Flutter CEO Peter Jackson says he’s “delighted” by FanDuel’s strong performance during Q1 2024 when his company reported earnings Tuesday.
They say the rich get richer, and in FanDuel’s case, that seems to be true.
The No. 1 brand in both sportsbook and iGaming shared an earnings presentation with numbers to validate that title. FanDuels’ parent company Flutter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in late January, so Tuesday’s earnings was its first quarterly review since.
Per the report, FanDuel maintains the top spot in the US legal sports betting market with a 52% share of net gaming revenue (NGR) as well as topping the iGaming market with a record GGR share of 27% in Q1 2024.
This propelled US-based revenue for the company to $1.41 billion for the quarter, a 32$ year-over-year increase from Q1 2023. Across its full international portfolio, Flutter churned $3.397 billion in total revenue for a 16% increase year-over-year.
Market Dominance
The US legal sports betting market is obviously a top priority for Flutter as it looks to continue its reign at the top while fending off close competitor DraftKings and the rest of the field mostly consisting of BetMGM, ESPN Bet, Caesars, Fanatics, and bet365.
Still, with the amount of competition and the sheer growth trajectory of the industry in recent years, maintaining market dominance is super impressive.
Average monthly players in the US using FanDuel spiked 15% year-over-year to 3,898,000 which contributed to the 32% YoY gain in US-based revenue for the sportsbook business.
The key highlight for FanDuel’s Q1 performance came in one of the newest legal sports betting markets in the US. FanDuel quickly became the best online sportsbook in North Carolina, getting 5.3% of the adult population in the state to sign up for the platform in just the first 45 days the North Carolina sports betting market was live. That means 1 in 20 adults in North Carolina are now signed up for FanDuel, a stat that really puts into perspective the scale of the brand’s dominance.
To top it all off, FanDuel’s iGaming average monthly players grew 34% year-over-year in the quarter too.
All of this success has Flutter CEO Peter Jackson exuding confidence in his company’s ability to withstand any threats to its market-leading position. He told CNBC’s Contessa Brewer that “it’s really tough if you’re a smaller player without our resources to impact us.”
Maintaining Integrity
Brewer hit Jackson with some tough questions about the recent improprieties taking the sports betting space by storm, namely the Jontay Porter scandal and the investigation into Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter.
Jackson did not back down from answering these, and his responses underscored the inherent advantages that a legal, regulated market has for properly addressing such issues:
“The advantage of our business, a regulated business, that takes these things very seriously is that we do spend time and energy focusing on that. Obviously, that isn’t the same for the operators in the black market who don’t really care about that.”
FanDuel joined six of the largest US online sports betting and gaming operators to establish the Responsible Online Gaming Association (ROGA) in March. In the wake of some shocking headlines that obscured the industry’s public image, Jackson is still confident that companies like his can ensure the integrity of competition remains intact.
“It’s crucial from my perspective that we’re able to use our resources, our insights, our experience to spot anomalous behavior around a game,” Jackson said.
