Allied Esports Entertainment, Inc.

Q3 2020 Earnings Conference Call

11/9/2020

spk01: Greetings and welcome to Allied Esports Entertainment third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Lassa Glasson, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
spk06: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment 2020 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. Speaking on the call today is Allied Esports Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer, Frank Ng, and Chief Financial Officer, Tony Hung. The company's president and longtime World Poker Tour CEO, Adam Pliska, and Jed Hannigan, who is leading the Allied Esports operations, are also available for the question and answer sessions. Before I turn the call over to management, please remember that our prepared remarks and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, intend, plan, believe, seek, could, estimate, judgment, targeting, should, anticipate, goal, and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. actual results could differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors discussed in the company's public filings, including the risk factors discussed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, certain of the financial information presented in this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The company's earnings release, which was issued this afternoon and is available on the company's website, presents reconciliation to the appropriate GAAP measure and an explanation of why the company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Allied Esports Entertainment's CEO, Frank Ng. Frank?
spk05: Thank you, Lhasa, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I'm extremely pleased with the resiliency of our business and the solid performance we delivered in the third quarter despite the significant challenges we faced in the first half of 2020 arising from the COVID-19 pandemic that persisted throughout the quarter. While strong results in the in-person pillar of our business was our primary growth driver for the company prior to the onset of the pandemic, operational restrictions, including extremely limited social gatherings mandated globally, impacted this part of our business model for both Ally Esports and the WPT during the third quarter. In light of this, I continue to be very pleased with our team's ability to adapt to the challenges by successfully pivoting our operational focus to our multi-platform content and interactive services pillars. Solid third quarter revenue growth in multi-platform content and interactive services pillars significantly mitigated the impact of the pandemic on our businesses as we continued to serve the esports and poker communities. In addition, as Tony will discuss further, we make aggressive strides to pay down our convertible debt principal to $3.1 million. As we look ahead, we believe that the strategic pivot we made as a result of the pandemic has accelerated our ability to monetize all three pillars of our strategy. Importantly, we believe this has put us in a great position to better serve our customers in the future and take full advantage of the significant growth opportunities as the economy continues to recover and the environment normalizes. Despite the near-term impact the pandemic has had on our financials, we do see a longer-term silver lining for RIE Sports and WPT. As gamers abide by stay-at-home restrictions and with fewer entertainment options during the pandemic, gaming is filling The void and its popularity is clearly on the rise. On the esports side, more time is spent on gaming. The proportions of gamers who spend five plus hours per week gaming jumped from 63% to 82% during the pandemic. Similarly, more money is being spent on gaming. The gaming industry has experienced a 39% increase in gaming spend where compared to to pre-pandemic levels and expected to increase an additional 21% post-pandemic relative to spending before COVID-19. And finally, gamers are watching more esports content. Audiences watched 7.5 billion hours of content across all live streaming platforms in the third quarter. Year over year, the live streaming industry is up 92% compared to Q3, With that, let's shift gears and review our third quarter results. Total revenues for the quarter of $5.9 million declined just 2.5% from $6 million in the third quarter last year. Considering the significant restrictions we had in our ability to operate our in-person events for both RIE Sports and WPT, we are pleased with the results. During the quarter, we generated a strong year-over-year growth in interactive services revenue, as well as a solid increase in revenue from multi-platform content. However, this was offset by sharply lower revenue from in-person experiences as a result of COVID-19 that persisted throughout the third quarter. As announced earlier in the year, we took significant actions to reduce our expenses and minimize the negative impact on our financial position results from the pandemic. These actions, which included salary reductions and other cost savings measures, reduced our GNA and selling and marketing expenses by $1.7 million this quarter versus the same period last year. At the bottom line, our adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.1 million improved significantly from an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.1 million a year ago, marking the third quarter as the best quarterly adjusted EBITDA results since we entered the public markets one year ago. Overall, we remain confident in our ability to capitalize on the valuable positions we created today. in the voyaging esports marketplace, while WPT continues to steadily build its business and we believe has a promising outlook. As we have stated previously, our goal is to maximize the potential of these complementary businesses through a model built around three strategic pillars, in-person experiences, multi-platform content, and interactive services. With that, let's turn to our third quarter operational highlights as well as an update on the previously announced strategic partnerships. Beginning with in-person experiences, similar to most businesses in the live entertainment and event industry, in-person experiences for both Ally Esports and WPT continued to face significant operational headwinds during the third quarter. Looking first at all our esports after being forced to completely shut down due to the pandemic on March 17th, our flagship HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas at the Luxor Hotel and Casino successfully reopened on June 25th with certain restrictions and a modified schedule for daily play and weekly tournaments. To ensure the health and safety of guests and team members, HyperX Esports Arena has implemented extensive sanitization protocols throughout the venue and has deployed reduced operating hours. Furthermore, enforced physical distancing remained in effect throughout the quarter, lowering customer capacity by approximately 35% of pre-pandemic levels with food and beverage service also limited. we believe we have earned the trust of our customers to provide a safe place to play with our enhanced safety and sanitization protocols. That said, since the reopening, the demand we have seen for our weekly tournaments is very encouraging. Third quarter highlights included a weekly event at HyperX Esports Arena Friday Fracks featuring Fortnite and Saturday Night Speedway featuring Mario Kart. though have shown considerable growth across all viewing matrix in the third quarter by comparison to the first quarter pre-pandemic levels. Most notably, unique viewers increased 1,144% with Friday Fract and 136% with Saturday Night Speedway as compared to the pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2020. While in-person events continued to be limited by the pandemic, during the third quarter, we are pleased to execute two events with the HyperX eSports truck, including an outdoor event with local Saturday night Speedway sponsor, Finlay Volkswagen. After a five-month hiatus, the WPT also resumed the in-person PILA office business during the third quarter. In August, the WPT returned to live poker with the record-setting WPT Japan event in Tokyo. The event drew 726 players in WPT's first live event since March 2020 and marks the first time WPT secured a mainstream sponsor for WPT Japan with Sega Sammy Corporation. In September, the WPT hosted a second event with PartyProper U.S. Network that featured another record-breaking price pool in the New Jersey market of more than $432,000 for the WPD Online Bogota Series main event. With the ongoing restrictions of in-person events during the quarter, we remained focused on interactive services and multi-platform content. Not only did this help recruit nearly all of the in-person revenues lost as a result of the pandemic, we are confident our efforts here will also help strengthen the pipeline of new fans as potential attendees at our live events when the pandemic subsides. Similar to last quarter, the shift to holding events online continued to strengthen our interactive service pillar. In the third quarter, we saw strong growth in our proprietary offerings. We extended the Legend Series brand and tournament format to Valorant, completing five online Valorant Legend Series tournaments sponsored by a Switzerland-based home of esports. Our community-building efforts in Valorant led us to a partnership with Riot Games on a Valorant Ignition Series tournament where we launched Ally Esports Odyssey, a six-day event featuring the top teams in Europe. The event set a company viewership record with 1.6 million live views and 1.1 million hours watched on Twitch. The success of our event in the third quarter grew our Twitch followers by 358%. We also became a member of the Esports Integrity Commission and forged strong partnerships with esports entertainment group and grid esports that have begun to generate monetization opportunities through esports betting via the licensing of video and data rights. The Viya.gg CSGO Legend Series ran for two weeks in September and delivered 1.7 million unique viewers across multi-platforms while driving a 400% increase in new users and a 300% increase in deposits on Esports Entertainment Group's Via.gg platform. The event was historic for Ally Esports, its partners, and the state of New Jersey, as the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority announced its regulatory approval, allowing our event to be the first to offer legal esports wagering in the state. In addition to Via.gg, The event was carried on several other sportsbook platforms, including Drop Kings, PointsBet, Bet365, Pinnacle, YouWin, Yabal, OneWorks, and FunBet. We also lay out our vision for continued growth of our online tournament offerings in North America, where we will be hosting combinations of month-long series and single-day pop-up events to drive participations and viewership. The Valorant Strife Series and Rocket League Combustion Series both ran throughout the quarter with more than 1,700 players participating online. The interactive services pillar for the online esports business continues to mature. Importantly, the platform we built to host online esports tournaments represents an important foundational building block In the future, we expect to further develop the platform as an always-on subscription-based online service where an esports player and fans can watch, play, and win with other members of the esports community, along with esports personalities and influencers. This online platform will be closely integrated with our offline experiences to create a comprehensive and authentic esports tournament experience for fans. Turning next to WPT. We demonstrate further online success during the third quarter. From July through September, WPD hosted the first ever WPD World Online Championships on party poker. The series was phenomenally successful with $100 million in guarantees in the festival and five WPD champions crowned and their names added to the Mike Saxton WPD Champions Cup. The 10,000 buy-in, 10 million guaranteed WPD Ming event drew more than 1,000 players and became the largest WPD prize pool of season 18. In addition to being one of the most successful events in WPD history, this festival underscores the growing brand value of WPD online globally. In addition to the online events, The successful World Poker Tour Interactive Services strategy includes Club WPT, our online membership platform that offers a subscription-based poker club with no purchase necessary. Early in the year, Club WPT launched its $100,000 Club WPT Diamond Championship promotion, which has proven very popular with members. Qualifiers rank from June through October, accumulating in a $100,000 prize pool event in November. This became the largest single-day tournament prize pool in Club WPP's history, with first place taking home $25,000. We also continue to be pleased with the new premium level of Club WPP membership, Club WPP Diamond, which successfully launched in June. Diamond subscribers have exceeded our expectations and comprises a meaningful portion of the overall Club WPD revenue. Thanks in part to these activities, Club WPD can point to some impressive growth statistics through the end of Q3, including new registrations increased 29% year-over-year, total subscription revenue increased 105% year-over-year, daily active users average increased 41% year-over-year, and Virtual currency sales on Club WPD are up 171% compared to the prior year. Rounding out our business model was in multi-platform content, where we generated content that is live-streamed, post-produced, or packaged for consumption on the 24-by-7 basis and retained optionality in monetization of content via direct distribution and sponsorship, use of third-party distributors, or other various hybrid solutions. World Poker Tour has executed this successfully for many years. Overall, we continue to experience strong demand for our poker television product. During the third quarter, WPT online sponsorship revenue from EdSales grew 23% over the prior year period. which is a promising sign as more content opportunity moves online to a global audience. Moreover, WPD Studios began the process of securing syndications for seasons 13 and 14 of the WPD television series in 2021, with a forecasted 80% clearance. This puts WPD in the position of selling national advertising buys in 2021 and pushing for upfront revenue. I think it is also important to note that linear household viewership in the third quarter was up 77% year over year, while OCP household viewership grew 368% over the prior year period. In fact, OCP third quarter viewership of 22 million households surpassed linear television viewership of 17 million households for the first time. Before turning it over to Tony to discuss our third quarter financial in more detail, I would like to provide an update on our strategic relationship with Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners, who we are working with to deliver esports experiences at select Simon and Brookfield properties. Earlier in the year, Simon's Mall of Georgia, located in the Atlanta metro area, was selected as the location for an ally esports venue. While the Simon project is currently suspended due to the pandemic, esports remains a key strategic initiative for Simon, and to allow for this, we are talking about further extending the milestone date under our partnership agreement until the COVID-19 crisis has ended. With respect to our similar strategic relationship with Brookfield, we are following a similar path to open an on-mall venue concept at Brookfield retail locations once the COVID-19 crisis has passed. Although the pandemic delays our timeline with expansion to malls, we remain confident in the prospect of this business initiative and will continue to update you on our progress in future calls. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Tony Hong, our CFO, for a more detailed update on our third quarter financial results. Hey, Tony.
spk03: Thank you, Frank. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As Frank mentioned, our third quarter performance demonstrates the resiliency of our business and our ability to pivot our strategic focus within our three pillars amidst this dynamic and challenging operating environment. While our in-person pillar continued to be impacted by the travel restrictions and social distancing protocols as a result of the pandemic, we made strides on the development of our multi-platform content and interactive pillars, where we saw strong revenue growth this quarter. As we continue to leverage these two pillars while diligently working on the recovery of live in-person events, our priority remains to manage our expense base and strengthen our liquidity position while executing our strategy and positioning ourselves for long-term growth. Now, turning to our third quarter results, total revenues for the third quarter of 2020 were $5.9 million, down 2.5% year over year, primarily due to lower in-person revenues, which were nearly offset by higher revenues from the multiplatform content and interactive services pillars. Looking at these results in greater detail, in-person revenues for the third quarter totaled $0.7 million compared to $2.6 million in the prior year period. The decrease of 73.1% year-over-year was a result of postponed events, reduced operating hours, and social distancing measures from the pandemic. Multiplatform content revenues totaled $1.3 million compared to $1.0 million in the prior year period, an increase of 22.6%. This growth was primarily due to an increase in distribution revenue from two major customers. Finally, interactive services revenues totaled $3.9 million for the third quarter compared to $2.4 million in the third quarter last year, or an increase of 62.1%. The increase was primarily attributed to strong growth in Club WPT subscriptions and continued success of our new premium Club WPT Diamond service. Overall, total revenues in the third quarter of 2020 derived from Allied Esports decreased to $0.6 million from $1.9 million in the third quarter of 2019. Total revenues derived from WPT increased to $5.3 million from $4.1 million in the prior year period. While the effects from the pandemic across the globe continue to significantly impact our esports business, World Poker Tour's mature multi-platform content and interactive services pillars allowed us to still realize revenue from the transition to online services and events and generate strong year-over-year growth through the quarter. Total costs and expenses for the third quarter were $9.2 million, down 6.6% from $9.9 million in the prior year period, We significantly reduced our expenses in the in-person pillar by 46.5%, or $0.6 million, selling and marketing expenses by 76.2%, or $0.5 million, and G&A expenses by 23.7%, or $1.1 million, compared to the prior year period. The decreases reflect our priority to manage expenses during the quarter and actively reduce all non-essential spending. The year-over-year decrease in total costs and expenses were partially offset by several factors. First, expenses in the multi-platform content pillar increased 18%, or $0.1 million, to $0.9 million. Expenses in the interactive services pillar increased 119.5%, or $0.7 million, to $1.2 million compared to the third quarter of 2019. And online operating expenses increased 90.7%, or 0.2 million, as we continue to build out online events and production services as the recovery of live in-person events continues. Total net loss for the third quarter was 6.5 million, compared to a net loss of 4.3 million in the third quarter of 2019. Total net loss for the third quarter of 2020 was negatively impacted from a non-cash extinguishment loss on acceleration of debt redemption of 1.7 million, that was not incurred in the prior year period. This resulted from the acceleration of monthly payment on the Senior Secured Convertible Debt during the period. Moving to our balance sheet. At September 30, 2020, our cash position totaled $10.8 million, including $5 million of restricted cash, compared to $12.1 million at December 31, 2019, which included $3.7 million of restricted cash. The decrease of cash is primarily due to funding our operating activities and the repayment of our prior bridge notes, partially offset by new funds raised during the year. As of September 30, 2020, we had convertible debt and bridge notes totaling $3.4 million in gross principal, which matures on February 23 of 2022. We also had convertible debt in the gross principal amount of $5.7, which is payable in monthly installments through June of 2022, and can also be accelerated at the option of the lender. In total, we reduced the outstanding principal of our convertible debt balance by $3.9 million from the prior quarter. Subsequent to quarter end, we paid down our convertible debt principal to $3.1 million. In summary, we continue to strengthen our offerings in multi-platform content and interactive services pillars, as evidenced by the significant growth this quarter in those pillars. and the successful WPT model continues to serve as a guide for the expansion of the LID sports business. We remain focused on maintaining safety for our employees and customers while continuing to look for opportunities to optimize our capital, strengthen our balance sheet, and create value and growth for the future. With that, we will now open the line for Q&A. Operator?
spk01: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. And for participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Brian Kinslinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed.
spk02: Great. Thanks. Just a couple. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned on the in-person events, Your capacity is at about 65%, I think, if I got that right. Can you talk about, first of all, how full the average events are, and then how has that improved, gotten worse, the same, you know, how are the trends in October, November, compared to maybe September? John, can you step in to do this question?
spk05: Sure.
spk04: I'd be happy to. Thanks, Brian, for your question. So our in-person events are limited to 65% of capacity due to social distancing, based on how many computer stations we can get on our arena floor. We've seen great numbers as far as the capacity is concerned. We're filling that. We're filling those stations week in and week out on our event nights. And so we remain bullish if we're able to increase the capacity when social distancing lifts. we will be able to continue to fill those seats.
spk02: Great. And then in terms of a potential second wave of COVID, just take us through what's happening in Las Vegas, if there is issues at all. And, you know, are there, do you see any need to make any changes in today's environment, which is, you know, every month is different?
spk04: I'm happy to take that question as well. So Vegas was one of the strictest places that, you know, at the early onset of the pandemic. And so they've also been able to open up earlier than many locations out there. And I think what we've recently seen is an increase in the permitted gathering number from 50 up to 250. I think one of the things that the general climate in Vegas is really focused on trying to bring conventions back. And so there's a lot of collaboration, not only with event organizers, but with tech and the medical field to be able to create a safe environment. I think that one of the things, being an operator in Vegas, having our facility there, we'll tend to benefit from some of those early waves of technology that increase the safety of gatherings there. And so what we're seeing right now is not really any kind of change in protocol. We're seeing folks kind of like holding at that number, and that number has only increased to 250 recently. So we haven't seen any downward pressure against that number at the moment, but we'll continue to evaluate that going forward. One of the things we've done is we've really earned the trust of our customers who come back to us week in, week out, because we put out a safe environment for people to play and do that with as little concern as possible, given everything that's going on in the world.
spk02: Switching gears just a little bit, in terms of the real gaming model, and you had that Jersey event, can you remind us how you monetize gambling events? Are you taking a VIG, a percentage of the VIG by the operators, just maybe a quick description on how you'll generate revenue.
spk04: Sure. Happy to. Yep. So what we do is we're licensing our data and video rights. So if you think about us as operating an event, within that game, we're operating a server. which is hosting that game. And so we're leveraging the data and video rights off of our stream and our gameplay and then selling that to and licensing that to operators, sportsbook operators around the world. And so we'll collect the license fee for them to be able to ingest that information and to create lines and, you know, create offerings around our content.
spk02: So sportsbooks around the world will be able to replay events, or is that what I understand? They're not live events. They'll replay events, and, you know, at sportsbooks you can play specs on these events?
spk04: So they are absolutely live, just to correct. They're absolutely live events. They're taking in a live feed from us, and then ultimately then being able to process that and create lines and and, you know, in some cases provide that video on their platforms as well behind a paywall.
spk05: Great. And this is a real experiment. You know, I can add to that, you know, this experiment is what we try to do is create an experience or offering that is, custom-made for bookmakers so that, you know, we can create the consistency, the frequency, you know, do a few hours block every day so that, you know, they can continue to see actions on their book. So I think our partners are very happy about the results so far.
spk02: Great. Last question I have, you talked about the cost reductions, yet you still burn $3 million in cash from operations, just back of the envelope, looking at the cash flow statement. So is more being done to reduce the cash burn, or just maybe some thoughts, you know, high level on what needs to be done to reduce that burn? Sure, Brian.
spk03: This is Tony. Why don't I go ahead and take that one? Yeah, Q3 was a little bit of an anomaly in that we had some timing issues and some kind of one-time items that were kind of part of our normalized burn. There was some timing issues. With regards to the tax withholding payments that we had to make for a bunch of the shares that were issued to a number of our employees, we also had a large D&O insurance premium and a few other things like that. So those all affected the normal operating burn. I would say more from a normalized perspective, You know, we've been doing everything we can to bring those costs down, and I think we've done a very good job of those, and that you should be able to see, you know, continue going forward.
spk02: Okay. Thanks so much.
spk01: Our next question is from Derek Soderberg with Collier Securities. Please proceed.
spk08: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start with the world poker tour business as it relates to the club WPT side. Can you give us any details on your expectations for the business from here? And then also how are you guys sizing that opportunity?
spk07: Yeah. So this is Adam speaking. Thanks for the question. So right now we've launched our new diamond club. And so I think we still have a lot of growth in that and what, what I can, uh, say just, you know, when you, when you go from, you know, 24 to $27 up to $150, uh, it's, it's not so much that the, uh, the margins change because you do have additional, you do have additional price pools, but the absolute dollar amount changes. And so it gives us a lot more room and what it does, it also gives us a lot more room to do affiliate marketing, something that the, the, uh, club at that level really is not as competitive with some of the online gaming affiliate models out there. So what we see is a great opportunity to begin affiliate marketing, something that we have not done, but we are now able to do. And, you know, I think that that provides a good avenue for us as well. And in addition to, As real money gaming starts to open up, you know, social gaming is a great entry place for gamers of all locations. And so what we're finding is that we're getting a lot of inward-bound inquiries from real money gaming companies, not just in poker, but in sportsbook and other areas as well, who realize that this is a very valuable database. These are people who are coming in, they have an interest, in competition, online competition, at the same time, the fact that they're in the social gaming space probably indicates that, you know, they're at the portion of their journey that they've not selected a real money gaming partner because that wasn't available in the U.S. So I think that that provides another avenue of growth in that respect as well.
spk08: Okay, and then within... You guys have the virtual product revenue, you know, Zynga and those others. Are those businesses benefiting as well from some of the trends that we're seeing? And then how are those partnerships going?
spk07: Yeah, so I think in general everybody has benefited from, you know, from the people being home and people, you know, realizing that this is entertainment. And so, you know, some more than others in terms of our captive play, you know, agreement, the play WPT side of the business, that which is, you know, far more based on web share. I think that, you know, we do see benefit from that. In terms of the relationships, our relationships have been good. You know, part of the decisions that we have to make going forward is related to, database names. Ultimately, you know, we take great pride in the fact that people want to license the WPT name, but it does present an opportunity. In the future, we might want to consolidate these things and put them just so that all of the names fall under our umbrella, you know, as opposed to the licensing model. So we'll see about that, but, you know, so far... Things have been good, and we've enjoyed the partnerships very well.
spk08: Great. And then my final question is just kind of a broad question on the industry. I know you guys had mentioned some really nice numbers on viewership, and I was wondering if you could provide some additional commentary on, you know, how you guys are going to monetize some of that for the online events. You know, viewership is clearly up. I'm wondering, you know, how has revenue per event, particularly online events, has it been trending upwards? Have you seen increased engagement from, you know, new customers? Any additional detail on how you guys are monetizing those trends?
spk07: Sure, sure. Well, it's not apples to apples because before, you know, we've always had, you know, basically 65 physical events. Suddenly we had a pandemic. Fortunately, we were prepared to test out our first online event before the pandemic. We just accelerated that. That was the event in May. That proved so successful that we did the world championship with party poker, which, you know, as Frank mentioned, they put $100 million of guarantees behind it. What is very nice about the online opportunities, And we will, you know, we're never going to go back to a world where there's no online world poker tour event. First of all, the margins are significantly better. Secondly, the intrinsic value that we bring can be replicated over thousands of people. You know, we still have, you know, we still have our hosts having dialogue with you know, the winners at the final table. But now over social media, instead of a stream that might, you know, reach several thousand people while you're at that time before the TV show goes out, you have a chance to reach many, many, many people who have been playing or watching the news. The other aspect about this is, yes, the viewership is up, But one of the things that I, you know, want to point out is for the first time, we saw total viewership online exceeding linear television. So that's a big turning point. And that's relevant in two respects. First of all, the World Poker Tour has one of the largest databases of quality poker content, you know, Five or six years ago when the world went on to streaming, the World Poker Tour continued to do high-end television, multimillion-dollar productions. So we were able to make relationships with, say, Pluto where we could come in and say, hey, don't worry, you're not getting a couple seasons or whatever. We have an entire channel that we can start from day one. that's going to be quality for what the online platforms are trying to develop. And make no mistake, those online platforms are becoming competitive with linear networks in that respect. The other reason why that's important is because if you think about it, you're watching television. And, you know, we tell you, we do a lot of call-outs. We tell you to go to Club WPT. We want you to watch the show. Historically, for the last, you know, 15 years, people would watch the show. They'd get off watching the show. They'd sign up. Well, you're that much closer and much less friction when you're online and you're watching and you see an ad and you can convert over. And so we think that we will be seeing more and more of that effect. is our growth in the online platforms and OTT platforms continue. Also, we have a massive database of some of the greatest moments of poker. Those little clips have become so immensely valuable that we have inbound inquiries for them, and we're using them for ourselves because, in essence, those are little viral pieces of information. You put them up. You have thousands of people watching. You know, we had... We had over a half a million views in a few days from one viral clip that we had put out a few weeks ago. And afterwards, you can still put your same ads on those. So we think that the online growth and the fact that we control our database, 100% of our database, and we're able to work with the online platforms is a strong advantage of the company.
spk02: Great. Thanks.
spk01: We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.
spk05: Okay. Thank you for your support and for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our 2024 quarter in March. Thank you again for your time and attention this afternoon, and please stay safe and healthy.
spk01: Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. And thank you for your
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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