Los Angeles Rams’ Odell Beckham Jr. (R) celebrates with a teammate after scoring a touchdown during Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)The owner of Paddy Power and Betfair has charged through to deliver a touchdown in the US, with a 45% boost in revenue there in the first quarter of the year.
Flutter Entertainment’s US sales rose to £429 million in the first three months of the year, with a 43% rise in average monthly players to 2.36 million.
Gambling stakes in the territory, where Flutter owns platform FanDuel, more than doubled to £5.7 billion on the back of big ticket events including the SuperBowl, which saw the company enjoy its best ever day for new sign-ups.
The group itself recorded revenue growth of 6%, rising to £1.57 billion in the first quarter.
Growth came from “recreational player momentum” as the number of average monthly players grew by 15% to 8.85 million.
In the UK and Ireland, Flutter reported a 15% rise in average monthly players to 3.63 million but revenue slipped 20% to £453 million as the end of pandemic restrictions led to weaker demand for recreational games and sports betting.
Peter Jackson, CEO of Flutter Entertainment, said: “The frequency with which customers are engaging on the [online] platform in what we would describe as the ‘covid unwind’, where with the UK in lockdown customers increased their frequency of engagement, that’s now moderated and come back again to the levels that we had seen previously pre-Covid.”
He added: “There’s no doubt that the cost of living will impact customers expenditure. There’s significant increases that customers are having to stomach around energy and a number of other items, and the extent to which that impacts our business, we’ll have to see.”
Flutter shares were up more than 5% in early trading today
Success in the US market may help quell a proxy rebellion brewing among shareholders regarding a proposed 26% basic salary hike for Jackson and a 20% increase to chief financial officer Jonathan Hill.
