By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) -Flutter sees revenue at its rapidly growing and market leading U.S. Fanduel business jumping by 4.5 to 5-times to around $15 billion over the long term, the world’s largest online betting firm said on Wednesday.
Fanduel has a 42% share of the sports betting market in the United States, which has taken off after a ban was lifted there in 2018. It said on Wednesday it expects the overall value of the sports betting and online gaming market to rise to $40.5 billion by 2030 from $9 billion currently.
“We do believe that we’ll be on the high end of the range – five times,” Fanduel Chief Executive Amy Howe said of the revenue forecast at an investor day, adding that Fanduel was “incredibly confident” of turning a profit for the first time in 2023.
Last week Flutter upgraded its 2022 full-year revenue guidance for Fanduel to between $2.95 billion to $3.2 billion. Fanduel’s revenue stood at $300 million in 2018 when Flutter bought an initial majority stake in the then-fantasy sports operator.
The Dublin-based group, whose Paddy Power, Betfair and Sportsbet brands are also the No.1 operators in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, grew its overall revenue to 6 billion pounds ($7.1 billion) last year.
Fanduel said on Wednesday that it expects sports betting to be legalised in states covering 80% of the U.S. population by 2030, up from 35% currently.
Scale will be critical in capturing new customers, it said, citing the fact that although there are 59 different sports betting operators in the U.S, only three have double digit share positions – Fanduel, DraftKings and BetMGM.
Fanduel is targetting a 12% gross win margin by 2025, up from 10% currently and long-term core earnings margins similar to other Flutter divisions of 25%–30%, thanks to marketing and operational spending becoming a smaller percentage of revenue.
“Given our expectation for the size of the market, we are clearly talking about very material levels of profitability, even in the context of Flutter’s large earnings base today,” Fanduel Chief Financial Officer David Jennings said.
($1 = 0.8398 pounds)
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Diane Craft and Deepa Babington)
