Genius Sports Limited

Good morning, and welcome to the Genius Sports third quarter earning results 2022 conference call. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Genius Sports.

You may begin your conference. Good morning, and thanks for joining us.

Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our last annual report on Form 20F filed on March 18th of this year. During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with the U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniussports.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. We're pleased to deliver another successful, profitable quarter and remain on target to execute on the four-year goals that we set out at the start of 2022 in our investor day. On today's call, I will discuss key business highlights from the quarter, which include new customer wins across sports, betting, and media, an update on our US backing performance, and an overview on key technology services we've delivered to the NFL and its partners. I will then pass the call to our CFO, Nick Taylor, who will discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail. To start, I'd like to commend our employees who are committed to driving revenue growth and profitability across the organization. The strong execution of our strategic plan has led to our third consecutive quarter of financial results in line or ahead of our forecast. In the third quarter, we generated $79 million of revenue and $8 million of adjusted EBITDA, up significantly from the adjusted EBITDA loss of $0.4 million last year. This brings our year-to-date revenue and adjusted EBITDA to $236 million and $13 million, respectively, tracking ahead of our guidance. The execution was evident in our betting business, driving our performance in the quarter. This was largely as a result of a strong industry backdrop and an outstanding effort by our sales team, who secured 27 new Sportsbook customers in the quarter. This will serve as the basis for strong, reoccurring revenue in the years ahead. Our media team also celebrated new wins in the quarter. having signed more than 10 new advertising customers in the consumer space. We're continuing to support our customers by successfully engaging sports audiences, while expanding our customer base beyond our traditional sports betting clients. And lastly, we've developed exciting new features to our second spectrum technology, which we've successfully delivered to our broadcast partners in the quarter. We'll review this in detail shortly, and discuss how this differentiated technology is fundamental to achieving our long-term strategic vision. Following a successful third quarter, we are confident in our ability to continue executing into the year end and are maintaining our 2022 outlook of $340 million of revenue and $15 million in adjusted EBITDA. Nick will cover this in more detail shortly. As many of you know, Q3 marks the beginning of the season for several top-tier leagues across the globe, enabling Genius to realize sequential growth where we have revenue share contracts with sportsbooks. You may recall in our last quarterly report, we outlined the operating leverage in the business and the multiple ways Genius generates EBITDA margin accretion alongside growth in betting revenues. In other words, Genius is the premier picks and shovels company capturing multiple revenue opportunities in this rapidly expanding market at little extra cost. While the reporting period only included three weeks of the 18-week NFL season, all of the betting KPIs we care about, namely growth of market, in-play mix, and win margin, were positive and contributed to our revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in this quarter. Handel is an obvious one, and the year-over-year growth has been strong, up 60%. Despite a failed ballot initiative in California that we predicted, 2023 still looks promising with the launch of new states such as Maryland, Ohio, and Massachusetts, as well as healthy growth from more mature states. The mix of in-play and pre-match betting in September has also been in line with our expectations. More importantly, we saw significant improvement in in-play win margins relative to our expectations and to last season's average. This has resulted in roughly 200% growth of in-play GGR compared to September of last year. While we often emphasize improving in-play win margins as a significant growth driver, it's also worth noting that we've seen impressive growth in pre-match win margins as well. As a reminder, Genius earns a share of pre-match and in-play gaming revenue, including for parlays, meaning our margins expand as growth and win rates improve across all bet types. Again, each of these factors have contributed to the growth of our US betting business, which helped propel our overall US revenues by more than 70% year on year in the third quarter, including specifically US betting, which has far outpaced a broader US market growth in September 2022 compared to September 2021. As I caveated earlier, these results reflect a small sample size of data covering only three weeks of the NFL season. Therefore, these results may not be indicative of what to expect for the remainder of the season. However, our goal is to be as transparent as possible, so we will communicate how the data is trending over time. In the meantime, we feel comfortable maintaining our current assumptions through the end of the season. Beyond US betting metrics, our sales team has done an excellent job of winning new business. In the first quarter alone, we've signed 27 new Sportsbook customers in regulated markets around the globe who have begun contributing revenue. For context, that matches the number of new customer wins in Q1 and Q2 combined, now doubling our count for the year. Additionally, we are continuing to expand our partnerships with existing Sportsbook customers as well. We are constantly increasing the utilization of our official data and streaming content and offering new services as they become available. As a recent example, after the reporting period, Genius extended its partnership with Bet365 to expand coverage of official data content. Most notably, as part of the deal, Bet365 will become the first sportsbook partner to explore the implementation of Genius' unique suite of immersive and real-time betting experiences powered by second-spectrum tracking and augmentation technology. In summary, we're satisfied with the betting results for the first few weeks of our second NFL season. We are confident in our assumptions going forwards, and we are continuing to successfully execute our land and expand strategy with Sportsbooks by winning new customers and growing our partnership with existing ones. This is proof of our operating leverage and demonstrates that we can substantially grow revenues off of the fixed cost base of our current rights portfolio. Moving on to our media business, we are continuing to find new and creative ways to engage fans on behalf of our sports betting customers, which has led to another quarter of significant year-on-year growth. We've seen a meaningful uplift in the month of September to start the NFL season. This is as a result of more advertising customers spending with Genius and our refined approach to buying media for NFL player acquisition. Importantly, Our media customer base continues to expand as we're beginning to work with some verticals that offer huge potential for our business. For instance, in ticketing, we have helped sports organizations like New York Liberty and Orange Bowl engage and target sports fans to optimize ticket sales. Additionally, We're now working with large consumer-facing brands such as Topgolf to help drive app downloads and Vitamin Water to advertise various flavors based on the mood of social communities. While our customer base is mostly sportsbooks today, the advertising services we provide are sector agnostic and we are equally effective for any brand seeking to target a sports audience. As we've demonstrated again this quarter, our customer composition is beginning to stand beyond just sports betting companies and we're gaining traction with customers across industries. This represents a large growth opportunity for the business and we're focused on delivering strong results for our customers and expanding partnerships over time. Now, you've heard us talk before about how our unique technology cements our position at the heart of the sports, betting, media, and broadcasting ecosystem. This is a true differentiator in our business model, and our technology was on full display this quarter. Let's take the NFL as an example in the US. First, you may have seen we launched new free-to-play games for several NFL teams this season, including the Broncos, Colts, Raiders, and Rams. In partnership with Genius, these teams utilize the suite of solutions to better engage fans, grow audiences, activate sponsors, and modernize in-stadium experiences. These free-to-play games are just another way Genius is driving the convergence of sports, betting, and media, and further embedding its technology to the benefit of the NFL, its clubs, and sponsors. We are also leveraging our second spectrum technology to innovate the way NFL broadcasts are consumed. You may recall last year's launch of our Emmy award-winning Roma vision for the NFL on CBS Sports. The product was a success in our inaugural NFL season, and we've made further enhancements to begin our second season. For example, we've developed new features such as player identification and jersey numbers, adding meaningful new dimensions to the coordinates on screen. We expect this project will continue to evolve over time in partnership with the NFL and CBS Sports. with a shared vision of changing the way fans interpret plays on the field. Additionally, as published in our 6K filing on the 16th of September, we secured an agreement with Amazon to provide augmented video technology and data-related services in connection with an alternative feed of Prime Video's Thursday night football NFL broadcast in the U.S. This agreement underlines the holistic and accretive nature of Genius' partnership with the NFL and demonstrates how our technology is bringing sports broadcasting one step closer to full personalization and optionality. Let me spend a moment explaining why we're so excited about this and why it's such an important development for Genius and its partners. First, as it relates to live sports broadcasts, this is truly a one-of-a-kind feature. The ability to identify players track receiver routes, display quarterback's time to throw all in real time is something that has never been done before. Front-footed broadcasters are beginning to break new ground by giving their subscribers more ways to watch a game and in turn appealing to a wide and diverse audience. Of course, the NFL benefits from this movement as well. we've now introduced innovative features as alternate feeds that fans enjoy, and we plan to continue building upon this foundation. As a result, the value of the NFL media properties will naturally increase over time as they attract more viewers and create additional media assets off the back of these alternate feeds and visual overlays.

For Genius, the successful launch of this product

There's a clear proof of concept that we can soon unlock future value and capture additional revenue by integrating betting, brand activation, and other merchandising all in a single platform. This not only integrates us even deeper with our most important partners across sports, betting, media, and broadcasting, but it also brings us another step closer to achieving the vision we described in our January Investor Day. This all ties back to the unique tech-driven partnership we have with the NFL and its largest customers, broadcasters, and sponsors, giving us the opportunity to continue innovating with the biggest names in sports, backing and believing in our vision. We're excited about the journey towards our vision in the long term, but in the meantime, we're encouraged by the new milestones that are happening today. I encourage all of you on the call to spend an afternoon or evening watching the NFL and to take notes of our products in action. I hope you will find that they provide significant enhancement to the NFL viewing experience and you can better understand our multifaceted role in the NFL ecosystem. The world goes in with the NFL continuing at a big stage to showcase our capabilities and we're excited not only to continue evolving our NFL partnerships but also to pursue the opportunity to deliver second spectrum technology to other broadcasters and leagues around the world. This represents tangible revenue for Genius today with significant growth potential over the years to come. And with that, I'd like to now turn the call over to our CFO, Nick Taylor.

Thanks, Mark. As mentioned at the start, we delivered another quarter of well-balanced revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA profitability. Before diving into the details, we'd like to remind you that foreign exchange rates remain volatile throughout the quarter, and the US dollar has appreciated even further against the British pound. For context, our guidance set out in January Investor Day assumed a GBP US dollar exchange ratio of 1.35. During the third quarter, This exchange ratio fluctuated in a wide range between 1.05 and 1.25. Therefore, we have provided a prior year constant currency view of our growth to remove this presentational currency volatility. We've also referenced our financial results using the exchange rate at the time of setting our guidance to give you an apples for apples comparison of our performance. To begin, in the betting segment, revenues grew 30% on a constant currency basis to $49 million in the quarter. Using the same exchange rate assumed in our initial guidance, betting revenue was $55 million in the quarter, exceeding our target of $53 million. This was predominantly driven by new customer wins, as our business development team secured 27 new Sportsbook customers in the quarter. As Mark mentioned earlier, Much of this growth was also supported by our US business as growth of handle and in-play betting helped drive out performance, along with improved win margins for the operators. And lastly, we continued to expand our partnerships with existing customers by increasing utilization of our content and services. Overall, this was a strong quarter for the betting business, setting positive momentum to start the busy sporting calendar. Our media segment posted another quarter of strong constant currency growth, increasing 41% year-on-year to $18 million, or $19 million, assuming our guidance exchange rate, which is right in line with our forecast. This brings our year-to-date media revenues to $57 million, compared to our guidance of $49 million, an outperformance of 16%, and year-on-year constant currency growth of 93%. Looking into Q4, our customers are beginning to adapt to the headwinds that are impacting the broader media and advertising space. Therefore, we expect to deliver results more closely in line with our forecast for the full year. Despite these headwinds, we expect to continue taking market share, not only with existing Sportsbook customers, but also with advertisers outside of our traditional sports betting clientele, which Mark touched on earlier. This represents a sizable opportunity to continue growing our media business over time. Lastly, our sports product group grew 6% at a constant currency, generating $12 million in revenue in the quarter, also in line with our guidance. Our revenue generated from Second Spectrum is becoming a more significant portion of our sports revenue, and it's worth flagging that we're now lapping Q3 2021, which was the first full quarter of Second Spectrum revenue post-acquisition. Collectively, this aggregates to a group revenue of $79 million in the quarter, representing 28% year-on-year growth on a constant currency basis. Using the same exchange rate assumed in our initial guidance, group revenue was $86 million, beating our guidance of $85 million. This is also translated to group adjusted EBITDA of $8 million in the quarter, or $9 million using the exchange rate at the time of our initial guidance, which is in line with our expectations. This adjusted EBITDA figure represents a material improvement from our $0.4 million adjusted EBITDA loss reported in the third quarter of last year. We are pleased with our consistent performance throughout the year and remain steadfast in our commitment to executing our plan set out in January. Through the first nine months of 2022, we are tracking ahead of that plan, and this is despite the currency headwinds I mentioned to you earlier. As you can see on the left-hand side of slide 11, we reported year-to-date group revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $236 million and $13 million respectively, tracking ahead of our guidance of $231 million and $12 million. When removing the impact of exchange rates, you can also see we've exceeded our guidance by an even greater margin. As we approach the final quarter of the year, we remain on target to achieve our full-year goals as the business continues to execute as planned. We believe that by using the fixed exchange rate assumed in our guidance, our strong results in the first three quarters would enable us to raise our full-year outlook. Given the further appreciation of the US dollar since last quarter, we are reaffirming our full-year outlook of $340 million in revenue and $15 million in adjusted EBITDA. We also remain confident in our 2023 guidance. and are maintaining our current outlook using the same exchange rate as our initial guidance. As we have more clarity on the direction of exchange rates and business performance, we may update this outlook accordingly. Looking beyond 2023, we believe we are on track to achieve EBITDA margins in excess of 30%, which remains our long-term objective or North Star. The operating leverage in the business enables us to capture a significantly larger revenue pool in this expanding market with a rights portfolio that does not need to increase. Our execution from this point forward is of a relatively fixed cost base that should not grow in line with revenues, paving the way towards our long-term target. As a final matter of housekeeping, you may have seen a separate 6K filing this morning relating to a forthcoming amendment of our Form 20F, which should be filed in the coming days. This is in response to a comment received from the SEC and relates to a restatement of our historical 2019 and 2020 earnings per share calculation. To be clear, this adjustment relates to the accounting treatment of a previously disclosed type of preference share, which existed prior to our listing and is a historic disclosure adjustment only. There is no impact on our profit, loss, assets, liabilities of cash in the group for any of the financial years. That said, we plan to amend our latest Form 20F to restate our EPS calculations for those fiscal years of 2019 and 2020. We view this as a matter of SEC housekeeping and wanted to be fully transparent on the context and timing of the amendment and what it pertains to. Before we conclude, I'd like to quickly touch on our cash position as well. I noted last quarter that we expected to finish the third quarter with $150 million of cash on the balance sheet, including restricted cash. As you'll see in our financials, we finished the quarter with just over $150 million in the cash and restricted cash, right in line with our forecast. In fact, our closing cash balance would have been about $10 million higher if it had not been for the effect of the presentational exchange rates. As noted last quarter, we still expect our Q4 cash flow to be roughly break-even. And given continued currency volatility, we expect a total cash and restricted cash balance in the range of $140 to $150 million at the year end. based on the exchange ratios at this quarter end. To be clear, we are comfortable with our strong cash position, have ample liquidity to continue funding the growth of the business under the plan as it exists today, particularly as we expect to accelerate profitability and generate positive cash flow by the second half of 2023. On that final note, I'd now like to conclude our prepared remarks and open the line to Q&A.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the question and answer roster. Your first question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan from Needham and Company. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you for taking the questions. Maybe to start, Can you just talk about some of the structural versus one-time headwinds and tailwinds in the quarter impacting sports betting revenue in GGR on your platform, thinking through some of the benefits of in-play against higher hold in the third quarter?

I think, Nick, this is one for you.

Hi, Bernie. It's actually Jack speaking. Just on the thing there, so... I think what you need to sort of understand, obviously the operators had a very good quarter, a very good sort of start to the NFL season under that. And so from our point of view, how that translates for us is a real kind of mixture of different things. We see, you know, the things that play for our revenues is really, you know, right from the top, we start a handle, we look at their GGR, we look at the margin, we look at the the balance between in play and pregame margin and these things. And all of that stuff spits out a number from us from a revenue point of view. All of those things are inputs into our performance as a business. What we saw at the very sort of start of the season for the NFL, and it's obviously a very short period of three weeks is pretty good. We're pretty happy with where we are. We're slightly ahead of where we are from a revenue point of view, on that point of view. And so that's good and the good indication is there. I definitely restate that it's three weeks of a season. It's very early to think about trends and things like that and what that means, but we're happy with where we started. The other thing to state here is to be cognizant of the fact that you know, the NFL for us is important, but it isn't our betting business. Our betting business is much wider than that, as you know. So the relative swings up and down on performance of NFL, they're not insignificant, but they're not the only thing that defines our success or failure. So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, no, that's great. And then on media revenue, we'd just love to get any color on where or how you guys are tracking against the $125 million of committed spending over three years. I think as we're one year through those deals are there any operators that are spending above their minimum thresholds and and likewise are there any you know kind of like budget flush flushes that um that were just happening in the third quarter yeah hey bernie it's nick i i think i said prepared marks you know we we had an exceptional performance in h1 of the year um and yes since then in this last quarter

the broader media headwinds, we're really back in line with our expectations. But let's be clear, Benny, back in line with our expectations still gives us, I think it's 41% year-on-year increase on a constant currency basis within the quarter, and that's now 93% year-on-year in the nine-month position. For Q4, we're anticipating to be in line with our guidance and be back in line with the guidance but not the exceptional outperformances that you saw in Q1, for example, this year, or in DQ2. I think Mark said earlier in the prepared comments, what the other thing is, is we're very confident to continue to take market share, I guess, regardless of the wider media environment.

Understood. Thanks for taking the questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet from Citi. Your line is open.

Congratulations on your accurate cash balance forecast. I had a quick question on free cash, actually. If I was thinking about 2023 and I was thinking about improvements in EBITDA from this year to next year, is there anything that you know of today that would not cause that growth in EBITDA to translate to better free cash? Free cash just being defined as Cash from Ops, less capitalized software and CapEx.

Hey, Jason. Thank you for the congratulations. No, Jason, there isn't anything from an EBITDA. Our working capital is, there might be quarterly swings, as you know, and we've guided to that this year. I'd expect there to be similar quarterly swings next year in terms of working capital. But certainly within the intra-year, there's no reason why EBITDA doesn't drop through to cash You've called out the two sort of capex areas, which are capitalized software, which I'm not expecting to increase. And indeed, over the course of time, expect that to reduce, certainly in an absolute basis as well. And then a small level of sort of tangible capex is the other piece.

The next question comes from the line of Robin Farley from UBS. your line is open.

Great. Two questions. One is looking at the stats for U.S. revenue in the first few weeks of the NFL up 70% and the in-play handle up 70%. Should we conclude that the mix of in-play was kind of consistent year over year? Is that the way you think about that? And then also wanted to just clarify on the two pieces of guidance. One is your year-end cash balance being 140 to 150 million, previously was 150 million. Is that all just FX, that sort of 10 million range? Is that just all due to FX? And similarly, for your 2023 guidance, you're reaffirming at the rates that you had given it in January, but I think last quarter you gave sort of a mark-to-market, like that the 430 to 440 would be 400 to 410 at the end of the year. FX rates at that time. I wonder if you could sort of update that for today's rates as well, just so investors can kind of anticipate with current rates what your expectations would be. Thanks.

Hey, Robin, it's Nick. I'll take, I guess, questions two and three, and I'll let one of the guys pick up the specific NFL piece. So on the cash for the $140,000 to $150,000, that's exactly right, Robin. You've called it out. When we talked about 150, we were around about 1.21, which I think was the rate around mid-August. The rates are now, what are they today, about 1.12. So it's purely just an FX position. Indeed, you can see in our cash flow statement that if we'd stayed at 1.35 throughout this year, our cash balance actually would be around $25 million higher, purely from an FX presentational fit. On the 2023 position, I guess the first important thing, Robin, is to call out just to reiterate what we said in the prepared remarks, is that based on the sort of strong performance of the business, we've reiterated the 2023 revenue and adjusted EBIT guidance at that 1.35, which was the currency back on that investor day back in January. You're right to say that the biggest variable, therefore, in our guidance is that movement of currencies, and we're... anywhere between 1.1 and 1.15 over the course of the last couple of weeks. Again, just to remind everybody that that's really a purely presentational impact on our revenues and a much more minimal presentational impact on our EBITDA. What we're very conscious of and what I'm keen not to do is to constantly change our official guidance based on moving exchange rates. So what I'll be looking to do is to come back to the market with an updated 2023 view based on where the exchange rates probably like to be in and around the new year, Robin. I'll hand over to one of the guys to pick up your first question on the NFL in play.

Hi, Robin, it's Jack. Basically, your assumptions are bang on. As I said to Bernie's question earlier on, There's a real mixture of ways for us to make the revenue and the mix and the margin and the handle and all those things are there. But in short, we're broadly in line. Our assumptions, as previously stated, are broadly where we thought they would be. And that's what we're seeing at the moment on the trends we've had in a very short period of time.

OK, great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan. Hey, guys.

I want to start with Second Spectrum. It's a nice showcase on Thursday night, football with Amazon. Nice integration with Bet365 that's now happening. But can you talk about what that's going to look like to the consumer within the betting experience within Bet365? And then secondly, talk about the opportunity to bring the technology to a much wider audience within the NFL community but also other sports leagues.

Hi, it's Mark. Yeah, so the Bet365 partnership is an exploratory partnership. And where we're coming from is, you know, if you look at the bookmaker sites and the innovation that you've seen over the last sort of, you know, 10 or 10 plus years, it's we think there's room for improvement that we can use second spectrum to really drive that user experience. Things like pose recognition, interactivity with some of the streaming and just generally the interface that the punters are using to place the bets and frankly, some of the other activities that we think they'll be doing over time, whether that's interacting with ticketing or interacting with with sort of merchandising other things that are coming, we think that user experience and that presentational layer can be improved and the second spectrum technology really gives us an opportunity to do that. So that's kind of where we're heading with this.

Is it, maybe as a follow-up, is it more within the AV functionality or is it more throughout the whole betting experience in the app?

Well, yeah, I mean, what do you mean the whole betting experience? Are you talking about sports betting? I mean, we said in the investor video that we put out at the beginning of the year, we kind of gave a bit of a vision about how we think it's going to work longer term. We believe there are huge opportunities to cross-sell, you know, not only new bet types and more bets to the punters, but other products within that user interface. So we think that the future of sports betting and the future of that user experience is going to be based around having further products cross-sold into it, whether they're betting products or external products. as the user is involved in the game. Whether that's AV in the traditional way or whether that's graphical representations of the game is going to, you know, that will evolve, but we think initially it will be both, and over time that will change.

Great. Then just one for Nick. Appreciate the update on guidance, but given kind of the macro challenges, various crosswinds, I guess, how do you feel about the cost structure today the operating leverage in the model going forward. And then my math implies incremental margins, EBITDA margins of about 30% at constant currency between 2023 and 2022. Is that a good rule of thumb going forward in future years? Thanks.

Yeah, yeah. Hi, Ryan. I mean, the headlines really is that the current cost base can support much higher revenues. And actually, if you look at our numbers this year, you're seeing it. If you look at the operating expenses in the business, actually quarter on quarter as well as year on year, you're seeing that, in fact, in some areas they're decreasing, not increasing. And yet our revenue is obviously increasing, certainly year on year. So we're actually at that inflection point now. And as I was just saying to Robin a second ago, we're very confident with our EBITDA position for next year on a currency basis that's sort of 40 to 50. So the way you're thinking about that incremental margin is correct.

Thanks. Good luck, guys.

Your next question comes from Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Hey. Great, great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two to start off. Nick, looking at the cost of revenue, you did drive really nice leverage in your data cost. So your data cost associated with sports betting. So can you kind of talk about some of the put-takes there? And then we have been hearing some softness in the broader advertising market. Are you seeing that with your media segment?

Thank you. Hey, Jed. Yeah, thanks for the questions.

On the first one, absolutely. And it kind of mirrors what I've just said to Ryan, really, is that the current cost base can support much higher revenues. Now, on the cost of revenue, there's a little bit of seasonality in that in relation to the NFL rights and the NFL revenues that we try and match. So Q2 and Q3 will always like to have a slightly higher gross margin than Q1 and Q4. But the point that you make is right, that the cost base that we have today, I don't envisage it growing significantly, and certainly in the operating line significantly, as we continue to grow our revenues at a decent click. On the media space, well, I think I commented a little bit in the prepared remarks, but the exceptional performance in H1 There are obviously broader media headwinds. So we're not outperforming our expectations in Q3. What we are is in line with our expectations in Q3. But we don't apologize for that. That's a 41% constant currency year-on-year growth. And let's also remember that now we're lapping acquisitions. That is almost all entirely organic growth, not inorganic growth. And year-to-date, we're now at 93% year-on-year. And the other thing I think that Mark said earlier is that what we are continuing to do and we expect to continue to do, regardless of what the wider media environment looks like, is we expect to continue to take market share in Syria.

And then just as another question, I think a couple of weeks ago, there was an announcement around one of your competitors, another sports book, you know, kind of tracking NBA data. I believe Second Spectrum is involved with the NBA. So can you talk about that relationship? And then sort of, you know, as more sports books, I guess, lean into this player tracking, you know, around prop bets, you know, just how are you positioned from a technology standpoint relative to your competitors?

Thank you. Hi, Ted. Sorry, it's Jack speaking again.

So from a technology point of view, we feel very, very good compared to the competition. I think it's well understood to be a market leader in what it's doing, and we feel great about the technology and the use cases for that right across the beast. Some of the stuff Mark talked on about user experience that Mark touched on earlier when talking about Bet365, but On top of that, and you're right to allude in this, there are opportunities around different types of bet types, player props, new bits of data coming out, that stuff we feel great about. With respect to the NBA in specific, you're right, we are a tracking provider and more than that to the NBA. And I think we've spoken about this before, the way that we can work with sports leagues. multifaceted so in some instances we are purely we buy their rights and and we distribute their rights in some instances we are technology providers in some instances like the NFL we are all of those things and it's a real combination of that with respect to the NBA and a couple of capacities we're just technology provider there so we're thrilled to be part of that really good relationship so we're that's did that answer your question just um yes thank you

Question comes from the line of David Bain from B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much. I guess my first question would be with regard to the settlement of, you know, sport radar litigation and how that would change the landscape for G&E strategically or, you know, generally for European sports rights moving forward.

Hi there. Yeah, there's sort of limits to what I can say about this, but I'm very happy to give you the lines from the press release. Basically, we've resolved the litigation. Resolution enables Football Data Code to continue to license the market Football Data Code data. As it deems fit, Genius shall maintain the ability and the exclusive right to provide load agency official Football Data Co betting data through the rights through 2024. Sport Radar has therefore agreed to refrain from unofficial in-stadia scouting of the Premier League, Football League and Scottish Professional Football League matches and has purchased a sub-licence from Genius Sports for a delayed feed to be marketed as the official Football Data Co secondary feed through 2024. And the remaining terms of our settlement are very confidential, but, you know, I'm very happy with the outcome and I'm very happy with the position we've reached.

Yeah, no, I understand that. But is there a general, like, bigger picture way to think about this for European sports going forward or...?

I don't think the market has really changed. The way that the business has been operating and the way that we have worked basically forever, I think that's pretty much the accepted and adopted view of the leagues, the sportsbooks now, and the rest of the industry. I think for us, it doesn't really change how we operate. And, you know, I can't comment on whether, you know, our competitors will operate differently or not. But, you know, for us, the cost of our rights are built into our model. You know, we understand how and where our data is coming from. And, you know, things aren't really going to change very much for us. It's just, you know, a positive affirmation of what we're doing.

Got it. Okay. And then, Nick, just, you know, I know this is kind of following up on Robin and some others, but just so that we understand, you know, the effects, could we take, you know, like a 0.1 differential change example using the mix in your guidance to understand what that would do to revenue, EBITDA, or free cash flow? I know those buckets are different just given, you know, you have some certain CapEx dollars and or in dollars versus pounds or op-ex. Could we get just kind of a mechanical view?

Yeah. Hey, David.

I guess, I mean, looking at those three individual buckets, you talk about revenue, EBITDA, and cash. So, perhaps if I take them in reverse order. So, cash, I think, as I said in one of the previous answers, you know, we're $25 million less just because of the exchange rate fall based on the the level of cash we've got in the business. So our $150 million that we reported this quarter, had we remained at 1.35, would have been circa $175 million. And you can see that in the bottom of the cash flow. Given where exchange rates are, I guess you can kind of do the math on that bit. I mean, the bit I'd say about revenues in EBITDA is that EBITDA is far less impacted by revenues because inevitably there are some costs within our P&L that are dollar denominators and therefore don't suffer any foreign exchange mix on that. So it's relatively minimal impact with our EBITDA. Revenues, obviously, we've seen it this year and we've seen a reduction. But one of the, I guess, nuances, David, and why I'm keen to not only let exchange rate settles, is actually the mix of our revenues of how much of dollar-denominated revenues and non-dollar-denominated revenues I mean, our course of this card was strong in the US. I think 30% of our revenues are US-related, and that's probably likely to go up as in Q4 and Q1, but obviously dropped significantly in Q2 and Q3 with a quieter US sports calendar. So that also has a significant impact. What I would say, David, is just to reiterate really what Robin has said, is that at our guidance rate, we are confident with the underlying performance of the business at 430 to 440, and we're likely to update that view purely from an FX example, probably early in the new year.

Real quick, so if I were to say, look at 3Q as an example, the mix next year should be more US generally, one would think.

I think that's a good rule of thumb, David. I think that's right. I mean, as I say, the seasonality quarter on quarter, but yet, I mean, the trajectory of the business Um, and the growth in the U S market naturally would expect to be a slightly, um, higher U S mix going forward.

Perfect. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey from Bridgemore company. Your line is open.

Hey Mark, Nick, Jack. Good morning guys. Wrapping in. Thanks for taking my questions. Um, I guess the first one just on the trend here of live sports going to streaming services, obviously you guys are very visible on the Amazon side and it seems like that's been a great win for you. Just curious when you look at the transition of betting to streaming services, if there's anything incremental that you see on betting behavior in terms of maybe ultimate GGR or anything in play versus pre-money trends that's incrementally positive for you or not. And then I guess same question, but looking at sort of tier two, maybe tier three sports, you know, you hear of Netflix looking to get into live sports, obviously tennis, which is a great betting sport already. But also sports like surfing, you can imagine that Netflix gets surfing, viewership's going to spike here, I would think. And with that, maybe that also, I think you can bet on sports, Mark, or surfing. I don't know. I'm not sure. Seems like that'd be good. But if you do see these sort of tier two, tier three sports going to these larger streaming services and a pickup here in viewership, is that an opportunity incremental opportunity for you on the betting side. Thanks, guys.

Yeah. Hey, Mike Smart. Look, I'll take this to your questions backwards. I think our business, I mean, we spend a ton of time, you guys here, on these calls and investor meetings talking about the NFL, but our business is a business that is really about not only the NFL, but enormously about the long tail of sports. So You know, we cover, you know, hundreds of thousands of sporting events from everything from the NFL all the way down to, you know, things like pickleball and surfing and, you know, and we always have. That long tail of sports is so important because, you know, we tried to explain this in the investor day. It's all about the time of day. It's about having content always available. It's having the shop window open for investors to engage with. So the long tail of sport is something that we are, you know, Well, we're real experts with and in lots of ways, I think we pioneered. Adding streaming to it is really just about improving fan engagement and improving fan engagement, whether that fan engagement comes because the fans are more interested because Netflix is promoting it or whether that fan engagement comes because the bookmakers start streaming on their own sites. we're kind of indifferent to because ultimately it's about making the fans more interested and getting them more engaged. our job and what we were talking about earlier with the deal, you know, the exploratory work we're doing with 365 and some of the stuff that we're doing with Second Spectrum, our job is to do a better job of making sports fans engage with broadcast. So we welcome broadcast in any way we can, whether that's on Netflix or on Amazon or or on a bookmaker's site. The second spectrum acquisition was really focused on making sure those broadcasts are more interactive, that they make more sense and are more interesting for your viewers. And over time, that technology stack that we have will play us unbelievably well into the next generation of integrated sports betting content. And whether that's only on the sports book sites or whether that's on a Netflix or an Amazon, the world is still to see. But from our point of view, we're incredibly well placed. And I think a lot of that answer probably covers your first question, I think. The streaming on the betting side, it's really, again, it's about fan engagement. It's about making sure that The fans are getting what they want. We think we can help bookmakers do a better job of cross-selling, not only additional bets, but other products, making those fans more interested, more interactive, and really appealing to some of the new generation of sports betting players and sports betting professionals. sports bettors that come online who are interested in more information, more detail, more data. So we sort of see this as a really exciting and really valuable part of the ecosystem. And we're, you know, I think fairly uniquely placed to really drive value from it as we're proving, you know, with some of the deals that we've talked about.

Nice. Thanks, Mark. One more for me. Nick, not to squeeze you too much here, because we've gotten a lot of questions on the media side, the ad side, but no doubt, you look at the average ad tech stock here in the U.S., it's not trending well in business. It's been very challenging. So, obviously, you've heard your prepared remarks, but I guess, and you reaffirmed your 23 guide, but given you're seeing some near-term headwinds here, just your confidence on... your original media assumption for 23, because I think that does sort of embed a larger spend above the minimums that you had baked into your 22 guide. So I realize you're not changing your guidance, but I'm just curious why you feel that media here for you will be resilient in 23, given the headwinds that you've noted in your peer set and the ad tech side. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, it might be helpful to get Jack's color on this from a sort of operator's commercial side, but just to be pedantic, we didn't actually give any specific media 2023 projections. But what, as I reiterated previously, is that what we are comfortable with is the guidance at 2023 for the whole of the revenues based on a constant currency. But let me hand over to Jack, because he might be able to give you a little bit more color that might be helpful.

Yeah. Hi, Mike. I guess, like, you know, some things you stated are obviously true. Obviously, some headwinds for some other players in the market, really. I think from our point of view, I think we're in a slightly different place, Mike, because, you know, we're beginning to offer many more products to this market. And those products are very relevant across not just our core market of sports betting operators and those that were historically built, but actually much wider than that. I don't have a number in front of me, but I think we've got some, we signed a lot of deals with brands who weren't sports betting operators this year. I think the number was, this quarter, I think the number was 10 or something like that. So we're beginning to really drive into that space, which doesn't mean that there's not pressure coming from them, but we're able to expand in a market because we've got good products and a good offering from our current position. We're not starting from a mature place where we've maxed out all the opportunities in front of us, which I guess some of these other people, not totally familiar with their businesses, might be in that place, so they're seeing those headwinds. Whereas that's not how we see it. We see it with very foothills here, and we've got massive amounts of opportunity right across the world in this space.

Nice. Thank you, gentlemen. Good luck.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.