Better Collective CEO Jesper Søgaard has underscored the sports betting media group’s commitment to the US market in its Q3 financial update posted this week which saw overall revenue in the quarter advance 7% to $21.5m versus $20.1m year-on-year.
Updating investors, he said that the firm remains “highly dedicated” to take part in the emerging US market, where more and more states are opening for online gambling, either just sports betting or in some states also online casino games.
“We are well positioned in this exciting new market, and we have released new products and upgraded versions of both vegasinsider.com and scoresandodds.com,” he stated. “We believe that VegasInsider has long-term potential to become ‘The Home of US sports bettors’, and in the coming years we will continue to invest in quality content for our users.
“In Q3 we saw the return of most sports to the US, and on the regulatory front, the fifth largest state, Illinois, has extended its temporary online registration permission until November 14. We expect this regime to remain open, and we have already seen more and more operators opening in this state.”
According to Better Collective, Q3 showed record high sports wagering in revenue share accounts, however, it was impacted by a low sports betting margin that reduced revenue by approximately $2.4m 2 compared to historical average. Q3 EBITA before special items increased 18% to $9.4m versus $8m year-on-year. The EBITA-margin before special items increased to 44% as cost levels were still kept relatively low.
Søgaard reported: “Q3 showed strong underlying performance on most KPIs measured in our revenue share accounts, as sports wagering was at a record high as were the number of bets placed and active sports users.
“After a couple of months significantly impacted by cancellations and postponements, we are excited to see activity back at pre-COVID levels, even though almost half of Q3 was less active because of changes to sports calendars implying a later start of the major leagues than usual.”