All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for sticking it out through day two of our 44th annual Growth Conference. It's a pleasure to have everyone here. I'm Michael Graham, one of the internet analysts here at the firm, joined by my colleague, Jason Tilchin. And we're really excited to have Sportradar here. We have Craig Felenstein, the CFO, who has only been with the company for two months, and he was kind enough to come and share his insights with us, and we also have the investor relations team here as well, so we're looking forward to digging in. Craig, thanks a lot for joining us. Craig has a great career in finance. He was the VP of IR at Shutterstock.
He was the CFO at Lindblad Expeditions, and has also served in a bunch of, IR and financial management roles at Discovery Communications, so we're really excited to have you here.
Thanks for having me.
I wanted to start and just maybe ask you to give us an overview of Sportradar, and just, maybe talk about the platform and how you provide value to the various stakeholders that you serve.
Sure. Thank you, first of all, Michael, for having me. Jason, it's good to see you as well.
Absolutely.
Thank you, everybody, for joining us. So, when we think about Sportradar, we really sit, what I would say, is at the intersection of the sports ecosystem. You know, we have services that we provide to the sportsbooks, we have services that we provide to the leagues, we have services that we provide to media and data companies, and we do that in a variety of ways. When you think about our relationships with the sportsbooks, we serve about 800 sportsbooks globally. We provide them with data and services that allows them to engage with their customers, to engage with their consumers, and ultimately to drive trading and drive volume, so they make more money off of the betting services that they provide.
With the leagues, with the sports leagues in general, we have relationships with, about, 400 sports leagues, and with those leagues, we give them the opportunity to create value off of their data and their rights, and we take those rights, and we sell them. By covering over 1 million matches a year, we sell those, the data that we ultimately get to the sportsbooks and to the media companies to ultimately better engage with their fans and better engage with their customers, and ultimately monetize it in that fashion. And, and it really leads to better customer engagement, right? Making sure that the brands that the leagues have are ultimately better utilized across the sports ecosystem. And then, with the media companies, we're literally providing data and statistics to them so they can engage with their fans as well.
So how is a league doing? How is a player doing? How is an overall match evolving? And when you do that kind of thing, you get better engagement with the fan overall. So we really sit at the what I would say is the intersection of those three platforms.
Okay, fantastic, and maybe before we dive into the business model, just share with us, after a couple of months on the job, you know, what are some of your biggest observations, and what are some of your most important priorities that you're starting to align around, for the next, you know, six months to twelve months?
Sure. So Sportradar is a global company, so I've spent the first few months of my tenure here traveling around the world, getting an understanding from the first the people at the company and an understanding of where they see the priorities are. What's been interesting for me as I've rolled up my sleeves is the passion and the knowledge base that is at this company is immense. Carsten founded this company back in 2001, and he's built an amazing team of people that know this space and understand this space and have a passion for what it is we do. And when you talk to them, not only are they passionate about where we are as a company and how far we've come, but it's really about what's ahead for the company, right?
The industry overall is pretty much at an early stage of its evolution, and for us to be sitting where we sit, at that intersection of the ecosystem, should provide us an immense opportunity of growth as the entire portfolio and as the entire platform grows. At the same time, as I kind of rolled up my sleeves further, I've had the opportunity to talk to some of our league partners, to talk to some of our sportsbook customers, and what's apparent from those conversations is how integral we are to the space, right? They value the amount of data that we provide. They value the amount of services that we provide. They value the products that we provide, and they want us to help them grow.
They're looking for additional ways to monetize the things that we provide to them, and when you think about where we sit and the access to data that we have and the products that we provide, what that allows us to do is to grow their pie and also grow our pie over time. So I feel really good about where we sit in the ecosystem, and I feel really good about the opportunity in front of us. More specifically, when it comes to our company, you know, the company has grown really, really fast from its early stages, and it is now a much, much bigger company. The amount of revenue that we're delivering, the amount of revenue growth, we delivered 29% revenue growth this past quarter, our third quarter of record revenue growth. It's pretty astronomical.
Now, the onus is on us to translate that revenue growth... Well, first, the onus is on us to have it continue, right? How do we continue to build products and services to make sure that that revenue continues to grow at a pretty amazing clip? And then, how do we transfer that revenue growth into real operating leverage? You know, the company has 19% margins today. We think there's a significant opportunity to get those margins higher. We think there's an opportunity to go upwards to the 25%-30% range.... and the way that we're gonna do that is making sure that we're investing in the right products and services.
So how do we make sure that if we're developing something new, that the sportsbooks wanna use it, or that the leagues wanna use it, or that the media companies and the technology companies wanna use it? And if we do that, and we can monetize that, then we could further increase our margins. And once we do that, now you have operating leverage, you have revenue growth, it'll translate into free cash flow. And for me, when push comes to shove, free cash flow is what matters for us. And the company is gonna generate 50%+ cash conversion in the current year. That's up from 27% a year ago, and we think there's an opportunity to take that even further from here. So that's really gonna be my, my, my key priorities.
The last thing I'll say is, the company is very invested in ensuring that we have an open and honest dialogue with the Wall Street community. They did that when they hired Jim to run investor relations, and one of the reasons I think they wanted me to come on board was to help tell our story in a pretty concise and clear way, and show to our... the investors that are out there, what the real growth opportunity is for the company, not just in the next few months, but in the next few years.
Yeah, and that's a great point because you are such a global company, but you're listed in the U.S., and, you know, let's really make sure we're close to those investors. I think it's a great, great move by the company. So, you reported Q2 yesterday. We're gonna get into that in a little bit, but I wanna focus on one number, which was 117% net revenue retention. And I wanna focus in on the 17 part of that ... which is the upselling, you know, that you, that you're able to do. Maybe just talk about your matrix of products and, you know, how you go about encouraging your customers to buy more of those products, and just how penetrated you are, and stuff like that.
Sure. When you think of the building blocks of the relationships that we have with our sportsbook partners, you think about data as the baseline of what we do, right? So our ability to not only collect data from a variety of matches, but then also package it in a way that is useful for the sportsbooks and for the consumers. And if you can do that, and you start to show the value of that, then they want more of your products, right? And if you do that, you can move up the value chain and then start to offer things like better odds, right? So some of our sportsbook partners don't need your odds.
Some of our sportsbook partners say, "Hey, we would love for you to help us create the most appropriate odds, where we could increase trading volumes and increase flow-through." Then, once you kinda continue up the value chain, now you have such a breadth and depth of relationship, that you can then start to offer things like streaming products, where you actually streaming in video of a game or of a match to foster additional betting opportunities for the operator. So you're kinda heading up and down that value chain of the inputs into the system. Then, you can also provide opportunities for them to attract additional clients by helping them with their advertising, helping them reach new audiences, so they can get more people into their ecosystem.
So, there's a variety of ways that we can trade them around the overall value proposition of the ecosystem, and you're always looking for ways to provide additional products and services to do that.
All right, so the softball questions are over now. It's time for the ...
Just on the heels of that, one of the things that's interesting is, as you go up that value chain of products, live data, live odds, more, stuff relating to in-play, is used, and I'm curious how the in-play market is different in the U.S. versus, in some of the more mature markets that you guys operate around the world, and what sort of financial opportunity does the company have, as in-play engagement in the U.S. increases?
Sure. So when you think about the in-play marketplace internationally versus the in-play market domestically, in-play is a much bigger piece of the pie internationally. It's about 70%-80% of the market internationally, whereas domestically, we estimate it's somewhere around that 35%-40% range. So there's a huge opportunity for us to go and grow that market. And some of the products and services that we're putting out there are intended to foster more activity in that space. So a great example of that is our 4Sight product, right? Which is, in the AV streaming world, where you're actually giving a video stream to your consumer, can you put data, and can you put statistics overlaying on top of that AV stream to ultimately drive activity?
And what we've seen thus far with the early days of doing that, we've been able to drive better uptake of live data - sorry, of live betting, because of those kinds of services. Now, from a financial perspective, when you think about how far behind the U.S. is versus the international platform, about 40 basis points, the reality is every percentage point or so of increase with regards to live betting ultimately gets you around EUR 1.5 million-EUR 1.6 million of additional revenue, and that's predominantly all straight to the bottom line, 'cause there's not a lot of additional cost associated with it. So there is a huge amount of opportunity if we can continue to crack the live betting opportunity.
Definitely sounds like a compelling opportunity, and speaking more broadly about the global gaming market, I'm curious how the company views the growth trajectory, both internationally and here in the US, and how you expect the company's sort of top line to grow ahead of that pace?
Sure. When you think about the international market, it's certainly a little more mature. You know, we believe the international market's gonna grow somewhere in the low double digits here for the next several years. There is the opportunity for it to go a little higher than that if some of these other markets, like a Brazil or like an India or like a Japan, open up and provide additional opportunity. But for now, we think it's gonna be somewhere in that low double digit. The U.S. is certainly growing a lot faster than that.
When you think about the US market today, it's growing somewhere in that 25%-30% range, and again, has an opportunity to not only grow just organically as the US market evolves, but also as you get additional states opening up, like a California or a Texas, which could have a significant impact for our business moving forward. That said, we're not sitting here relying on that to happen. You know, when you think about the growth of the market that I just talked about, we've grown far in excess of that, right? You look at the record revenues that we delivered this past quarter, you look at our US revenue growth this past quarter, it was close to 60%, you know, significantly far ahead of where the market is growing just organically.
The way we're doing that is by continuing to offer unique products and services. Part of that additional sports rights and some of the things like the NBA and the ATP, part of that is just rolling out new opportunities to engage with clients in, I would say, various and unique ways.
So yeah, digging into Q2 a little bit, you know, really strong results. You beat consensus, and you beat your guidance on revenue and EBITDA. You added a bunch of MTS customers, which was really great. But can you just maybe talk about how you looked at the quarterly results and what you think, you know, were the most important drivers of your success in the quarter?
Yeah, I think the good thing for our success is it's very much broad-based. It's not just one avenue that is ultimately driving the company, right? When you think about what happened in the third quarter, we had growth not only across our live data and odds services, we had growth across our audiovisual services, we had growth across our, MTS business or Managed Trading Services business, which we just talked about. We had growth against, in our media business. So it's a, it's a pretty diverse, avenue of growth, which is nice. And we're continuing to have a pretty, I would say, steady take on margins. One of the things that's happened for us this year, as I'm sure a lot of you know, is we've taken on some additional sports costs, which I'm sure we'll get into.
But we still envision this year, as we have a little bit of a deleveraging on the sports side, we've been able to leverage some of our other cost structures around the company. So we are seeing some nice leverage across our personnel side of the house, across our back office functionality side of the house. And as a result, when we look at the year, despite having an additional opportunity on the revenue side, with regards to new sports rights, we will expect our margins to be flat, if not slightly up on the year overall. So the second quarter was another step in that kind of evolution.
So, just to drill in on the second part of the quarterly results, was the guidance. You know, we thought the quarter was really strong. Stock was down a little bit yesterday, and, you know, I think maybe investors were hoping to see a little more oomph in the guidance for the second half of the year. So maybe just talk about your guidance philosophy. I know you have the words "at least" in there - you know, which are important words, but-
CFO's best friend.
Yeah, maybe just talk about your guidance philosophy and how you're thinking about, you know, that as after you've had the chance to speak with investors post the-
Sure. You know, obviously, you know, when we provide our guidance, we're looking at what our expectations are for the year. And given the success that we've had in the first half of the year, especially on the revenue side of the house, we certainly see an opportunity to raise our revenue guidance in the back half of the year, and we did that by offering another percentage point of growth. Is there the possibility for upside from there? Certainly. But there's a variety of things that could drive it up or down, and we feel very comfortable about adding a percentage point to growth on the revenue side. On the EBITDA side, the company, at its heart, has very high incremental margins, okay?
The reality of our guidance increase after the second quarter was we kept the margins relatively flat, which is about 19%, like I said, for the year. Is there an opportunity for upside there as well? There is. Given I just got into the seat about two months ago, I don't wanna promise the world out of the gate, so we'll see what the opportunity looks like here over the next few weeks as I dig in even further, and we'll be able to give even further guidance at the end of the third quarter. But certainly expect there to be some nice margin expansion in the back half of the year versus where we were in the first half of the year.
And then certainly when you get to the fourth quarter of our year, we expect to see margin expansion year on year versus a year ago as we lap the first year of our NBA deal.
That's a topic I wanted to dive into next. This is sort of the... You talked about 83% year-over-year growth in sports rights cost, but you're able to keep margins flat, which is very impressive. Can you just maybe talk a little bit about the trajectory of how a new rights deal like these ATP and NBA deals are monetized over the course, and then also how margins are impacted early on, and how that evolves as the deal goes on?
Sure. So we signed our NBA, our new NBA deal back in, the end of last year, so it took effect in the fourth quarter of 2023. Our new ATP deal started in January of this year. I think the first thing to highlight with regards to our sports costs is there are no real major sports rights that are gonna be up here over the next several years. We do have our Major League Baseball deal, which ends at the end of this year, but we feel very confident about our ability to renew that at very reasonable rates, starting next year. But overall, our sports portfolio is in very good shape for the next several years.
Because we're at the start of a new sports deal with the NBA and with ATP, there are some unusual, I don't wanna say, accounting mechanisms, but the way the deals are recognized from a purely reporting perspective is they're straight-lined from an accounting perspective. So the cost in year one of the deal is the same as seven years from now, the cost of the last year of the deal. So as a result, you have a margin, obviously, pressure in the first part of the deal, and you have a whole lot of margin expansion in the back end of the deal.
And while it's kind of a little frustrating from an accounting perspective, the reality of these deals is, from a cash flow perspective, we are doing very well and very positive from these deals out of the gate. You look at some of the cash flow that we're gonna have this year, which is we expect cash flow conversion over 50% versus, like I said, 27% a year ago. A lot of that upside is being driven by the success that we're having with the NBA and with ATP. And the reason that we can do these sorts of deals is because of how big we are from a scale perspective and how big we are from a reach perspective, and we're able to monetize these deals across a variety of our products and services, both domestically as well as internationally. So while-...
to sportsbooks globally, and that global reach and that global depth and that global, what I would say is breadth of relationships, allows you to monetize, not only for yourself, but for them, their data and their rights more exclusively and more globally. So the more reach you have, the more return on investment you can get. And when you have the relationships that we've built up for many, many years, because we've been in these markets for many, many years, it allows you to leverage those relationships even further. And you saw that with the current ATP deal.
One of the reasons that we were able to get the ATP deal into Sportradar is the breadth and depth of the offerings that we have, and the ability to take their product into a wider, range of markets over time.
One of the things that you mentioned earlier is the cash flow conversion. I think operating cash flow is up about 20% in the first half of the year. Could you talk a little bit about what you plan to do with that cash and your capital allocation strategy, a little bit more on the repurchase program?
Sure. So the company has over $300 million, sorry, EUR 300 million of cash today, and to your point, will generate over $100 million of free cash flow for the year. So you're looking at a really high level of free cash flow generation, which allows you to be opportunistic here when you look out into the marketplace. The first thing that I would say is, we would love to continue to invest into our own assets and our own capabilities. The broader that our capabilities are, the more we can organically grow, the faster we can organically go. By providing more products and services to the sportsbooks globally, to the leagues globally, to the media and sports media and technology partners globally, that'll allow us to grow even faster.
So in an ideal world, we would use that cash to invest directly into our own business. In the absence of that, you will continue to look for M&A opportunities to further the growth opportunity moving forward, whether it be a technology option, whether it be a rights option, whether it be some sort of product offering, you'll look to see ways to continue to enhance the overall growth profile of the company. And then lastly, in the absence of that, especially given where the stock is trading today, we see returning capital to shareholders as a viable option with regards to our capital. Now, we have to be somewhat cognizant of the low float that we have out there in the marketplace today.
When you see where the stock is trading, and you see what the upside is from an EBITDA perspective, from an operating leverage perspective, from a free cash flow perspective over time, certainly using our capital to return capital to shareholders is a viable option.
I wanted to go back to a couple of topics that came up earlier. You know, one was your comment that margin expansion on the horizon is what you expect. And, you know, I wanted to kinda... The other thing that you said was, you know, you straight-line the cost of those sports rights deals, so obviously, they're gonna get more profitable in the future as you're able to get those deals into more of your customers. I just wanted to ask if you could kinda segment out, you know, at a high level, how much of the margin expansion you expect to see over the next few years would come from that leverage on those sports rights deals, versus just overall operating efficiency?
Yeah, sure. You know, it's, it's funny, whenever we talk about operating leverage, we tend to focus on the cost side of the house, but the reality is, the biggest driver for us of our operating leverage is gonna be to continue to deliver revenue growth over the next several years, right? And when you think about where we are with regards to the market and the opportunity there, when you think about where we are with regards to new products and new services, there's a significant opportunity to continue to grow revenues at a nice clip, so that'll be the first thing. Leveraging the sports rights, you know, the, the headwind from sports rights in the current year is about 700-800 basis points. The headwind from sports rights in the future will be significantly less than that.
Actually, I shouldn't even say headwind. It'll be a little operating leverage on those sports rights starting in 2025. So, that'll be your first place that you'll start to get leverage. We are getting leverage across the remainder of our cost base already today. When you think about the 700-800 basis point headwind from sports in the current year, that is being completely offset by savings that we're seeing. I shouldn't say savings, 'cause savings implies that we're taking costs out. We're just controlling the way we spend, right? If you think about the personnel costs across the company or the operating expenses across the company, growing that at a clip that is much, much smaller than our revenue growth, will provide additional operating leverage.
So when I think to the future, I think you're gonna get operating leverage across both sides of the house. It's not just gonna be the sports rights, it will also be continuing to get additional leverage across what I would say is the G&A of the company overall.
Fantastic! Well-
... All right. All right, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for sticking it out through day 2 of our 44th annual Growth Conference. It's a pleasure to have everyone here. I'm Michael Graham, one of the internet analysts here, at the firm, joined by my colleague, Jason Tilchin. And, we're really excited to have Sportradar here. We have Craig Felenstein, the, CFO, who has only been with the company for two months, and he was kind enough to come and share his insights with us, and we also have the investor relations team here as well. So we're looking forward to digging in. Craig, thanks a lot for, for joining us. Craig has a great career in, finance. He was a VP of IR at Shutterstock.
He was the CFO at Lindblad Expeditions, and has also served in a bunch of IR and financial management roles at Discovery Communications. So we're really excited to have you here.
Thanks for having me.
I wanted to start and just maybe ask you to give us an overview of Sportradar, and just, maybe talk about the platform and how you provide value to the various stakeholders that you serve.
Sure. Thank you, first of all, Michael, for having me. Jason, it's good to see you as well.
Absolutely.
Thank you, everybody, for joining us. When we think about Sportradar, we really sit, what I would say, is at the intersection of the sports ecosystem. You know, we have services that we provide to the sportsbooks. We have services that we provide to the leagues. We have services that we provide to media and data companies, and we do that in a variety of ways. When you think about our relationships with the sportsbooks, we serve about 800 sportsbooks globally. We provide them with data and services that allows them to engage with their customers, to engage with their consumers, and ultimately to drive trading and drive volume, so they make more money off of the betting services that they provide.
With the leagues, with the sports leagues in general, we have relationships with about 400 sports leagues, and with those leagues, we give them the opportunity to create value off of their data and their rights. And we take those rights, and we sell them by covering over 1 million matches a year. We sell those, the data that we ultimately get to the sportsbooks and to the media companies to ultimately better engage with their fans and better engage with their customers, and ultimately monetize it in that fashion. And it really leads to better customer engagement, right? Making sure that the brands that the leagues have are ultimately better utilized across the sports ecosystem. And then with the media companies, we're literally providing data and statistics to them so they can engage with their fans as well.
So how is a league doing? How is a player doing? How is an overall match evolving? And when you do that kind of thing, you get better engagement with the fan overall. So we really sit at the, what I would say, is the intersection of those three platforms.
Okay, fantastic, and maybe before we dive into the business model, just share with us, after a couple of months on the job, you know, what are some of your biggest observations, and what are some of your most important priorities that you're starting to align around, for the next, you know, 6 months to 12 months?
Sure. So Sportradar is a global company, so I've spent the first few months of my tenure here traveling around the world, getting an understanding from first the people at the company and an understanding of where they see the priorities are. What's been interesting for me as I've rolled up my sleeves is the passion and the knowledge base that is at this company is immense. Carsten founded this company back in 2001, and he's built an amazing team of people that know this space and understand this space and have a passion for what it is we do. And when you talk to them, not only are they passionate about where we are as a company and how far we've come, but it's really about what's ahead for the company, right?
The industry overall is pretty much at an early stage of its evolution, and for us to be sitting where we sit, at that intersection of the ecosystem, should provide us an immense opportunity of growth as the entire portfolio and as the entire platform grows. At the same time, as I kind of rolled up my sleeves further, I've had the opportunity to talk to some of our league partners, to talk to some of our sportsbook customers, and what's apparent from those conversations is how integral we are to the space, right? They value the amount of data that we provide. They value the amount of services that we provide. They value the products that we provide, and they want us to help them grow.
They're looking for additional ways to monetize the things that we provide to them, and when you think about where we sit and the access to data that we have and the products that we provide, what that allows us to do is to grow their pie and also grow our pie over time. So I feel really good about where we sit in the ecosystem, and I feel really good about the opportunity in front of us. More specifically, when it comes to our company, you know, the company has grown really, really fast from its early stages, and it is now a much, much bigger company. The amount of revenue that we're delivering, the amount of revenue growth, we delivered 29% revenue growth this past quarter, our third quarter of record revenue growth. It's pretty astronomical.
Now, the onus is on us to translate that revenue growth. Well, first, the onus is on us to have it continue, right? How do we continue to build products and services to make sure that that revenue continues to grow at a pretty amazing clip? And then, how do we transfer that revenue growth into real operating leverage? You know, the company has 19% margins today. We think there's a significant opportunity to get those margins higher. We think there's an opportunity to go upwards to the 25%-30% range, and the way that we're gonna do that is making sure that we're investing in the right products and services.
So how do we make sure that if we're developing something new, that the sportsbooks want to use it or that the leagues want to use it, or that the media companies and the technology companies want to use it? And if we do that, and we can monetize that, then we could further increase our margins, and once we do that, now you have operating leverage, you have revenue growth, it'll translate into free cash flow. And for me, when it, when push comes to shove, free cash flow is what matters for us. And the company is gonna generate 50%+ cash conversion in the current year. That's up from 27% a year ago, and we think there's an opportunity to take that even further from here. So that's really gonna be my key priorities.
The last thing I'll say is the company is very invested in ensuring that we have an open and honest dialogue with the Wall Street community. They did that when they hired Jim to run investor relations, and one of the reasons I think they wanted me to come on board was to help tell our story in a pretty concise and clear way, and show to our the investors that are out there, what the real growth opportunity is for the company, not just in the next few months, but in the next few years.
Yeah, and that's a great point because you are such a global company, but you're listed in the U.S., and, you know, let's really make sure we're close to those investors. I think it's a great, great move by, by the company. You reported Q2 yesterday. We're gonna get into that in a little bit, but I wanna focus on one number, which was 117% net revenue retention. And I wanna focus in on the 17 part of that, which is the upselling, you know, that you, that you're able to do. Maybe just talk about your matrix of products and, you know, how you go about encouraging your customers to buy more of those products, and just how penetrated you are, and stuff like that.
Sure. When you think of the building blocks of the relationships that we have with our sportsbook partners, you think about data as the baseline of what we do, right? So our ability to not only collect data from a variety of matches, but then also package it in a way that is useful for the sportsbooks and for the consumers. And if you can do that, and you start to show the value of that, then they want more of your products, right? And if you do that, you can move up the value chain and then start to offer things like better odds, right? So some of our sportsbook partners don't need your odds.
Some of our sportsbook partners say, "Hey, we would love for you to help us create the most appropriate odds, where we could increase trading volumes and increase flow-through." Then, once you kinda continue up the value chain, now you have such a breadth and depth of relationship, that you can then start to offer things like streaming products, where you actually streaming in video of a game or of a match to foster additional betting opportunities for the operator. So you're kinda heading up and down that value chain of the inputs into the system. Then, you can also provide opportunities for them to attract additional clients by helping them with their advertising, helping them reach new audiences, so they can get more people into their ecosystem.
So there's a variety of ways that we can trade them around the overall value proposition of the ecosystem, and you're always looking for ways to provide additional products and services to do that.
All right, so the softball questions are over now. It's time for the-
Just on the heels of that, one of the things that's interesting is, as you go up that value chain of products, live data, live odds, more stuff relating to in-play is used, and I'm curious how the in-play market is different in the U.S. versus in some of the more mature markets that you guys operate around the world. And what sort of financial opportunity does the company have, as in-play engagement in the U.S. increases?
Sure. So when you think about the in-play marketplace internationally versus the in-play market domestically, in-play is a much bigger piece of the pie internationally. It's about 70%-80% of the market internationally, whereas domestically, we estimate it's somewhere around that 35%-40% range. So there's a huge opportunity for us to go and grow that market, and some of the products and services that we're putting out there are intended to foster more activity in that space. So a great example of that is our 4Sight product, right? Which is, in the AV streaming world, where you're actually giving a video stream to your consumer, can you put data, and can you put statistics overlaying on top of that AV stream, to ultimately drive activity?
And what we've seen thus far with the early days of doing that, we've been able to drive better uptake of live data, sorry, of live betting, because of those kinds of services. Now, from a financial perspective, when you think about how far behind the US is versus the international platform, about 40 basis points, the reality is every percentage point or so of increase with regards to live betting ultimately gets you around EUR 1.5 million-EUR 1.6 million of additional revenue, and that's predominantly all straight to the bottom line, 'cause there's not a lot of additional cost associated with it. So there is a huge amount of opportunity if we can continue to crack the live betting opportunity.
Definitely sounds like a, a compelling opportunity, and speaking more broadly about the global gaming market, I'm curious how the company views the growth trajectory, both internationally and here in the U.S., and how you expect the company's sort of top line to grow ahead of that pace.
Sure. When you think about the international market, it's certainly a little more mature. You know, we believe the international market's gonna grow somewhere in the low double digits here for the next several years. There is the opportunity for it to go a little higher than that, if some of these other markets, like Brazil or like India or like Japan, open up and provide additional opportunity. But for now, we think it's gonna be somewhere in that low double digit. The U.S. is certainly growing a lot faster than that.
When you think about the U.S. market today, it's growing somewhere in that 25%-30% range, and again, has an opportunity to not only grow just organically as the U.S. market evolves, but also as you get additional states opening up, like a California or a Texas, which could have a significant impact for our business moving forward. That said, we're not sitting here relying on that to happen. You know, when you think about the growth of the market that I just talked about, we've grown far in excess of that, right? You look at the record revenues that we delivered this past quarter. You look at our U.S. revenue growth this past quarter, it was close to 60%, you know, significantly far ahead of where the market is growing just organically.
The way we're doing that is by continuing to offer unique products and services. Part of that, additional sports rights and some of the things like the NBA, the ATP. Part of that is just rolling out new opportunities to engage with clients in, I would say, various and unique ways.
Cool.
So, yeah, digging into Q2 a little bit, you know, really strong results. You beat consensus, and you beat your guidance on revenue and EBITDA. You added a bunch of MTS customers, which was really great, but can you just maybe talk about, how you looked at the quarterly results and what you think, you know, were the most important drivers of your success in the quarter?
Yeah, I think the good thing for our success is it's very much broad-based. It's not just one avenue that is ultimately driving the company, right? When you think about what happened in the third quarter, we had growth not only across our live data and odds services, we had growth across our audiovisual services, we had growth across our MTS business, or Managed Trading Services business, which we just talked about. We had growth also in our media business, so it's a pretty diverse avenue of growth, which is nice. And we're continuing to have a pretty, I would say, steady take on margins. One of the things that's happened for us this year, as I'm sure a lot of you know, is we've taken on some additional sports costs, which I'm sure we'll get into.
But we still envision this year, as we have a little bit of a deleveraging on the sports side, we've been able to leverage some of our other cost structures around the company. So we are seeing some nice leverage across our personnel side of the house, across our back office functionality side of the house. And as a result, when we look at the year, despite having an additional opportunity on the revenue side, with regards to new sports rights, we will expect our margins to be flat to if not slightly up on, on the, the year overall. So the second quarter was another step in that kind of evolution.
So just to drill in on the second part of the quarterly results, the guidance. You know, we thought the quarter was really strong. Stock was down a little bit yesterday, and, you know, I think maybe investors were hoping to see a little more oomph in the guidance for the second half of the year. So maybe just talk about your guidance philosophy. I know you have the words "at least" in there - you know, which are important words, but -
CFO's best friend.
Yeah, maybe just talk about your guidance philosophy and how you're thinking about, you know, that as after you've had the chance to speak with investors post the-
Sure. You know, obviously, you know, when we provide our guidance, we're looking at what our expectations are for the year. And given the success that we've had in the first half of the year, especially on the revenue side of the house, we certainly see an opportunity to raise our revenue guidance in the back half of the year, and we did that by offering another percentage point of growth. Is there the possibility for upside from there? Certainly. But there's a variety of things that could drive it up or down, and we feel very comfortable about adding a percentage point to growth on the revenue side. On the EBITDA side, the company, at its heart, has very high incremental margins, okay?
The reality of our guidance increase after the second quarter was we kept the margins relatively flat, which was about 19%, like I said, for the year. Is there an opportunity for upside there as well? There is. Given I just got into the seat about two months ago, I don't wanna promise the world out of the gate, so we'll see what the opportunity looks like, here over the next few weeks as I dig in even further, and we'll be able to give even further guidance at the end of the third quarter. But certainly expect there to be some nice, margin expansion in the back half of the year versus where we were in the first half of the year.
Then, certainly, when you get to the fourth quarter of our year, we expect to see margin expansion year-over-year versus a year ago, as we lap the first year of our NBA deal.
That's a topic I wanted to dive into next. This is sort of the... You talked about 83% year-over-year growth in sports rights cost, but you're able to keep margins flat, which is very impressive. Can you just maybe talk a little bit about the trajectory of how a new rights deal like these ATP and NBA deals are monetized over the course, and now also how margins are impacted early on, and how that evolves as the deal goes on?
Sure. So we signed our NBA, our new NBA deal back in, the end of last year, so it took effect in the fourth quarter of 2023. Our new ATP deal started in January of this year. I think the first thing to highlight with regards to our sports costs is there are no real major sports rights that are gonna be up here over the next several years. We do have our Major League Baseball deal, which ends at the end of this year, but we feel very confident about our ability to renew that at very reasonable rates, starting next year. But overall, our sports portfolio is in very good shape for the next several years.
Because we're at the start of a new sports deal with the NBA and with ATP, there are some unusual, I don't wanna say, accounting mechanisms, but the way the deals are recognized from a purely reporting perspective is they're straight-lined from an accounting perspective. So the cost in year one of the deal is the same as seven years from now, the cost of the last year of the deal. So as a result, you have a margin, obviously, pressure in the first part of the deal, and you have a whole lot of margin expansion in the back end of the deal.
And while it's kind of a little frustrating from an accounting perspective, the reality of these deals is, from a cash flow perspective, we are doing very well and very positive from these deals out of the gate. You look at some of the cash flow that we're gonna have this year, which is we expect cash flow conversion over 50% versus, like I said, 27% a year ago. A lot of that upside is being driven by the success that we're having with the NBA and with ATP. And the reason that we can do these sorts of deals is because of how big we are from a scale perspective and how big we are from a reach perspective. And we're able to monetize these deals across a variety of our products and services, both domestically as well as internationally. So while-...
to sportsbooks globally, and that global reach and that global depth and that global, what I would say is breadth of relationships, allows you to monetize not only for yourself, but for them, their data and their rights more exclusively and more globally. So the more reach you have, the more return on investment you can get. And when you have the relationships that we've built up for many, many years, because we've been in these markets for many, many years, it allows you to leverage those relationships even further. And you saw that with the current ATP deal. One of the reasons that we were able to get the ATP deal into Sportradar is the breadth and depth of the offerings that we have and the ability to take their product into a wider range of markets over time.
One of the things that you mentioned earlier is the cash flow conversion. I think operating cash flow is up about 20% in the first half of the year. Can you talk a little bit about what you plan to do with that cash and your capital allocation strategy, a little bit more on the repurchase program?
Sure. So the company has over $300 million, sorry, EUR 300 million of cash today, and to your point, will generate over $100 million of free cash flow for the year. So you're looking at a really high level of free cash flow generation, which allows you to be opportunistic here when you look out into the marketplace. The first thing that I would say is, we would love to continue to invest into our own assets and our own capabilities. The broader that our capabilities are, the more we can organically grow, the faster we can organically grow by providing more products and services to the sportsbooks globally, to the leagues globally, to the media and sports media and technology partners globally. That'll allow us to grow even faster.
So in an ideal world, we would use that cash to invest directly into our own business. In the absence of that, you will continue to look for M&A opportunities to further the growth opportunity moving forward, whether it be a technology option, whether it be a rights option, whether it be some sort of product offering, you'll look to see ways to continue to enhance the overall growth profile of the company. And then lastly, in the absence of that, especially given where the stock is trading today, we see returning capital to shareholders as a viable option with regards to our capital.
Now, we have to be somewhat cognizant of the low float that we have out there in the marketplace today, but when you see where the stock is trading, and you see what the upside is from a EBITDA perspective, from an operating leverage perspective, from a free cash flow perspective over time, certainly using our capital to return capital to shareholders is a viable option.
I wanted to go back to a couple of topics that came up earlier. You know, one was your comment that margin expansion on the horizon is what you expect. You know, I wanted to kind of, the other thing that you said was, you know, you straight line the cost of those sports rights deals, so obviously they're gonna get more profitable in the future as you're able to get those deals into more of your customers. I just wanted to ask if you could kind of segment out, you know, at a high level, how much of the margin expansion you expect to see over the next few years would come from that leverage on that, on those sports rights deals versus just overall operating efficiency?
Yeah, sure. You know, it's funny, whenever we talk about operating leverage, we tend to focus on the cost side of the house, but the reality is, the biggest driver for us of our operating leverage is gonna be to continue to deliver revenue growth over the next several years, right? And when you think about where we are with regards to the market and the opportunity there, when you think about where we are with regards to new products and new services, there's a significant opportunity to continue to grow revenues at a nice clip, so that'll be the first thing. Leveraging the sports rights, you know, the headwind from sports rights in the current year is about 700-800 basis points. The headwind from sports rights in the future will be significantly less than that.
Actually, I shouldn't even say headwind. It'll be operating leverage on those sports rights starting in 2025. So, that'll be your first place that you'll start to get leverage. We are getting leverage across the remainder of our cost base already today. When you think about the 700-800 basis points headwind from sports in the current year, that is being completely offset by savings that we're seeing. I shouldn't say savings, because savings implies that we're taking costs out. We're just controlling the way we spend, right? If you think about the personnel costs across the company or the operating expenses across the company, growing that at a clip that is much, much smaller than our revenue growth will provide additional operating leverage.
So when I think into the future, I think you're gonna get operating leverage across both sides of the house. It's not just gonna be the sports rights. It will also be continuing to get additional leverage across what I would say is the G&A of the company overall.
Fantastic. Well, we, we're ticking down to the last few seconds, so I think we'll leave it there. Craig, thanks a lot. A great session, and we appreciate you coming.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate the bell.