Snowden gives shoutout to theScore
TheScore gets a shoutout in Penn’s Q3 results
Jay Snowden’s virtual scrum with financial analysts and members of the fourth estate occurred after we hit the Publish button on last Thursday’s dispatch. But we thought the comments of the Penn Entertainment CEO’s around theScore’s Ontario business merited this filing from the Dept. of Better Late Than Never.
“We continue to grow our business at or above market growth levels, especially on the online casino side as we get more and more effective at cross selling between online sports betting and online casino,” Snowden said.
Much of the buzz over the fibre optics during the CEO’s call was about the pending launch of ESPN Bet, which will be powered by Penn/theScore, on Nov. 14. In presenting the third-quarter results, the company referred to its success in Ontari-ari-ari-o as a “blueprint for success that we intend to replicate in the U.S. with ESPN Bet”.
From Snowden:
“ESPN BET will be powered by our proprietary and proven technology platform, which has been driving impressive performance in Ontario for over a year now under theScore Bet brands. In fact October represents a record month for us in GGR (gross gaming revenue) and NGR (net gaming revenue) in both online sports betting and iCasino… We’ve had great success in terms of media integration, retention, and cross sell results, leading to double-digit market share in a highly competitive market.
“Notably 73% of our total handle in Ontario comes from users already within the score media’s ecosystem and in terms of cross selling, there’s over 50% conversion, five zero, of online sports betting players into iCasino. Besides Sky Bet in the UK we think Ontario with theScore Bet provides one of the best blueprints for success in the US with ESPN BET.”
As Dave Briggs reported for PlayCanada.com, Snowden believes that when it comes to the merging of sports wagering and sports media, nobody in Ontario is doing it better than theScore. That’s likely to elicit howls of protest from the folks at FanDuel, Bet99 and Sports Interaction, among others operating legally in the province
“. . . I think we’ve got it to a point in Ontario, where it’s pretty frictionless,” Snowden said. “When you’re in theScore media app, and you’re populating a bet slip, and then you’re ready to place the bet, you click and it takes you right over theScore Bet, you place your transaction, and you move right back over the score and finish reading your story or whatever you were doing checking scores and stats, etc. And we envision getting there very quickly here in the U.S. with ESPN. … And we have a shared vision of getting there here in the U.S. as quickly as possible.”
We’ll save that debate for when the snow starts flying. For now, however, we’ll gladly take an operator’s insight and information into its Ontario business. Nary a word was mentioned in DraftKings’ Q3 financials when they were released last week although there was a “it also has a also has a sports betting and iGaming presence in Ontario, Canada” mention in a CNBC article on the results.
Rush Street Interactive, on the other hand, provided some numbers around its third-quarter performance in the true north, strong and free. Average revenue per monthly active user for the company in the U.S. and Canada was $374 for Q3, a hike of eight per cent year over year.
Also, if you don’t have time to do a deepish dive through RSI’s investor presentation:
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Playmaker Capital to be acquired by Better Collective
There was news of the breaking kind late yesterday afternoon that Toronto digital sports media company Playmaker Capital has entered into a definitive agreement by Danish digital sports media company Better Collective. The financial details of the acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, were made public in a news release, but includes “total price consideration of 176 mEUR” ($285.5 million in Canuck bucks).
If you’re keeping score at home, that’s two Playmaker brands acquired by Better Collective over the past four months. In July, BC acquired U.S. sports and entertainment media platform Playmaker HQ for up to $54 million U.S. The company, which owns The Action Network and HLTV, has had a busy year on the M&A side as it also acquired in August four Swedish sports media brands from Everysport Group.
“Acquiring Playmaker is in many ways transformational for Better Collective and will be an important milestone in our journey towards becoming the leading digital sports media group,” Better Collective founder and CEO Jesper Sogaard said in the release. “Upon closing of the acquisition, we will be able to significantly grow our audience and reach a larger segment of generalist sports fans.
“For years, Playmaker has built incredibly strong sports media brands and excited sports fans across the Americas with high-quality sports content, cultivating a loyal and dedicated following. The skilled team behind Playmaker brings a unique set of media competencies that will boost our organization.”
In a LinkedIn post last night, Sogaard added: “The deal is in many ways transformational for Better Collective as we will both become the market leader in South America with the largest audience across sports media brands and further strengthen our leading position in North America.”
In Playmaker Capital, Better Collective is getting a company that has also been an active M&A participant since Jordan Gnat - the son-in-law of Canadian sports tycoon Larry Tanenbaum - co-founded the company with Canadian venture capital business Relay Ventures in 2018. Today, Playmaker owns Latin America-focused Futbol Sites, U.S. sports media brand YardBarker, online gaming affiliate Wedge Traffic, Canadian sports media business The Nation Network (which produces approximately 20 hockey podcasts across the country), and Quebec-based sports and entertainment media group La Poche Blue, which it acquired in August.
The company’s shares are listed on both the TSX Venture Exchange and the U.S.-based OTCQX.?As reported by Sara Fischer of Axios this morning, Playmaker’s shares closed at 49 cents yesterday, shares of Playmaker closed at 49 cents, “giving it a current market value of $111 million Canadian dollars”.
“Over the past 12 months I have been talking a lot about a transformational deal for Playmaker and its shareholders that will take this company to the next level,” Gnat said in the news release. “Today’s announcement does exactly that, and I could not be more excited for the Playmaker family to join the Better Collective family.
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“Their success is undeniable and their vision to become the leading digital sports media group aligns with us exactly. The cultures of our companies are very similar and I see the integration and synergies to be incredibly accretive to shareholders.”
Landed on a screen near you: Rivalry Magazine
Rivalry is once again bringing the snark when it comes to competing in uber-crowded Ontario gambling marketplace.
The Toronto-based sports/esports wagering and online gaming company introduced yesterday Rivalry Magazine, “a magazine of esports, internet culture, and magic”. The magazine appears in a digital format, with the content focusing on the company’s use of social media influencers, its now-famous Mighty Rooster activation, the launch of its Casino.exe product, and more.
Why a magazine, curious minds ask?
“Because they said we couldn’t. . . or maybe that we shouldn’t,” reads one of the taglines below the magazine’s lead image (sorry, no Giselle Bundchen or Chris Hemsworth cover photos, gang).
“We’re on a mythical quest to build a sports betting brand that meets our audiences’ unique needs and brings something fresh to the table,” was one of the passages in the article raising the curtain on the mag. “Because let’s be honest, the world doesn’t need another sleepy, run-of-the-mill sportsbook. We’re in it for the long-haul, the glory, and yes, the memes.”
And, oh yeah, this:
“We hate sportsbooks that look like Excel spreadsheets and Kevin Hart telling us to “bet now” as much as you do. So we’ve set out to do something entirely different with the belief that a fundamentally entertaining product and brand creates real value for customers.”
The article also mentions that Rivalry is getting together with some “incredibly talented journalists (yes, real journalists) to help tell those stories”.
We’ll keep tabs on the mag, and keep you posted.
The Company Line
This week, Canadian Gaming Association member MediaTroopers gets The Company Line marquee treatment.
Birthdate:?2018
Home Base:?King of Prussia, Pennsylvania
Founders:??Shmulik Segal and Benjamin Truman, who stepped down last month as Chief Operating Officer with the old “to explore new opportunities” reasoning for his departure.
Raison D’Etre:?MediaTroopers is a digital marketing agency which specializes in online gambling for clients across the U.S., and since April 2022, in Ontario as a licensed supplier.
Gaming News Canada is looking for companies in the gaming space to be featured in this corner of the Tuesday dispatch. If interested, please email?[email protected].
Join us Thursday on LinkedIn Audio
Your congested correspondent, providing we no longer sound like Donald Duck, will be back in the host’s chair on LinkedIn Audio this week for the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. A reminder to our American listeners, that we are no longer on Daylight Savings Time here in the Great White North so for them, the first bon mots drop at 2 p.m. ET (and, as usual, 1 p.m. in our neck of the woods).
A tap of ye olde Northland hockey twig to Mark Silver for pinch-hitting (apologies for the mixed metaphor) on the latest GNCS episode. Jean-Francois Reymond, an education ambassador for the International Betting Integrity Association, was Silver’s guest to discuss IBIA’s athlete information program in the aftermath of the Shane Pinto suspension by the National Hockey League.
Regular contributor Amanda Brewer, and Phill Gray also participated in the conversation, and later discussed what’s happening in Alberta with the move to a regulated gaming landscape. Brewer and Gray also discussed their recent departures from Kindred Group and Sports Interaction respectively.
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a magazine, you say?