through 27 28. I think you said the football data go through 2029.
Yeah.
Are, are there sort of, outside of those known knowns, are there other things that investors should think about in terms of renewing smaller things?
Okay
... or any sort of disruption, or it's just—
That there are renewals all the time, but none of them material.
Okay.
What I'd say about the ongoing renewals is that because we're a technology business and because we ingrain ourselves in the technology, the friction factor to get rid of Genius is very difficult. I mean, our churn on sport is almost zero churn.
Mm.
Because if you think about it, and it's the same for the, for the major leagues as well, but if you think about the minor leagues, and you think about how we are helping digitizing their sport, and we'll give them competition management systems, we'll give them player registration systems, we'll give them OTT platforms, media feeds, scoreboard feeds, the websites themselves, it means that if anyone ever wanted to leave Genius, and hopefully there's no reason to do so, but if they ever wanted to do so, it's very, very difficult for them to do so practically because they lose all of that, that suite of technology. As I said, nobody else has that suite of technology. From a rights perspective, you know, we have all we have, all the plans we've set out, we've talked about our margin position.
Mm.
... we've talked about, those of us who've followed it closely will see that we went from a margin EBITDA margin negative position, I think it was back in three years, three years ago. We were a 5% margin business two years ago. We're, you know, a 12.5% margin last year. I think our current guidance is around about 16.5%. You know, you can see that margin progressing, and we've said-
Yeah
... publicly, you know, within our line of sight, we will be a 30% EBITDA margin position. We are able to say that with confidence, Jason, because as exactly as you say, the visibility of our cost base is huge. You know, rights step up every year. Yes, of course they do, but I know to the exact dollar what those rights costs will be in 2029 in U.K. soccer or 2028 in football.
Yeah.
And the operating leverage that we have in the rest of the business is huge. I mean, if you go, I think our operating costs over the last three years, I think have actually declined possibly—
Right
... rather than gone up. There's certainly, you know, you know, if we sell our data to more sportsbooks, if we're able to monetize our rights through different technologies, if we're able to get more price from a sportsbook, if more people are betting on it because of TAM, if more people are betting on in-play sports betting, none of that impacts my cost base by a single cent. You suddenly see that-
Yeah
... operating leverage is in that business.
That's super helpful. One of the unique things about your company is that the NFL is an owner, I think eight-
Yes, that's right.
... 8% or something like that?
Yeah, 8%, on a fully diluted basis, yeah.
Okay. What does that... I mean, how should investors sort of think about? Do you think that it gives you advantages? Are there disadvantages?
Okay.
Are there any sort of weird things that-
Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean, is there anything weird in that? No, we treat the NFL like any major shareholder. We meet them after earnings in the same way that we do. As you'd expect us to be close, both from a shareholder perspective, but obviously from a partnership perspective. I would hope that shareholders take, you know, some real comfort in that, that we are directly aligned with the NFL in terms of a su... You know, a successful Genius is a successful news for the NFL, and-
Yeah
... and, and yeah, in terms of anything beyond that, there's nothing peculiar.
Okay.
I would hope that people think that's a good thing.
Okay. On the OSB side, are there any sort of major negotiations that are coming up or anything that people should think about as positives or risks?
Yeah, I mean, U.S. sportsbooks, you know, we had three-year deals with U.S. sportsbooks, the majority of U.S. sportsbooks, and they have those sportsbooks. Those three years ended in, in, in right now-
Okay
... for 2024. We are in the process of completing those negotiations now. I think, Jason, it's fair to say they've gone exactly how we thought they would go, both in terms of quantum, but also in terms of timings. I think it's fair to say the majority of the deals have now been agreed. They're of a similar size and scale, I'd say, as deals that we've historically done. You know, we're very happy with them. The lengths are different going forward.
Okay.
Outside of our U.S. sportsbooks, on a, on a European basis, we're, we're always... You know, there's always some negotiations going on within there.
Okay. I don't have the full history of Genius, but I, at least for the public data—
Yeah
... that we're looking at, as you've been public, you've never had any debt.
Nope. Never, never... Always been, always been a debt-free business and continue to be a debt-free business today. You know, it's... We're, we're in a really good tipping point of the business. We were cash positive in the second half of last year, and we will be cash positive, 2024 will be the first time we've been cash positive across the year. I think we had, if I remember rightly, $93 million in the bank account at the end of Q2, so the end of June, and entirely debt-free. Yeah, very positive. We've just extended, we've just taken on a revolver for the first time through, you know, through some of your, through yourselves.
Yeah
... through, through Citi, and Deutsche Bank and Goldman-
Yeah
... which I think is $120 million. We, you know, from a capital structure, we're in a great spot. What I'd also add to that in terms of capital structure is our private equity owners, Apax Partners, who ended up as, I think they had 40% of our shareholding when we first came out into the market in 2021. They sold their final segment in July this year, and therefore, from a capital markets perspective, you know, that has all been tidied away as well and very clean going forward. You can see that if you look at our liquidity profile, I mean, our stock, it has increased significantly over the last—
That's great
... eight to nine months, thanks to, as I say, Apax selling down.
In terms of the... Given that you have no debt, then given that you're generate free cash, have this revolver, you've done a handful of small tuck-in acquisitions, FanHub, Spirable-
Mm-hmm
... Second Spectrum. Is that how investors should think of the most likely use of your cash flow, is like, you know, small tuck-ins to sort of-
Yeah
... augment the platform or?
I'd say a couple of things on that, Jason. I think, first of all, we don't, we don't need anything.
Yeah.
We have everything we want. The plans that we've set out publicly and we've talked about today, we have all of that technology. That technology exists today. That doesn't mean that there aren't anything opportunistic that there may or may not be out there, but what I can say is it, you know, because we don't need it, we're coming at this from a position of strength.
Okay.
We will only do that if we work very hard to be cash positive, we work very hard on that EBITDA margin to get to where it is, those deals would need to make sure that they fall into those two critical positions, is what I'd say. The other thing from a cash perspective, because I, I'm gonna pre-empt your question, Jason, because I suspect it's the next one, is things like share buybacks.
Mm-hmm.
You know, tidying up the Apax stock in July makes that a lot more straightforward. You know, we don't have publicly a buyback program in place, but I think it's fair to say it is something we're constantly monitoring, given, as you say, our cash profile, not just in 2024, but the cash profile that will continue to become really quite significantly cash accretive in 2025 and 2026.
Yeah. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Any questions or one final check on questions from the audience? Okay, I'll take that as a no.
Great.
Thank you so much. That was great.
No, thank you, Jason.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Absolutely. Thank you.