Genius Sports Limited

Good day and welcome to Genius Sports first quarter 2026 earnings results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Genius Sports. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. 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 statement should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 17th. 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 U.S. GAAP. The 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, everyone, and thank you for joining. Before I get into the results, a quick word on context. We're really pleased to share that we successfully closed the Legend acquisition last week. Integration is well underway, and we're excited to share our progress into the quarters ahead. Q1 was another strong quarter. reinforcing the simple point that this is a reliable compounding business model and that we are executing on plan. We delivered group revenue growth of 31% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 21% with meaningful contributions from both betting and media. Importantly, betting grew 33% this quarter, and that consistency is structural, and I want to spend a few minutes on why. Net revenue retention remains in the 120 to 130% range across our Sportsbook customers year after year. We partner with circa 500 licensed Sportsbook brands across regulated markets globally, and over half our revenue is generated outside of the United States. Our consistent growth comes from the same drivers that we have always communicated. selling additional content and products to sportsbooks, winning new customers globally, sharing in market growth, and increasing the value of our partnerships as they come up for renewal. Each renewal is a pricing event. More content, more products, more geographies. And that's what compounds into the growth that you see year after year. What sets us apart is how deliberately this business is built. That repeated performance across a diverse set of customers, products, and regulated geographies is fundamental to how this business compounds. Further, we are selective by design, working only with licensed operators in regulated markets. It is what makes our business model predictable and sustainable. That predictability is reinforced by our contracts, which are structured to protect against the downside. Volatility in handle or hold does not translate to earnings volatility for Genius. We have proven this through periods of industry-wide pressure, and this quarter was no different. While discussing our betting business, I want to spend a moment on prediction markets because, as we've mentioned before, this is a meaningful new ecosystem for Genius Sports. The regulatory framework is evolving. Leads are establishing agreements for the CFTC and prediction market platforms, and well-funded operators are deploying significant new influxes of capital at scale. are a beneficiary of this. Where we are different is that our position here is structural. We provide the data and the infrastructure that enables prediction market operators and the other stakeholders in the ecosystem to function at scale. We expect this to translate into both incremental data revenue and advertising demand as those operators ramp customer acquisition. The way to think about this is simple. We are applying the same proven model in the US online sports betting market to a new category. As a concrete example of revenue, during the quarter, we onboarded several high profile market makers using our low latency data feeds to help them participate in prediction markets. That is the pattern. Our infrastructure becomes the foundation for new products as they emerge. And as the industry continues to evolve, we see a clear opportunity to execute that same proven strategy and effectively expand our addressable market. We are at the very early stages of that journey today and are excited about our pipeline. That is the betting story. Now media. Media grew 22% in this quarter. Most exciting for Genius was the launch of our Moment engine that has already gained significant traction across the advertising industry and become the new standard. The Moment engine identifies when fan engagement is likely to peak, not just from the scoreboard, but from momentum shifts, comebacks, And the kind of high impact moments where customer attention is most valuable to advertisers. Genius IQ is what makes that possible. And importantly, it matches that moment to high value audiences and activates them instantly. It's not just about identifying what is happening in the game. It's about understanding who it matters to and how they are likely to respond. Because not every fan reacts to the same moment in the game in the same way. That signal, the connection between the moment, the fan, and the response is what advertisers pay for. What differentiates us is the combination of data and identity. Our FanHub ID graph, 250 million consumers, combined with legends intent signals drive better targeting and higher yields. The result is enabling advertisers to target high intent audiences in real time, which drives higher yields and increased spend over time that translates directly into high margin media revenue. To accelerate the growth of this opportunity, we have now integrated the Moment Engine with leaders representing approximately 90% of the programmatic market, agencies, broadcasters, and the major SSPs and DSPs. These integrations let us connect into existing advertising workflows and budgets with minimal friction, supporting our ability to scale efficiently. The product was already live during the tentpole events like the Super Bowl and March Madness, with NBA finals and FIFA World Cup still ahead. What we are executing here is a structural shift in how digital businesses create value. The economy has moved from selling attention to capturing intent. Search engines did it. Retail media did it at the point of purchase. In sports, we are enabling that shift to happen in real time. And the Moment Engine is built precisely for it. At our new front event in New York a few weeks ago, we partnered with nearly 70 new advertisers. Clear evidence of growing demand for outcome-driven sports advertising. That builds on existing partnerships that we have with Publicis, WPP, DoorDash, Venmo, and Samsung. Samsung in particular tested our self-serve CTV product early and quickly graded Genius as a tier one partner within its internal evaluation framework, increasing spend by 220% from their test campaign to their most recent booking. A remarkable signal given Samsung's scale and selectivity in choosing advertising technology partners. We expect more of these graduations as advertisers complete their first full season with the product. As adoption continues to grow, we expect the moment engine to be a meaningful driver of high margin media revenue over time. The core businesses in betting and media are on a strong fit in. And now I want to spend a few minutes on the three areas that are accelerating our margin expansion and profitability. Legend, Genius IQ, and AI. They're all connected and all running on the same platform. First, Legend. As you know, Legend adds the intent layer of the system that we have been building for two decades. Owned environments where 118 million unique users actively engage with sport and iGaming, with more than two thirds returning regularly. Combined with the official data and infrastructure that Genius already provides, the platform now connects context, engagement, and action all in one place. As AI commoditizes information retrieval, owned environments are where users come back to engage. They become more defensible, not less. Legend also extends the Moment Engine into the global iGaming market, which is expected to grow at near 20% CAGR over the next three years. On customer acquisition, as US markets mature, sophisticated operators are shifting spend from the blanket promotional offers towards targeted high intent performance media. Channels where legend is a proven leader. We're already seeing clear evidence of this shift. For example, Legend acquired customers delivered 60% higher yield for operators after one year. The category is moving towards Legends model. Integration is underway and we'll share more on Synergy execution next quarter. Second, Genius IQ is replacing legacy systems across the sports league landscape. As we outlined at our investor day, Genius IQ is the operating system of modern sport. One platform that captures live game action, understands fans, distributes data, and powers every touchpoint where sport is consumed. Officiating, coaching, betting, fan engagement, advertising, all running on the same system. Legacy manual data capture, where humans key in events from television feeds, is obsolete. Leagues are transitioning towards automated AI-driven solutions, and we are winning that transition. Our recent expansion with Liga MX is one example, a single relationship covering officiating support, performance analytics for clubs, betting data, and fan engagement, all powered by Genius IQ. We see a meaningful opportunity to take market share and drive incremental revenue with limited additional costs as more leagues make this transition. This is a strategic shift that we anticipated and that we built for, and we are now seeing the return on that investment in real time. Third, AI lowers our cost base and increases speed across the business. Genius IQ automates data collection in venues where it is deployed, delivering faster, more accurate data with reduced operational overhead. By the end of next year, we expect that automation to span our entire data rights portfolio. That is a meaningful margin lever as we scale. Internally, agentic AI has cut feature development time by more than 50%, and we expect these gains to compound. We're extending the same capabilities into partner workflows, embedding our technology more deeply into customers' operations, which both creates stickiness and creates additional commercial opportunity. We have also developed automated anti-piracy solutions to protect our most valuable asset, the data itself. AI is not just enabling innovation in our products, it is structurally improving our margin profile. and reinforcing the defensibility of our business. The through line is this. One platform, three accelerants, expanding operating leverage. That is what gives us confidence in sustained margin expansion from here. Brian will take you through the financials, but I'll leave you with this. Q1 extends a consistent pattern of execution on a durable model. We are moving from a data provider to the operating system and monetization layer of global sport. We've built a competitive position and margin profile that few others in the sports ecosystem can replicate. Consider this against the backdrop of an industry that's being reshaped by AI. Every wave of AI progress increases the value of two things. data that can't be replicated, and destinations audiences actively choose. We own both, which puts us in a rare position. AI doesn't threaten our core. It compounds it. The opportunity is to use AI to make our data more useful, our destinations more essential, and the gap between us and everyone else even wider. I want to close with a direct comment. We understand and appreciate that it's early days with respect to legend. As I wrote to shareholders in February, the gap between how we see this business and how some of the market currently sees it is where the asymmetric returns live. The way we close that gap is by delivering quarter after quarter with the discipline that has defined this business for two decades. These results begin that process, and every conversation between today and our next call will be about exactly that. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.