Entain touted a record level of online active customers with a 23% year-over-year increase when it reported its results for fiscal year 2023 Thursday.
BetMGM itself finished at the top end of expectations with $1.96 billion in net gaming revenue, a 36% YoY increase. The operator claimed 14% market share in the sports betting and iGaming markets where BetMGM operates.
Shifting expectations
The company updated its trading and online net gaming revenue guidance for FY2023 last September, projecting lower-than-expected growth due to adverse sporting results impacting margins, safer gambling measures, and regulatory costs. It expected BetMGM to report between $1.8 billion and $2 billion during that adjustment phase, so its actual results were in line with that adjusted expectation.
“2023 presented a number of challenges for the Group, both industry-wide and Entain-specific. I am extremely proud of how our people around the world came together to navigate the business through an eventful and at times difficult year," Stella David, interim CEO of Entain. "Against that backdrop, Entertain was still able to deliver overall revenue growth of 14% including our U.S. joint venture achieving revenue at the top end of expectations.”
Other financial highlights
BetMGM also achieved positive EBITDA for the second half of 2023. This helped propel Entain’s online net gaming revenue to a 12% increase.
Entain noted that its the only global operator with 100% revenue from regulated or regulating markets as one of its sustainability highlights.
Its net gaming revenue climbed from $4.3 billion in 2022 to $4.8 billion in 2023, with slight increases in both gross profit and underlying EBITDA as well. Gross profit jumped to 2.9 billion from 2.7 billion and underlying EBITDA rose to just over $1 billion from $993 million.
Its retail sports betting arm reported a 9% increase in net gaming revenue, reflecting the acquired shops in New Zealand and Poland as drivers of this growth.
The company expects further regulatory headwinds in the UK and the Netherlands to potentially reduce FY2024 EBITDA by approximately $40 million, so it will be interesting to see if and how they adjust their future expectations again this year.
