Great. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the webcast. My name is Bernie McTernan. I'm one of the internet analysts here at Needham & Company. And my pleasure to be joined once again for a fireside by Genius Sports. We have CFO Nick Taylor. Nick, thanks for joining us again.
Yeah, no, hey, buddy. Nice to see you. Happy New Year. We're still doing that, aren't we?
Yeah. Well, maybe not, but it's okay. Lots of news coming yesterday, so maybe we'll just start right off with that, so there was the reiteration of 2024 guidance, obviously the raise. Just wanted to give you the opportunity to start by just talking through some of the moving pieces, and I'm sure we'll have questions, and then also, too, before we start, I know there are a lot of folks on the webcast right now. If you have any questions, please put them in the queue, and we'll be sure to weave them into the conversation, so, Nick, over to you.
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well, first of all, as I say, thanks for talking to us, Bernie. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, I mean, yesterday, there were a couple of announcements. I mean, you're right. First of all, I guess the key thing is we reiterated our 2024 guidance. And just to remind everyone, that's $511 million in revenue, $86 million in EBITDA. And I guess that's also as a backdrop against the sort of industry-wide headwinds that we've seen from the operators in Q4. So that's the first point to note. The second key point, really, is the cash balance. We guided to $135 million worth of closing cash as of the 31st of December. And just to remind everybody as well, that's $9 million plus for the full year and up from about $70 million at Q3.
Again, Bernie and everyone else on the call will have heard that we have been forecasting that for really for all year, and that puts us into a cash-positive position for 2024. A big moment for Genius. That's good news. We'll talk about 2024, and I'm sure, and what's contributed to that over the course of the next 40 minutes or so. Just moving over to the equity raise, and specifically, Bernie, because I'm sure people have questions about that. I mean, I guess the first thing to note is that it's a reverse inquiry, really. It was an opportunistic investment led by Wellington, Caledonia, and a very small number of our top existing shareholders. That opportunity was brought to us by that tight group who are looking to put really growth capital to work, Bernie. They know us. They know our long-term vision.
And they believe in our ability to be, I guess, prudent holders of their capital. We weren't necessarily looking for the offering. But do you know what? When it's from the likes of Wellington and Caledonia and others, it just felt like the right opportunity to take, really, at this time. As I said, Bernie, we're at that cash flow inflection point. We've shifted our attention to capital allocation. We've talked about it on a couple of the earnings calls coming up. And really now, on the back of yesterday, we're really in a very strong position to move quickly when we see the right near-term opportunity. And that's all about further scaling our business and generating that ROI for shareholders. But if you humor me for one moment, there's three things that I think are important that we just kind of make sure that everyone fully understands.
We are becoming bigger and stronger, and as we know, the sports tech industry continues to fragment. It's putting pressure on those small players, and that's really allowing us those opportunities to come our way, and also, Bernie, they're at a much more attractive valuation now, so we believe, I think it's the right time, using the Americanism, to be playing offense now, and that's something that we think is the right time to really be doing that at this point in our growth maturity cycle, so that's point one. Point two, Mark has been very, very clear on earnings calls. Indeed, I've talked about it as well. We maintain our high bar for M&A. Nothing changes there. We're only going to be looking at opportunities that are margin accretive and cash accretive. We know that's important.
We've worked hard over the last four years on both of those aspects, and we're not going to give that away. So nothing changes in terms of what we're looking for. And the third thing to note, really, is there were no gaps in our business model or our technology. We will continue to remain disciplined when we look at opportunities. But as I say, this really has been an opportunistic capital raise from high-caliber shareholders and really puts us in that strong position to move fast as and when the opportunities arise.
Okay. That all makes sense. Maybe just double-clicking on a few of those. So no gaps, right? But what kind of assets could be interesting to you? Because obviously, I think the assets that would come to mind first would be, well, Stats Perform has been for sale. Is anything going with IMG? Are there interesting contracts out there? Or should we think about this more as something in the sports technology or media technology parts of your business that M&A could support?
Yeah, it's very much about the latter, really, Bernie, in terms of these sort of tuck-in acquisitions. You know us. We're a large-scale technology business, and we touch so many areas of the sports ecosystem, whether that's leagues or teams or sponsors or broadcasters, sports books. And therefore, really, we're a natural consolidator of that sports technology to boost our offering, really, across that broad ecosystem, something that deepens our relationships, generates that high-value revenue. That's how you should be looking at the opportunities that we foresee in the market.
Right. Okay, and then just going in reverse order here, so now on the cash balance, we've been certainly getting some questions on it, or we have. Can you just remind us what caused the maybe dip from 3Q and then back up into 4Q? I'm sure there's just some working capital seasonality, but just to make sure we have our handle on it.
Yeah, of course. I mean, there's always seasonality. If you look back in the previous years, it was more dramatic in Q4 this year. And the rationale was that, and we talked about it on our Q3 call, is that we were finalizing those sports books renewal deals, particularly the U.S. deals, as we run up towards the end of Q3, as we run up to the 30th of September. And I'm sure we'll talk about those in a second, Bernie, at some point. And that meant that where we would normally expect cash receipts to be pre-30th of September, we actually received them post-30th of September. And therefore, I think we reported $70 million in cash at the end of Q3.
I think I said at the time there was probably a good $20 million or so or $30 million or so of cash that we would normally have expected to receive by then. But given our negotiations with the sports books, these things just take a while to actually hit the bank account. Obviously, all of those were received as per normal in October and November, and then our normal cash receipts in December, which is why you're seeing that particularly large step up in Q4 2024.
Understood. And then just two more on this kind of beginning part. Just wanted to go back to M&A. I know you say you don't have any gaps in your product. Is there anything that when you speak to the leagues that they wish you had more of? Just trying to think if it's like audio-visual capabilities or whatever it might be.
I mean, look, every league's different, but there's nothing that the leagues specifically are crying out for that we can't provide or we don't want to provide. Every league's different. It's all about what the leagues are looking really for is an enhanced experience and enhanced fan engagement, and as you know, we have a wide suite of technology to be able to do that. However, there are some interesting things out there, Bernie. There are stuff, whether it's in the ad tech space. This is really about sort of classic buy-build, classic acceleration. This isn't a need. This is a want, I guess, is probably how I'd look at it, and it's about being front-footed.
We've spent the last few years, Bernie, and you've known us for a while, really focused on that execution about proving out the operating leverage, proving out the cash flows, all the things that we've started this conversation around what, 2024? That's what we've really been concentrating on the last few years, and now feels like a good time to be moving into a more front-footed position, and this opportunity came along with the high-quality investors.
Right, and then was there anything special about the reverse inquiry? Do you usually get reverse inquiries on these deals? Is there anything about this moment in time when you finally hit the bid on it, or I'm not sure if there's any context to that, and if there's not, that's fine.
Not massively. It was very specific and a very high-quality shareholder position, and therefore, that's what triggered our interest this time around.
Okay. Got it. And then just want to move on to the guidance reiteration. So despite NFL broadly coming in lower, what came about it to offset it?
I mean, it's not a question of offsetting, Bernie, I think. I mean, you're right conceptually. A good hold month for a sportsbook is good for Genius, and a profitable sportsbook is great. It's been one of the tailwinds over the last couple of years as margins improve in sportsbooks. That's absolutely true. You know, Bernie, we have so many levers of growth here in this business. Remembering that a significant proportion of our business is still outside of the U.S., is European-based sportsbooks. As you know, our contracts are different there. They tend to be on more of a SaaS-style contract. Therefore, individual results don't have the same impact for us. There's that.
Also, some of the new sports book deals we've done have been able to mitigate some of those individual month-by-month swings because we've been able to put things like minimum revenue guarantees in place. There's a couple of contracts where we're actually taking percentages of handle in certain areas rather than necessarily on gaming revenue. But it's also really the other suite of all the other products, really, Bernie, that we talk about, whether that's in the media space or free-to-play games. As I say, all the sports tech deals we've been announcing, there's BetVision, technology plays, and all of that means that, yeah, a good sports book month is good for Genius. But I don't lie awake at night needing the Chiefs to lose tonight or the Eagles to win or whatever it is.
So we're able to mitigate all of that given the number of levers of growth that we have in the business.
Okay. Makes a lot of sense. You mentioned the sports book renewals. So I wanted to go over some of the thoughts on the recent U.S. renewals. Why was it so important for Genius to move away from co-terminus deals to kind of more spread out?
I would say de-risk, actually, and I say there's two things. There's a commercial de-risk. I think it's easier not to be negotiating with everybody at the same time, Bernie, but I'd also say it's about putting renegotiations in the business-as-usual category, so I'd say it's almost the capital markets de-risking as well. There's obviously been a lot of focus on it this year, understandably, by the nature of us coming to the market three years ago and therefore having co-terminus deals.
This is something we've been doing in Europe for many, many years, and therefore, they were important deals, but this isn't our first rodeo, I guess, Bernie, and therefore, by staggering, it means we don't have that sort of capital markets cliff going forward that everyone gets agitated about it. We'll be renegotiating deals as we go all the time, as we've been doing with our European sportsbooks for many years. So there's a commercial position, but there's also, I think, a de-risking from an external perspective as well.
Yeah. I mean, I would argue it's not a cliff. It's more of a mountain. But I guess we'll see. Okay. And then so we talked about co-terminus, moving away from that. What were some of the other key items that you were trying to achieve with the renewal this time around?
Oh, I think.
In the context too, I think last time a big focus was trying to get the media business really up and running in the U.S. So was there any kind of major strategic focus this time?
I think there's a couple of things. I think there's three. And they're inevitably interlinked, Bernie. So I would say getting a fairer price view on the value of data. Mark was very clear about that publicly. So I think that's one. It's not necessarily most important, but it's certainly one of them. I would say continuing to drive our deeper, wider, higher-quality relationships with sports books. I think that's the second. And really, that comes into the third, which is kind of a similar point. And this is about getting our product out as widely as possible.
That's partly to make sure those relationships continue to be very, very sticky. It's also high margin. But it's also about changing customer behavior on something like a BetVision, for example. Our job is to get that product out. These negotiations have allowed us to do that. Obviously, in the current NFL season, the BetVision product is far more widely distributed than it was, say, for example, last season when it was still in sort of trial mode.
Understood and when you have the renewals of the U.S. operators, how does that differ in Europe? I mean, you just had a big European renewal in the second half of this year. It's really driving European growth 20% plus. What's different in those negotiations? Or what's the difference in terms of what you're trying to push in those deals?
I'm not sure there's conceptually any difference, Bernie. I think all those three things I just said are very true for the European deals as well. We're still taking price in Europe, and there's still a long way to go there. We're still continuing to ingrain ourselves in the ecosystem and about getting our product and changing that customer behavior. I think all of those three things are still true. We've been working with European sports for a bit longer. It was probably true of both as well. We've been able to tailor our contracts a little bit different depending on sportsbook to sportsbook.
In Europe, we've been working with a long time. Obviously, the U.S., it's been a kind of a three-year relationship, but different sportsbooks will have different views of what they particularly want or what they prefer or how they see themselves as providers. And therefore, having all the technology that we have, it allows us to have that little bit of a more of a smorgasbord view around dialing things up and dialing things down depending on what the sportsbook's preferences are.
Understood. And then just one other thing on the U.S., forgot to ask. How should we think about the average length of the contract? Obviously, not co-terminus, but if we think about the average, so by definition, they were three-year deals last time around. Are they shorter or longer on average this time?
Sorry to be vague answering here, Bernie, but they're both. So some of the deals are longer than three years. Some of them are shorter. So again, that was a lever on negotiations around what a sportsbook might want in terms of length and what we might want in terms of length. So they're all a little bit different depending on how important it was for sportsbooks to have a shorter or long-term deal.
Okay. And so as we're thinking about 2025, and we see the renewal impact on your 4Q results and what U.S. revenue's growing in 4Q, is that the right way to think about what U.S. revenue growth should be growing basically through August of next year? Or kind of any puts and takes that we need to be aware of?
Yeah. I mean, first of all, Bernie, I don't see any reason why we won't be giving detailed guidance in our December Q4 results at the beginning of March. So we'll give that as per normal. What I'd say is 2025 is nicely set up. It's nicely set up for growth. And certainly, as you say, those first eight months of the year, we're going to be annualizing against those old contracts. And therefore, just conceptually, we should see decent growth across those first Q1 and Q2. We'll continue to see the market grow by the time we get out to NFL next season, year 2025 and 2026. And therefore, all the usual tailwinds that you know from this business around move-to-in-play, growth in market, Brazil, all of which Mark touched on, I appreciate in the next few minutes, all continue to come into play.
Right. And then just to round out the renewals, obviously, nothing coming up in the U.S. next year. But anything we should be aware of in Europe that's coming up in 2025 or 2026 that could be impactful?
As I say, there's always sportsbook renegotiations, particularly in Europe, Bernie. But there's nothing to flag to you here that's anything that's out of the ordinary is what I'd say.
Okay. What about moving to the other side? So sports leagues renewals, at least on our math, I think rights cost growth accelerate in 2024. If we're right, where did that acceleration come from?
I mean, we talk about rights lots of times, Bernie. I mean, first of all, what I'd say is that I love the visibility. I love the predictability of these rights. Just to remind everybody who's listening, that our rights costs are fixed. So I have absolute visibility almost to the end of the decade of what those rights costs will be to the dollar, which is obviously enormously helpful when you're talking about long-term planning and you're able to forecast on a long-term basis. What they do do is they do step up every year, or at least most rights costs will step up season to season. So you'll see a little bit of that in 2024.
I think if you go back to Q1 2024, you've got the annualization of the watch and bet rights on NFL because you wouldn't have had a full year in 2023 if I got my timings right, and therefore, you'll see a Q1 step up in 2024. Obviously, that's just a one-time annualization, and without opening Pandora's box a little bit, I would also say there's probably some currency stuff in there. I would have thought with the move to dollar, particularly for the non-U.S. rights that we hold, for example, like U.K. soccer on a dollar-to-dollar basis, you've probably got additional costs in 2024 to 2023.
Okay. Understood. And then kind of same question asked the other way, but any renewals in 2025 that we should be aware of?
I mean, I should be anyways, but it's the same answer. No, not really. I mean, there are always renewals because we have a couple of hundred thousand events, but nothing fundamental. I mean, what I'd say is, and we've said it before, and it's always worth reiterating, is we have everything we need. Extension of the UK soccer rights was a big moment for us in 2024, really one of the key building blocks, I guess, for the business really for the next five years. So we have everything tied up, and I think it's fair to say that some of our competitors believe the same in terms of those long-term deals, so my sense is we're in a pretty stable market, I would say, in terms of the rights, certainly for the next long period of time.
And so you do the extension with U.K. soccer, extended the NFL. What are the leagues primarily focused on when they're talking to you in terms of what they want from you and for you to be a good partner for them?
Yeah. I mean, what we're seeing really is a focus on the leagues of how they improve a fan experience, how they engage their next generation of fans. You often hear me quote that my 16-year-old son watches sport differently to the way I used to watch sport 30 years ago. And what we're seeing is those sports, the conversations with us, is that they're understanding that really that improvement of fan experience and engagement is through the use of innovative technology, really. That's what it is. So that's what those conversations are really being driven.
And you see that. You see that with things like our UK soccer and the Premier League, with the use of the semi-automated offside that, as you're aware, we've won. You're seeing it through our NFL and everything we do in the NFL. We talk about things like BetVision, we've already mentioned, but we had the Madden Cast, for example, just before Christmas, wasn't it? It's things like that, those conversations. Now, I've name-checked UK soccer and the NFL, but that mentality proliferates through all of our key major sporting relationships as all of those sports bodies are really looking at us as a technology partner, really, to help drive that innovation.
Right. And then inbound, we had asking when the NFL and EPL rights expire. And then last time when they expired, how much did those go up? I believe the starting point was zero, but I just want to make sure that that was the right way of thinking about it.
So the two sets of rights that we have with the NFL, obviously, the data rights, if you will, the wider technology partnership, the ones we announced back in 2021, I think that runs now until Super Bowl 2028. Our job has always been and continues to be making sure our relationship is very strong with the NFL, which it is, Bernie. And we've discussed that many times. And our job, yes, we collect the data, and that's important. And we package that up with our own proprietary software, and we sell that to the sports books.
Great. But as you know, our work with the rest of the NFL ecosystem, whether that's on the media side, whether that's in the broadcast space, whether that's with the teams and leagues and federations and innovation, continues to be strong. As you'll be aware as well, let's not forget the NFL are also a major shareholder in Genius Sports, which is another key part of our working relationship.
Right. And what about the EPL?
EPL, UK soccer rights, they now run till the 2029 season. So again, effectively to the end of the decade. And again, obviously, that's the data rights. But as you know, I've just name-checked semi-automated offside, but we work with most of the Premier League teams. We work very heavily with Premier League Productions in relation to their broadcast, which you see in hundreds of countries worldwide. I think in the U.S., you see it on Peacock. So that's Genius working with UK soccer on a much wider relationship than just our sort of narrow data position.
Right. Okay, and so the question I get a bunch. I would love to know how you answer it. Just how do you have comfort in terms of what that renewal will look like next time around?
Well, I mean, first of all, I'd say the renewal is five years away for both of those sports, Bernie. So going back to my point around the current rights position and the sort of stability over the medium term, there's plenty of opportunity now for anyone else playing in this data space to have a stable rights position. And remember, going back to what I said about rights, there's complete visibility and fixed nature of those rights. And that's an important part of this. So first of all, I'd say that our relationships remain strong with both of those organizations. We have only just done the UK soccer. Our technology suite of products is unmatched and unrivaled in the market.
Increasingly, almost every month, increasingly, that is becoming a differentiator for us in terms of our relationship with these sports bodies because technology is moving at such a pace. Going back to what you asked about, well, what do leagues look for us? Well, they look for innovative technology. I name-checked the Madden Cast as a good example where that's Genius Sports working way beyond the sort of narrow data, but it's all part of our ecosystem and getting our products, our wide suite of products proliferated wide. BetVision is another great example.
That's specifically NFL at the moment, as you know, and we might talk about that in a second. That's something that only Genius is providing to the market. It is a real differentiator. That's all based on our wide technology suite. That's how we think about it. That's how the sports are thinking about it. And therefore, in terms of renewal, we think about it in terms of we just continue every day executing on what we said we're going to do. And as I started this conversation, the numbers have proved over the course of 2024 and 2023 that the execution has been strong. We're not complacent about that. We go again in 2025, Bernie.
Yep. Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Wanting to move over to the media side of the business, on the last earnings call, Mark said that he wanted Genius to be the trade desk of sports. Certainly had a lot of inbounds from people asking me to explain what that means. So I would like you to do my job for me and break it down.
Yeah. That's what I'm here for, Bernie. That's fine. Well, look, I mean, first of all, I guess what I'd say, Bernie, is that we've had and continue to have a strong managed programmatic media services business for some time. You see the numbers. It's a $100 million revenue business. And therefore, the next logical step, I guess, was to create a self-serve model, which we launched, I think, in the fall, November, possibly October, November, under the banner FanHub. And you might have seen that. That was the next logical step. So what gives us, I think, Mark's asked, what gives him the right or what gives us the right to compare ourselves to The Trade Desk?
So what I'd say, Bernie, I guess, first of all, is we've got access to the same inventory as TradeDesk, the entire world of digital and inventory across, whether that's any distribution channels like social media or third party or connected TV or emails. We also have our own exclusive inventory as well, which nobody else has, things like NFL.com, NFL app, for example. So that's the first thing. Second thing is when we talk about being TradeDesk, we're talking about the sort of niche position of sports. The TradeDesk has this enormous TAM. We're looking at it from a sports TAM, which, to be clear, is plenty for us. And actually, interestingly, I think it's growing as ad spend is becoming more prevalent on live sports, given the fact that's really the only thing that anyone watches live these days. So what do we have?
We have, I guess, unique sports data, Bernie, that nobody else does. So we can advertise at those key moments of kind of high emotion, I guess, in a live sporting event, whether that's a touchdown, the goal, the three-pointer. That informs us when fan engagement is at its highest. And it tells us really when, where, and who, really, we should be placing that relevant content to on behalf of the brands, whether that's on sports books or indeed more likely on consumer brands. We have that understanding of a sports fan.
And also, just to humor me for a second, as you put the building blocks together and you think about BetVision and where we're going to be taking BetVision, that's also that exclusive inventory through those league partnerships is potentially an important part of those captive audiences as we build our own walled garden in due course. So that's how I think Mark's thinking about it when he talks about The Trade Desk.
Right. Okay. And then maybe so you talked about exclusive inventory and data. What about on who you're advertising to, the consumer side in terms of the FanHub ID, I believe it is? How do you know how does that work in terms of targeting?
Yeah, of course. I mean, for sports books, obviously, we're doing it in a programmatic way now, but we will do it, I'm sure, alongside complementary on a FanHub basis. We're helping them acquire new customers or retargeting existing customers. And actually, for consumer brands, that value proposition isn't any different, Bernie. We're just doing it for them, and we're reaching sports audiences with a specific message in that sort of personalized, cost-effective manner is how I look at it. And we've done that. We've done campaigns, whether that's brand awareness campaigns or something that's perhaps more specific that leads to an app download or a purchase.
Okay. Sorry. So you mean brand and direct response. Okay. One question we got from the audience just kind of more broadly on the media business is just line of sight of revenue or how predictable it is on a quarterly or annual basis and what's a reasonable long-term growth rate for this segment?
Yeah. I mean, do I have line of sight? Yes, I absolutely do. I don't have the SaaS-style models that I do, for example, in the European sportsbook. But all the major U.S., I think all the major U.S. sportsbook deals still have minimum commitment spend as part of their spend on media. Now, some of those timings aren't necessarily strange. And you know what it's like, Bernie. You can spend some money on the 29th of September, and it becomes Q3 revenue. And you do it on the 2nd of October, and it becomes Q4 revenue. So there's always going to be a little timing around that where obviously sporting events are a little bit more predictable as and when they happen. But we've got pretty decent line of sight.
That's enabled us to forecast the way we forecast, Bernie, over the last couple of years in terms of traction. What that long-term, there is huge opportunity in this area. In the programmatic media space, we've seen that growth rate. People talk about our media business slightly kind of decelerating, I guess. We've heard that. And they're right. Obviously, we were growing at 63% year- on- year in Q1. So I think the media business, I'm expecting it back in growth in Q4. And I think we're looking at still sort of double-digit growth in the media business, which is still great, even on the deceleration. And it will vary year to year where things like new states come on board or new territories and things. That's always an important programmatic step up. On the FanHub side, so the self-serve model, we just launched that.
We've had some really interesting conversations on it, Bernie. We will earn revenue on that in 2025. And one of the challenges we are setting ourselves internally is to how do we accelerate that? How do we make that more meaningful in 2025? We are supremely confident and estimate that this will be a material part of our business. We just want it to be a material part as quickly as possible. Because also, Bernie, as you know, from a self-serve perspective, that FanHub is coming at it at a very, very high margin. And therefore, it's an important part of our ongoing margin story beyond sort of 2026 and beyond.
Got it, and what kind of advertisers should we think that you're working with outside of sports? Just any kind of commercial that we see during the NFL game, those are the kinds of advertisers that you're targeting?
Yeah. I mean, obviously, we've name-checked people on our programmatic media basis over the course of the last few quarters anyway. But really, it's anyone. And I go back to that kind of we know we can advertise. We know those key moments of high emotion in sport, that touchdown. And we can target when fan engagement's the most, who is watching, when they're watching, and where they're watching. And any brand that wants to associate themselves with that sports audience should be a home for Genius Sports. So yeah, that absolutely makes sense to that sports books. But any consumer brand that wants to advertise to you, Bernie, when you're watching Sunday Night Football on the playoffs last weekend, anyone who wants to do that are consumer brands. So you can imagine the kind of consumer brands that you can imagine that we are talking to.
Right. And so what are the kind of tangible checkpoints that you're trying to hit in 2025 in order to get this revenue to scale? From a technology perspective, what kind of things do you need to be adding in order to start to reach these kinds of lofty goals?
The technology side, let's be absolutely clear, Bernie. So this is about getting scale through it. So this is about getting brands starting to use it. This is about agency relationships and getting agencies involved because that obviously opens up a whole new ton for us. And this is also about some of our sporting relationships and in terms of inventory through there. So they're the kind of three things that I think we ourselves will be looking at internally, and we will be talking about externally as these things motor. They're the kind of things. And ultimately, obviously, that then becomes the actual revenue and spend that's going through the system.
Okay. Okay. Makes sense. Okay, and then so maybe just taking a big step back in terms of just thinking about the U.S. business more broadly. If we think about kind of like a non-renewal year, so kind of like second half of 2025 and beyond, how should we expect your growth to trend relative to the broader sports betting market? Thinking about if parlay mix matters, probably not, but in-play betting, but if there's market consolidation among operators, trying to think about some of the puts and takes that might make you grow faster than the industry, but some others that might make you grow slower.
Yeah, of course. I mean, I guess I can remember these data points. I think the US GGR grew 40%, I think, in Q3 in the US, and I think we grew at 60%. So just as a sort of kind of data point. We should always grow faster than the broader market, and I make that statement because of all the things that you know and some of the things you just name-checked. As in-play betting continues to move, and we're seeing that happen, and you've heard the operators talk about it a lot more. Product, not just our product, but right across the market is making a difference there. So in-play sports betting is absolutely one of that. All of our product is driving our outcome performance as well. Margin that sportsbooks margins as sportsbooks themselves continue.
You talked about parlays, is a good example of how that's happened over historically. So we always set ourselves as we should grow faster than the market. And that's the first thing. Now, whether it's as much as the sort of 40%-60% that I've just name-checked, we've always got price is not an insignificant part of the outperformance in 2024. So when you're talking about it, I think you used a normalized year. That's not necessarily going to be the case every year in price, but we should absolutely see us outperform the market every year.
Right. Okay. Makes a lot of sense. And then kind of same question on Europe. Strong growth over the past two quarters, I think, driven by major renewal, but would love to get your thoughts on this. And again, kind of like once we get past this renewal period, what's the right way to think about European growth over a multi-year period?
Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, the price negotiations or the renegotiations on the back of extending our U.K. soccer deal, for example, in Europe have been successful and long-term deals, and we've been able to provide more product, so everything I've just said really in terms of the U.S. market is similar to the European market. This is about driving more product. Sometimes, as you know, Bernie, it's not about necessarily the sportsbook spending more. It's about spending more with Genius. And this is about number of events. This is about our risk product Edge.
This is about BetVision. It's all the same products that we're using in Europe. And it's about price. What people sometimes forget is in the U.K., you've been able to bet on sports since 1960, I think, so the betting market as a whole is relatively mature. What we do and in-play sports betting in the U.K. is still nascent. We're still driving that fair value for data in the U.K. market. We're obviously a little bit ahead in the U.K. than we are in the U.S., but we've still got work to do to make sure that we're doing that.
Okay. It's the last couple of minutes here, but I wanted to make sure I hit on recent hires. You hired Mark Kropft , a CTO. We'd love to know kind of why is now the right time to hire a CTO? What will he be focused on? And I don't know if it's drawing, if it's over-extrapolating here, but you hired Manny Puentes in advertising a year ago, and then a year later, you have FanHub, which is a product you guys are really excited about. So that's why. Is there any kind of new product or new focus for Mark that is driving revenue, or is this just more about him working in the core?
I think it's a bit of both, Bernie. I mean, first of all, Mark brings a huge amount of relevant experience to Genius from his time at Google. He worked there. He was really advancing the sort of generative AI capabilities and really drove innovation at scale at Google, and that's obviously massively relevant for Genius in where we are in our maturity curve. What will Mark be focused on? I hate to say his objectives for the year, Bernie, but when he's not on the call, but there's lots of things Mark's going to do. Expanding AI and, I guess I'll say, the sort of large language models capabilities, I think it's going to be an important part in working with our platform, enhancing personalization, automation, all the things you know we're doing, but we want to accelerate, so I think that's part of it.
I think accelerating that ad tech innovation is going to be another important part of 2025 for Mark and the tech team, really meeting that growing demand for that advanced targeting and analytics right across the sports ecosystem, and of course, I'm bound to say this. This is also about doing it so that we're doing it in an innovative manner, but we're doing it in the cost-effective manner as well, so all the stuff around the Genius IQ platform, Mark's going to be focused on that. The ad tech product we've talked about, BetVision again.
There's lots more to go in BetVision in terms of what we're looking to do and also across the different sports. At the moment, as you know, BetVision is an NFL football sport product. Our aim is to make sure that it's on a wider basis than that. And also how all of these, the interconnectivity of these, I think, is important of these. What have been traditionally standalone products, but how they all come together in sort of Mark's vision.
Great. Well, Nick, I know we're about out of time here. Maybe just one last question to wrap a bow on, and just would love to get some key items that would make 2025 a successful year for Genius.
Oh, I used the phrase earlier, we go again, Bernie. And I think that's right. Look, 2024 was a year where we probably did this last year. I have to go back and check my diary. But there were some uncertainties there around Apax's overhang, around the UK soccer deal, around the sports book renewals. They've all been done now. They're critical building blocks, I guess, those foundations really for the business for the next five years. So I think 2025 is a really exciting year for us. I think it's about product enhancement and innovation. The relationships are all in place. It always is about execution, Bernie, every day. It's about getting FanHub really up to scale as quick as we can.
It's about BetVision, all within the parameters of that sort of financials continuing to improve, continuing to drive free cash flow, continuing to drive margin improvement, and continuing to drive strong revenue growth. That doesn't go away, and to bring this conversation full circle, I used the phrase earlier. It's about playing offense rather than defense, and that's where the opportunistic raise comes into it, so we're really excited about 2025.
Great. Good way to end it. Thanks, Nick. Thanks for everyone on the webcast. Really appreciate the time and talk soon.
Thanks, Bernie.