Editor’s note: We spoke with Gambling.com Group CEO Charles Gillespie and CFO Elias Mark about their US success. You can read that here
A stellar performance in the US buoyed a record quarter of earnings for the affiliate company Gambling.com Group. North American revenues tripled year over year, producing $9.1 million in Q3, contributing to overall revenue of $19.6 million. That $9.1 million represents a nearly 300% uptick from the previous year.
“Our investments to expand the breadth and quality of our portfolio of performance marketing websites ahead of new North American market launches has positioned Gambling.com Group for strong performance from its first day of operations in each of these new markets. The efficacy of this strategy is evident in our strong third-quarter revenue growth in North America,” said Gambling.com Group CEO Charles Gillespie in a release.
Top-line numbers for Gambling.com Group Q3
Here is a look at the key numbers from the past quarter:
- Revenue: $19.6 million (up 94% YoY)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $6.4 million (up 32% YoY)
- Free cash flow: $4.9 million (up 549% YoY)
- FY 2022 revenue projection: $71-76 million
Gillespie noted the quarter produced 68,000 new depositing customers compared to 27,000 in 2021. This was largely the result of US expansion, with a particularly strong launch in Kansas in September. He also stated that BonusFinder.com is performing ahead of schedule.
Looking ahead, Gillespie is enthused about the next rollout of sports betting states, Maryland, Ohio, and Massachusetts, and thinks the company is positioned to excel in all three, both because of strong domains under the company’s Bet brand and the mainstream media partnership with McClatchy.
Gambling.com Group CFO Elias Mark also spoke about some of the uptick in operating expenses. The Roto Wire acquisition is starting to show up on the balance sheet. In Q3 it accounted for $600,000 of expenses for the company. Increasing company headcount to help North American expansion also added expenses for the quarter.
Gambling.com Group adds power URL Casinos.com to portfolio
Gillespie used the earnings call to announce another major acquisition for the company, the domain name Casinos.com.
“We recently completed the acquisition of a superstar marquee domain, which in our view, is the single most desirable and valuable domain for companies in our line of business: Casinos.com The addition of Casinos.com to our already best-in-class domain portfolio enables us to build another powerhouse global brands alongside Gambling.com using our existing teams, technology, and know-how. We look forward to sharing more details on this exciting project with this replicable domain as we get closer to formally launching a new, fully-featured website. With this addition, we have largely completed our portfolio of premium domain names for the North American market,” Gillespie said.
“We bought [Gambling.com] in 2011 for $2.5 million and the business behind that website now is just incredible. We see an opportunity to not only do the same thing with Casinos.com, but do it faster with all the lessons we’ve learned in the past 11 years and can do it safely with more laser focus because Gambling.com covers everything. Gambling.com touches on anything related to poker, bingo, sports betting, and casino. Casinos.com is just casinos and casino, as I’m sure everyone on the call knows, is the most lucrative gaming product,” he added.
Gambling.com Group will consider rev share but not push it
Inevitably, the topic of Better Collective’s decision to move from CPA to a revenue-share model came up in the earnings call Q&A.
Gillespie responded that the company is certainly open to the revenue share discussion, but such a strong pivot is not in the plans, at least for now. Other than that, Gillespie had little to say on the matter.
“We run the same calculation as they do and we are increasingly interested in monetizing with rev share in the United States, but we are not pushing as hard as they are.”
Another hot topic was the exit of sportsbooks like Fubo and MaximBet and what kind of impact it has on the business.
“I think it’s great for us. The more focused on ROI they are, the more they will invest into the affiliate channel, the performance marketing channel because it’s just basically guaranteed ROI,” he said. He also pointed to the massive spending on non-performance marketing as one of the reasons some of these smaller operators did not have better success.
