The Gambling.com Group does not expect a significant negative long-term impact on its business, with the firm positioned to “benefit from an accelerated structural change from offline to online”.
Asserting confidence in operational efficiency and revenue growth under pandemic conditions, the firm asserts that in order to take advantage of growth opportunities it plans to scale up investments in people, content, and products, with a continued heavy focus on the American market into the close of the year.
“With states now collecting less tax, they have even more need for new revenue sources to support public health,” commented Charles Gillespie, chief executive of Gambling.com Group.
“The case for online sports betting and particularly online casino is harder for state legislators to ignore than ever before. With politicians having witnessed the success of other US states, we expect to see increased legislative action and have revised up, once again, our expectations for the roll-out of regulated online gambling in the US.”
The group is currently authorised to do business in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, and Colorado and is pursuing licensure or awaiting regulation in Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Tennessee.
With a decline in sports revenue offset by increased demand for other online gambling products, such as casino and poker, Gambling.com saw Q2 revenue increase 29 per cent to €5.69m (2019: €4.42m).
Operating profit for the quarter reached €3.05m (2019: €856,000), EBITDA came in at €3.14 (2019: €940,000) and new depositing customers finished with 24,986 (2019: 19,487).
For the January-June period revenue dropped two per cent from €9.67m to €9.46m year-on-year, operating profit reached €3.48m (2019: €2.36m), EBITDA totalled €3.7m (2019: €2.7m) and new depositing customers closed over five thousand down at 41,082 (2019: 46,752).
“The macro environment continues to be difficult to predict and we continue to monitor the situation closely with the health and wellbeing of the team our number one priority,” continued Gillespie.
“As expected, we saw a decline in sports revenue in the quarter as a result of COVID-19 postponements and cancellations of most sports events. However, the decline in sports revenue was offset by increased demand for other online gambling products like casino and poker.
“We attribute this increased consumer demand to a variety of factors including the closure of land-based gaming facilities, restriction on movement and substitution demand from sports bettors unable to wager normally.
“We expect to see increased adoption of online gambling products persist post-pandemic. The net effect of all this is that online gambling in general has accelerated its adoption and take up of the overall share of the global gambling market. There is no reason to suspect a reversal of this trend.”
Closing his CEO comments Gillespie provided the following outlook: “Although we remain cautious about the general economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, online-based business models such as ours have benefited from an accelerated structural shift from offline to online.
“The group itself continues to benefit from improved operational efficiencies from our new technology platforms. We are now in a position to accelerate product development and optimisation. We look to the future with confidence.”